Mauritian society incorporates several ethnic and multi-ethnic groups. A majority of the republic's residents are descendants of people from India. Mauritius also comprises migrants from continental Africa, China, France, and the East African island of Madagascar. As of 2023, Mauritius now has the highest population density in Africa.
Mauritius has 2 genres of music that originate from the Island. The traditional music of Mauritius which is known as sega music and also Seggae Music. Other genres like reggae, ragga, zouk, soukous and Indian music are also popular, but these genres do not originate from Mauritius, despite famous local singers such as Kaya, who successfully combined Reggae Music with sega music to create Mauritian Seggae. Well-known traditional sega singers from Mauritius include Ti Frére, Marlene Ravaton, Serge Lebrasse, Michel Legris and Fanfan.
Bhojpuri is an Indo-Aryan language native to the Bhojpur-Purvanchal region of India and the Terai region of Nepal. It is chiefly spoken in eastern Uttar Pradesh, western Bihar and western Jharkhand in India as well as western Madhesh and eastern Lumbini in Nepal. It is an eastern Indo Aryan language and as of 2000 it is spoken by about 5% of India's population. Bhojpuri is a descendant of Magadhi Prakrit and is related to Maithili, Magahi, Bangla, Odia, Assamese, and other eastern Indo-Aryan languages.
Mauritius is a multi-ethnic, multilingual and a plural society with a population composed mainly of four major ethnic and religious groups. It is often depicted as a "rainbow nation".
The Hindi Belt, also known as the Hindi Heartland, is a linguistic region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India where various Northern, Central, Eastern and Western Indo-Aryan languages are spoken, which in a broader sense is termed as Hindi languages, with Standard Hindi serving as the lingua franca of the region.
Hinduism came to Mauritius when Indians were brought as indentured labour to colonial French and later in much larger numbers to British plantations in Mauritius and neighboring islands of the Indian Ocean. The migrants came primarily from what are now the Indian states of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, with another influx of migrants from the Sindh region of Pakistan, following the Partition of India.
Indo-Mauritians are Mauritians who trace their ethnic ancestry to the Republic of India or other parts of the Indian subcontinent in South Asia.
Indians in Réunion are people of Indian origin in Réunion. They form two ethnic groups on the island, Malbars (Tamils) and Zarabes (Muslims).
Caribbean Hindustani is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by Indo-Caribbeans and the Indo-Caribbean diaspora. It is a koiné language mainly based on the Bhojpuri and Awadhi dialects. These Hindustani dialects were the most spoken dialects by the Indians who came as immigrants to the Caribbean from Colonial India as indentured laborers. It is closely related to Fiji Hindi and the Bhojpuri-Hindustani spoken in Mauritius and South Africa.
Fiji Hindi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by Indo-Fijians. It is an Eastern Hindi and Bihari language, considered to be a koiné language based on Awadhi that has also been subject to considerable influence by Bhojpuri, other Eastern Hindi and Bihari dialects, and Standard Hindi-Urdu. It has also borrowed some vocabulary from English, Fijian, Telugu, Tamil, Bengali, Punjabi, Gujarati, and Malayalam. Many words unique to Fiji Hindi have been created to cater for the new environment that Indo-Fijians now live in. First-generation Indians in Fiji, who used the language as a lingua franca in Fiji, referred to it as Fiji Baat, "Fiji talk". It is closely related to Caribbean Hindustani and the Bhojpuri-Hindustani spoken in Mauritius and South Africa. It is largely mutually intelligible with the languages of Awadhi and Bhojpuri, as well as with the Bihari languages of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhesh, Koshi and Lumbini, and the dialects of Eastern Hindi of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Lumbini, but differs in phonetics and vocabulary with Modern Standard Hindi and Urdu.
The Mauritius Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) is the national state broadcaster of the Republic of Mauritius, that is the islands of Mauritius, Rodrigues, and Agaléga. The historical headquarters in Curepipe were relocated in Réduit, Moka. It also operates a station in Rodrigues. The MBC programmes are broadcast in 12 languages, notably French, Creole, English, Hindi, Urdu, Bhojpuri, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Mandarin/Cantonese, and Hakka. MBC provides 17 television channels in Mauritius, four in Rodrigues and two in Agaléga, as well as seven radio channels.
The island of Mauritius is home to many languages, and Mauritian literature exists in French, English, Creole and Indian languages. Major themes in Mauritian literature include exoticism, multiracialism and miscegenation, racial and social conflicts, indianocéanisme, and—more recently—post-modernism and post-structuralism currents, such as coolitude.
Babu is a historical title of royalty and nobility in the Indian subcontinent used by Bhumihar rulers and chieftains of many princely states. It is derived from Raja. Compound titles include babu saheb and babuji.
Bhojpuri cinema is the segment of Indian cinema dedicated to the production of motion pictures in the Bhojpuri language widely spoken in the state of Eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar with major production centres in Lucknow and Patna. The first Bhojpuri talkie film, Ganga Maiyya Tohe Piyari Chadhaibo, was released in 1963 by Bishwanath Prasad Shahabadi The 1980s saw the release of many notable as well as run-of-the-mill Bhojpuri films like Bitia Bhail Sayan, Chandwa ke take Chakor, Hamar Bhauji, Ganga Kinare Mora Gaon and Sampoorna Tirth Yatra.
Bihari Mauritians are the descendants of mainly Bhojpuri speaking migrants to Mauritius. A majority of Indo-Mauritians are of Bihari descent, and the majority of Mauritians are Indo-Mauritian. Castewise, most Bihari Mauritians are Vaishyas with significant Bhumihars, Brahmins, Rajputs, Koeris, Chamars, Yadavs, Kurmis, Banias and Kayasthas. All but one Mauritian Prime Ministers have been of Bihari Vaishya descent. The community includes a Hindu majority with a Muslim minority. About 65.7 % of the 1.3 million population of Mauritius is of Indian origin, most of them from Bihar, with Bhojpuri as their ancestral tongue.
Bihar has produced a number of poets and writers in its languages like Bhojpuri Maithili language, Magahi language, Angika and Bajjika including Bhikhari Thakur, Heera Dom, Viveki Rai,Satishwar Sahay Verma, Pandey Kapil etc are writers of Bhojpuri, Vidyapati in Maithili. Besides its regional languages, Bihar has also produced writers in English such as Raj Kamal Jha, Amitava Kumar, Tabish Khair, Gunjesh Bond, Abhay K, Kumar Vikram, Siddhartha Chowdhury; and Hindi including Raja Radhika Raman Prasad Sinha, Kumar vansi, Acharya Ramlochan Saran, Acharya Shivpujan Sahay, Divakar Prasad Vidyarthy, Ramdhari Singh 'Dinkar', Ram Briksh Benipuri, Phanishwar Nath 'Renu', Gopal Singh "Nepali", Ramesh Chandra Jha and Baba Nagarjun. Writer and Buddhist scholar Mahapandit Rahul Sankrityayan was born in Uttar Pradesh but spent his life in the land of Buddha, i.e., Bihar. Hrishikesh Sulabh is a short story writer, playwright and theatre critic. Arun Kamal and Aalok Dhanwa are poets.
Bhojpur is a ethnolinguistic and cultural area in the Indian subcontinent where the Bhojpuri language is spoken as a mother tongue. The Bhojpuri region encompasses parts of the Indian states of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and Jharkhand, and the Madhesh, Gandaki and Lumbini provinces of Nepal.
Nowadays, no one could still claim his pure race status. Ethnic, social and linguistic differences become each day more and more present and marked all over the world. Time, history and continuous population intermingling across boundaries led to create cosmopolitan beings, that is to say world citizens who, in spite of their singularity, manage to bring themselves together in order to create a unique and single nation. Among the nations most affected by this cross-fertilization is notably found Mauritius. The social and linguistic diversity of this country makes it unique and contribute to its wealth. It arouses curiosity, urges us to deepen our knowledge on the subject and is, to this extent, worth being studied.
Tamil Mauritians are the descendants of Tamil people who migrated, from the South Indian regions corresponding to the modern state of Tamil Nadu, to the island of Mauritius.
The Bhojpuri people, also known as Bhojpuriya-sawb are an Indo-Aryan ethnic group from the Indian subcontinent who speak the Bhojpuri-language and inhabit the Bhojpur-Purvanchal region. This area is now divided between the western part of the Indian state of Bihar, the eastern part of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, western Jharkhand, along with some neighbouring districts in the Madhya Pradesh and Madhesh and Lumbini of Nepal. A significant diaspora population of Bhojpuris can be found in Trinidad and Tobago, Netherlands, Guyana, Jamaica, Suriname, other parts of the Caribbean, Fiji, South Africa, and Mauritius.
