Indian Filipinos are Filipinos of Indian descent who have historical connections with and have established themselves in what is now the Philippines. The term refers to Filipino citizens of either pure or mixed Indian descent currently residing in the country, the latter a result of intermarriages between the Indians and local populations.
Archaeological evidence shows the existence of trade between the Indian subcontinent and the Philippine Islands at least since the ninth and tenth centuries B.C. According to the National Geographic, 3% of the average Filipino's genes are of South Asian origin, which equates to nearly 3,300,000 Filipinos living in Philippines having full or partial Indian descent as of June 2020. As of the year 2018, there are over 120,000 Indians in the Philippines.
History
Prehistory
Indian genetic signatures found among the Dilaut native ethnic group of the Sulu archipelago show that Indian immigration to the Philippines happened even before the start of formal written Philippine history.
Ancient history
Iron Age finds in Philippines also point to the existence of trade between the Indian Subcontinent and the Philippine Islands during the ninth and tenth centuries B.C. India had greatly influenced the many different cultures of the Philippines through the Indianized kingdom of the Hindu Majapahit and the Buddhist Srivijaya. For at least two millennia before the arrival of the Spanish, Philippines was ruled by Hindu kings called Rajahs and Pramukhas. Numerous kings with written genealogies and Sanskrit names were found by Spanish warlords and friars. Indian presence in the Philippines has been ongoing since ancient times along with the Japanese people and the Han Chinese and Arab and Persian traders, predating even the coming of the Europeans by at least two millennium. Indian people together with the natives of the Indonesian Archipelago and the Malay Peninsula, who came as traders introduced Hinduism to the natives of the Philippines. Indian migrants have been crucial in the establishment of several Indianized kingdoms or "rajahnates" in the Philippines, Rajahates such as that of Butuan and Cebu. Indian Bania converts to Islam brought Sunni Islam to the Philippine islands in the course of trade, which was later enhanced and strengthened by Arab Muslim Sea traders to Mindanao and Sulu Sultanate.
By the 17th century, Gujarati merchants with the aid of Khoja and Bohri ship-owners had developed an international transoceanic empire which had a network of agents stationed at the great port cities across the Indian Ocean. These networks extended to the Philippines in the east, East Africa in the west and via maritime and the inland caravan route to Russia in the north.
Colonial Period
During the Spanish era, the chief source of slaves bought by Spanish administrators, native Filipino nobilities, and Chinese merchants in the Philippines, were: India and Bengal. Together they formed a cosmopolitan community in even the rural areas of the country. Sepoy troops from Madras (now Chennai, Tamil Nadu), British India also arrived with the British expedition and occupation between 1762 and 1764 during the Seven Years' War. When the British withdrew, many of the Sepoys (Army privates) mutinied and refused to leave. Virtually all had taken native brides (or soon did so). They settled in what is Cainta, in what was then the Province of Manila (currently part of Rizal Province). As of 2006, between 70 and 75 percent of Indians in the Philippines lived in Metro Manila, with the largest community outside of Manila being in Isabela province. The region in and around Cainta still has many Sepoy descendants.
However, Indian business people started to arrive in larger numbers in The Philippines during the American colonial period (1898–1930s) – especially during the 1930s and 1940s, when many Indians and Indian Filipinos lived in Filipino provinces, including Davao. The longest serving mayor of Manila, Ramon Bagatsing, was of Indian-Punjabi descent, having moved to Manila from Fabrica, Negros Occidental before the second world war.
A second surge of Indian businessmen, especially Sindhis arrived in Philippines during the Partition of India.
Present
Most of the Indians and Indian Filipinos in the Philippines are Sindhi and Punjabi as well as a large Tamil population. Many are fluent in Tagalog and English as well as local languages of the provinces and islands. Many are prosperous middle class with their main occupations in clothing sales and marketing. Sikhs are involved largely in finance, money lending (locally called Five – six ), sales and marketing.