Diaspora and Migration are interconnected concepts describing the movement and settlement of people away from their ancestral homeland, with the Indian context being one of the largest globally, numbering over 35.4 million people as of November 2024. Migration is the act of moving from one place to another, while Diaspora is the resulting community of people who maintain a collective identity and ties to their origin country.
The history of the Indian diaspora is often categorized into waves: the Old Diaspora began in the mid-19th century with the forced migration of over 1.6 million indentured labourers, known as Girmitiyas, to British colonies like Trinidad and Fiji after the abolition of slavery in 1833. The New Diaspora emerged post-World War II and intensified from the 1970s, driven by voluntary migration of skilled professionals to Western countries and semi-skilled workers to the Gulf states for economic opportunities.
The Indian government engages with this community through the Ministry of External Affairs and classifies them into three main categories: Non-Resident Indians (NRIs), who are Indian citizens residing abroad; Persons of Indian Origin (PIOs), who are foreign citizens of Indian ancestry; and Overseas Citizens of India (OCIs), a status created by the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2003, which grants a lifelong visa and certain rights, but not full citizenship. The Pravasi Bharatiya Divas (PBD), celebrated annually on January 9th since 2003, is a key institutional mechanism to honor the diaspora's contributions.
A significant recent change occurred on January 9, 2015, when the PIO Card scheme was merged with the OCI Card scheme. Furthermore, the Citizenship (Amendment) Rules, 2026, effective from May 1, 2026, introduced a fully digital e-OCI system to streamline the application process. The status of an NRI is also defined for tax purposes under the Income-tax Act, 1961, based on the number of days spent in India, such as less than 182 days in a financial year.