From: The Encyclopedia of Canada's Peoples/Indo-fijians/Norman Buchignani
Indo-Fijian culture in Canada has, from the beginning, blended Fijian and Canadian beliefs and practices. Indo-Fijians have quickly become acculturated in many cultural domains, including public language use and most aspects of the material culture. Conscious efforts to maintain Indo-Fijian culture have focused on beliefs and practices that have high symbolic value, particularly those that support personal and group identities, such as Fijian food habits, household dress, language use, religion, family values, and what are considered to be appropriate relations with other Indo-Fijians. There is little institutional support for the maintenance of cultural values, but they are in part sustained through ongoing relations with Indians in Fiji.
Adult Indo-Fijians have generally come to Canada with at least ten years of formal schooling, augmented in many cases by occupational training. Many subsequently have taken occupational upgrading, certification, or retraining programs. The hope of securing better educational prospects for their children has always been an important motivation for immigration. Although they are not often directly involved in their children’s education in Canada, parents exert strong pressure on both daughters and sons to do their school work and to graduate from high school, and a high proportion of the children do both. Many now go on to colleges and universities. Almost all Indo-Fijian children go to public schools where they generally have fitted in rather easily. Their school peers, however, put enormous pressure on them to acculturate, a pressure so far not significantly countered by parental action or supplementary cultural education, except in the area of religion. Culturally, and in terms of primary identity, Indo-Fijian children are fast becoming Canadian children.
Most Indo-Fijians come to Canada as practising Hindus – either orthodox Hindus (Sanatanis) or Arya Samajists. Adult immigrants have maintained a strong and active commitment to their personal Hindu devotions, sometimes backed up by collective worship and special life-cycle ceremonies shared with coreligionists, who are almost exclusively other Indo-Fijians, usually from the same subbranch of Hinduism and, for Sanatanis, from the same part of India. The transmission of this religious commitment to the next generation has proved difficult, and young immigrant children and Canadian-born children do not appear to be becoming practising Hindus in the same sense as their parents.
Indo-Fijians in the Vancouver area played an important role in the establishment of the first permanent Hindu temple there in 1972. From the beginning, it was designed to be used by a wide range of different cultural groups. By the mid-1970s the annual Hindu festivals of Dirwali (the Hindu New Year’s celebration) and Holi (the celebration of spring) were being held at home and in parallel temple-organized services, with entertainment.
About 15 percent of Indo-Fijians in Canada are Muslims, almost all of whom are Sunnis. Social ties among Fijian Muslims, backed by intermarriages, are dense, and Islam has provided a significant basis upon which to develop formal community organization. Muslim Indo-Fijian immigrants joined with coreligionists from other South Asian communities to found one of the first permanent mosques in the Vancouver area. Muslim religious institutions have since developed further, and seem to be effective in helping to transmit the faith to Indo-Fijian children. Although there is little religiously-based division between Indo-Fijian Hindus and Muslims in most areas, there is also little intermarriage.
Indo-Fijian immigrants in Canada have a keen interest in the political situation in Fiji, especially since many recent Indo-Fijian immigrants feel like political refugees, even if they are not so classified. Particularly since the 1987 coup, there has been deep concern for the Indian community in Fiji, but there has not been a great deal of nationalist agitation on the part of Indo-Fijians in Canada. In contrast, civic commitment in Canada has never been high. In British Columbia, Indo-Fijians tend to vote for the New Democratic Party, but their party participation has not yet been extensive. Some Indo-Fijians have become involved in antiracist organizations and in more general volunteer work.
