Hindi in the Caribbean | Ajay Kamalakaran

In the 1960s, as Caribbean countries with large Indian diasporas were gaining independence, an idea popped up tens of thousands of kilometres away in New Delhi: let us teach them Hindi and Sanskrit.

The initiative was spearheaded by the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, or ICCR, an agency under the Ministry of External Affairs. And its target were the descendants of indentured labourers sent from North India to Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, and Suriname, most of whom primarily spoke Awadhi and Bhojpuri.

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