The first indentured ship did not land at Suva. The Leonidas arrived off Levuka, on Ovalau, on the evening of 14 May 1879, and most of the cane that the girmitiyas cut grew in the west of Viti Levu and on Vanua Levu. Suva's part in the story is different: it is where the girmit history is written into law, holidays and archives, and where many descendants later settled as the population moved to towns.
Why were Indian labourers brought to Fiji?
Sugar. The Fiji Sugar Corporation's history page records that the Colonial Sugar Refining Company (CSR) began operating in Fiji in 1880 and built mills at Nausori (1882), Rarawai (1886), Labasa (1894) and Lautoka (1903). The same page states that the British government brought indentured labourers from India to work plantations from 1879 until 1916, after which a small-farm system settled Indian farmers on plots of about 4 hectares.
The contract terms explain why "girmit" is remembered as hardship. Historian Brij V. Lal's account of indenture lists nine hours of work a day except Sundays and holidays, a minimum wage of one shilling a day for men and nine pence for women, and a free passage home only after ten years of "industrial residence". A Government of Fiji feature from June 2023 records a Nasinu descendant's family memory of whippings, bans on saris and having to hide to eat roti.
The Leonidas and the numbers
Lal's chapter on the Leonidas says the ship cleared Calcutta on 28 January 1879 with about 500 migrants. Cholera and smallpox broke out soon after departure, 19 people died at sea, and the survivors were held in quarantine on Yanuca Lailai until 15 August, where 15 more died. Official speeches give different numbers for this voyage, so treat any single figure you see on a plaque or leaflet as one count among several.
The same caution applies to the total. Doug Munro's introduction to Lal's book gives 60,945 people between 1879 and 1916. The President's 2024 Girmit address said around 60,553, the Prime Minister's 2025 speech said nearly 60,000, and the President's 2025 address said over 61,000.
Two end dates also circulate. The Deputy Prime Minister's 2024 Girmit speech states that the last ship arrived on 11 November 1916 and that indenture officially ceased in 1920. So 1916 marks the end of new arrivals; 1920 marks the end of the contracts already running.
How many Indo-Fijians live in Fiji today?
The honest answer is that the current official figure is not published in the census releases we could read. The Fiji Bureau of Statistics' 2017 Release 1 counts 884,887 people on census night, 17 September 2017, but gives no breakdown by ethnicity or religion. Figures you see quoted for 2017 or later should say where they come from.
The last ethnic count we could verify is the Bureau's 2007 analytical report:
| Census | Indo-Fijian population | Share of total |
|---|---|---|
| 1986 | 348,704 | 48.7% |
| 1996 | 338,818 | 43.7% |
| 2007 | 313,801 | 37.5% |
The same report attributes the decline to two measured factors: net emigration (an international net migration rate of minus 1.5% for Indo-Fijians in 2007) and a fertility rate that had fallen to 1.9 children per woman, below replacement. It also found that 56.7% of Indo-Fijians lived in urban areas in 2007, which helps explain why the community is visible in Suva and its neighbouring towns even though girmit was a rural system. In 2007 the religious shares for the whole country were 65.1% Christian, 27.7% Hindu and 6.3% Muslim.
Where does the girmit story show in Suva?
In the words people use
The 2013 Constitution states in section 5 that all citizens are known as Fijians, and its preamble recognises the descendants of indentured labourers from British India and the Pacific Islands. That is why "Indo-Fijian" describes heritage rather than a separate citizenship, and why "Fijian" on its own can mean any citizen. Section 31 makes conversational iTaukei and Fiji Hindi compulsory subjects in all primary schools, so primary pupils in Suva are taught both. If you are also visiting an iTaukei village, our sevusevu and kava guide covers that separate set of customs.
In the calendar
The Government of Fiji's 2026 public holiday list includes Girmit Day on Friday 15 May, Prophet Mohammed's Birthday on Monday 24 August and Diwali on Monday 9 November. Girmit Day is new as a national holiday: at the 2023 western commemoration the Prime Minister described it as the first public holiday to honour the girmitiyas.
Recent national Girmit events have been held away from the capital, at the Lautoka Girmit Multi-Cultural Centre in 2024 and in Labasa in 2025. The holiday applies nationwide, but the main official ceremony may be in the cane belt, so check the government's announcements before planning around it.
In the museum
The Fiji Museum in Thurston Gardens runs "Voyages: Stories of an Ocean People", which presents girmitiyas alongside Pacific Island labourers and other migrants within the longer history of people reaching Fiji. Its exhibitions page lists no separate girmit gallery, so do not expect a dedicated hall.
The museum opens daily from 9:00 am to 4:30 pm, including most public holidays, but it closes on Diwali, Christmas Day, New Year's Day and Easter Sunday. A Diwali-week visitor should go on another day.
In the records
UNESCO added the Records of the Indian Indentured Labourers to its Memory of the World Register in 2011, and the entry lists Fiji among the related national committees. UNESCO describes these as the only documents for ancestral and lineage research for the labourers' descendants, across 1,194,957 Indians sent to 19 colonies. Munro notes that Lal's own research rested on 45,439 emigration passes of north Indians who embarked at Calcutta for Fiji.
Planning a visit around the history
If your aim is the plantation landscape itself, Suva is the wrong base: FSC's three operating mills are at Lautoka, Ba and Labasa, and the Nausori mill near Suva no longer appears among them. If your aim is to understand how the girmit legacy shapes the country now, Suva works well, combined with a museum visit that does not fall on Diwali.
For a descendant tracing an ancestor, gather whatever the family holds first (a ship name, an arrival year, a pass or registration number), then contact the National Archives of Fiji in Suva before travelling to ask what can be viewed and how requests are handled; we could not read its access rules online. Girmit Day 2026 has passed, and the 2027 date was not yet on the government list when we checked, so the next date to plan around is Diwali on Monday 9 November 2026, with the museum closed that day.