India and its diaspora: making sense of Hindu identity in South Africa.

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Date
2014Author
Gopal, Nirmala Devi.
Khan, Sultan.
Singh, Shanta Balgobind.
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Indian immigrants to South Africa in the late nineteenth century differed in terms of their
origins, motivations, belief systems, customs, and practices from the indigenous African
population as well as from the ruling white settler elite. It is within this context that this
paper interrogates some of the ways in which several generations of (Indian) Hindus
constructed and continue to (re)construct their religious identities in South Africa. Data for
this study were achieved by administering face-to-face questionnaires to 66 individuals in
the Metropolitan Area of Durban in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The sample (selected
through snowball sampling) comprised third to fifth generation Indians belonging to the four
major language groups (Tamil, Telegu, Gujarati, and Hindi) residing in South Africa.
Following the questionnaire responses, interviews were conducted with a selected number
of respondents from the same sample. Quantitative data were analysed using SPSS while
analysis of qualitative data followed a thematic model.