Caribbean Hindustani (spoken by the original Indian indentured immigrants and to a lesser extent spoken by their descendants)
Standard Hindustani (Hindi–Urdu)·Sindhi·Punjabi·Gujarati·Kutchi·Bengali·Tamil·Telugu (spoken by more recent immigrants and their descendants, either Belizean-born or Belizean-naturalized)
Kriol·English·Spanish (common languages spoken in Belize)
Religion
Hinduism·Christianity·Islam
Related ethnic groups
Indo-Caribbeans·Indian people·Indian diaspora
Indo-Belizeans, also known as East Indian Belizeans, are citizens of Belize of Indian ancestry. The community made up 3.9% of the population of Belize in 2010.[2] They are part of the wider Indo-Caribbean community, which itself is a part of the global Indian diaspora.
Indians began arriving in Belize in the 1880s as part of the Indian indenture system set up by the British Indian government after slavery was abolished. Initially coming in as indentured, many of them stayed on to work the sugar plantations and were joined by other Indian immigrants. Indians are spread out over many villages and towns primarily in the Corozal and Toledo districts and live in reasonably compact rural communities. They are fairly well integrated into the Belizean population through intermarriage. However, they are still identifiable through their physiognomy and are known as 'Hindus'. These set of Indians were almost entirely composed of people from the Bhojpur region, Awadh region, and other places in the Hindustani Belt in North India. A minority of indentured laborers were from South India and other regions throughout South Asia.
In 1907, the Canadian Government made an unsuccessful attempt to transfer Indian independence activists residing in the province of British Columbia to Belize (then known as British Honduras). A Canadian delegation led by the chief clerk of the Canadian Ministry of the Interior Harkin, and a small Indian delegation including Teja Singh traveled to British Honduras in November 1907 to determine if conditions were suitable for the move. Upon his return to Canada, Teja Singh stated that Indians were being sent to Honduras for slave-labour and claimed that Canadian officials had attempted to bribe the Indian delegation to secure a positive report. The Canadian government blamed Teja Singh's statements for the failure of the proposed transfer.[3]
