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emerging cities in the newly independent Gulf Arab states in the 1960s
and 1970s.^1 Similarly, Indians have been emigrating to different parts of
the world, primarily for economic reasons and the presence of people of
Indian origin in South Africa, Uganda, South Pacific and the Caribbean
can be cited as examples. Some of them moved voluntarily while others
were taken as indentured labourers during the British rule.
The Indian migration to the Gulf Arab countries is distinct and recent.
This largely began in the wake of the oil crisis of 1973 and the subsequent
construction boom in oil-rich Gulf Arab countries. The sudden accumula-
tion of wealth came against the backdrop of the meagre domestic popula-
tion who practised a nomadic lifestyle and relied on fishing and pearl trade.
Most Gulf Arab countries had no basic amenities and the sudden oil wealth
resulted in a massive transformation in terms of infrastructure and lifestyle.
This necessitated in the influx of a large number of expatriate workers,
initially from the neighbouring Arab countries and gradually from the
subcontinent and beyond (Halliday 1984 ; McMurray 1999 ; Weiner 1982 ;
Jain 2005 ).
Unlike the earlier trends, the new Indian migration to the Gulf Arab
countries has been exclusively economic and though many managed to
stay longer, most often it is temporary. A large segment of them filled the
blue-collar jobs, which the native Arabs found too demeaning or least
remunerative. According to one estimate, the number of Indian migrants
to the Gulf Arab countries swelled from 123,000 in 1975 to 705,000 in
1983 (Nuri 1992 , 48). A majority of the early migrants were unskilled and
semi-skilled workers and were employed in building and road construc-
tion, hotels, departmental stores and oil companies. They belonged to
states such as Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Punjab, Goa and
Tamil Nadu but more than half of them hail from Kerala. Gradually their
origin diversified and a large portion of them became skilled workers, with
a considerable number of professionals engaging in white-collar jobs such
as medicine, hospitality, engineering, management, teaching, accountancy.
The number of Indian expatriate community has been swelling since the
mid-1970s and is estimated to be nearly 8.5 million in 2017, including
about 3 million in Saudi Arabia alone (India, Rajya Sabha 2017 ).
(^1) One of the famous personalities of Saudi heritage and a doyen of Indian theatre is
Ebrahim Alkazi, whose father belonged to the Qassim region of central Arabia and settled in
India in late nineteenth century and established a successful business. See Business Wire
( 2017 ) and Alam ( 2017 ).
P. R. KUMARASWAMY AND MD. M. QUAMAR