Indian Indonesians are Indonesians whose ancestors originally came from the Indian subcontinent. Therefore, this term can be regarded as a blanket term for not only Indonesian Indian proper, but also Indonesians with other South Asian ancestry (e.g. Pakistanis, Bangladeshis etc.). According to the Indian Ministry of External Affairs, there were about 120,000 people of Indian origin as well as 9,000 Indian nationals living and working in Indonesia as of January 2012. Most of them were concentrated in province of North Sumatra and urban areas such as Banda Aceh, Surabaya, Medan and Jakarta. However, it is quite impossible to get correct statistical figures on the Indian Indonesian population, because some of them have merged and assimilated with the indigenous population to become indistinguishable from native Indonesians.
History
Various people from the Indian subcontinent have frequented the Indonesian archipelago since the prehistoric era. In Bali, for example, remains of pottery from the first centuries C.E. have been recovered. In fact, the name Indonesia itself comes from the Latin Indus ("India") and Greek nêsos ("island"), which literally means the "Indian archipelago".
From the 4th and 5th centuries onwards, Indian cultural influences became more visible. Initially, Sanskrit was used on inscriptions. However, since the 7th century onward, the Indian scripts were used more often to write down indigenous languages which by now already contained many loan words from Prakrit and Tamil.
In addition to that, indigenous Indonesians began to embrace Hinduism and Buddhism.
It is believed that various Indian people settled in Indonesia, mixed and assimilated with the local population. In an inscription from Central Java in the 9th century, the names of various Indian people (and Southeast Asian people) are mentioned:
ikang warga kilalan kling ārya singhala pandikiri drawiḍa campa kmir... (Brandes 1913:1021). "the civilians of which one has the use are: people from Kalinga, Aryas, Sinhalese, people from Pandiya, Dravida, Chams, and Khmer..."
Later, with the rise of Islam, this religion was brought to Indonesia by the Indian Muslims from the 11th century onward, first not to replace the existing religious systems, but to complement them.
Recent history
Today migrations of people from India still occur. In Medan, North Sumatra, there is a large (Tamil people) community estimated at 75,000 people (around 75% out of all Indian-Indonesian population). In all of Indonesia, various North Indians are found, but in a very small number. Usually their professions are connected with textile industries. Like Chinese Indonesians, many are shop owners.
Though there are no official figures, it is estimated that there are around 25,000 PIOs/NRIs living in Indonesia, of whom the Indian expatriate community registered with the Embassy and the Consulate in Medan numbers around 75,000.
Indians have been living in Indonesia for centuries, from the time of the Sri Vijaya and Majapahit Empire, both of which were Hindu and heavily influenced by the subcontinent. Indians were later brought to Indonesia by the Dutch in the 19th century as indentured labourers to work on plantations located around Medan in Sumatra. While the majority of these came from South India, a significant number also came from the north. The Medan Indians included Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs. They have now been in Indonesia for over four generations, and hold Indonesian passports. While local statistics continue to suggest that there are some 400 PIOs in Sumatra, the vast majority are now completely assimilated in Indonesian society, though some elements of the Tamil, Sikh and Bihari communities still maintain their cultural traditions.
The Indian Diaspora also includes several thousand Sindhi families who constitute the second wave of Indian immigrants who made Indonesia their home in the first half of the 20th century. The Sindhi community is mainly engaged in trading and commerce.
Among these communities, Tamils and to a lesser extent Sikhs were primarily engaged in agriculture, while Sindhis mainly established themselves in the textile trade and the sports business.
The inflow of major Indian investments in Indonesia starting in the late 1970s drew a fresh wave of Indian investors and managers to this country. This group of entrepreneurs and business professionals has further expanded over the past two decades, and now includes engineers, consultants, chartered accountants, bankers, and other professionals.