FIJI, July 20, 2015 (Fiji Times): The local Gujarati communities are renowned for their commercial success and as published accounts relate, their origins in Fiji could be traced to Porbander in India. Located on the Kathiawar peninsula, the coastal town is more famously known as the birth place of Indian activist and spiritual leader Mohandas Gandhi. In a closer-to-home context though, this was also from where the key traders in Fiji sprang.
Expanding trade routes and commercial prospects in the earlier part of the last century led to a wave of merchants, traders and craftsmen sweeping into Fiji from India and China. Many founded large families, with some descendants still practicing the traditional craft of these entrepreneurial ancestors. As noted in Kenneth Gillion’s book, Fiji’s Indian Migrants, the first of this lot were Virjee Narshi and Choonilal Gangjee, a pair of jewelers who migrated from Natal in 1906 after hearing of Fiji from Indians who had been contracted here as indentured laborers. “The peak of this ‘free’ immigration (as it was called at the time) was not reached until the 1920s, but perhaps two or three thousand arrived before 1920,” Gillion noted in his publication.
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