| Regions with significant populations | |
|---|---|
| Phnom Penh | |
| Languages | |
| Khmer · Various Indian Languages · English | |
| Religion | |
| Hinduism · Sikhism · Buddhism · Islam · Religions of India | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| People of Indian origin |
There is a small community of Indians in Cambodia mainly expatriates and immigrants from India.
Relations between India and Cambodia go back to ancient times. Indian traders made contact with south east Asia and vice versa as far back as before the common era. South east Asian civilizations such as the Khmers were speculated by scholars to have traveled as far as the Indus river delta. Modern scholars have proposed that early Khmer arts and buildings showed a south Indian as speculated by earlier scholars. [1] The Khmer language was heavily influenced by Cholan, Tami the writing system was derived from like most of other native south east Asian nations'. [2]
During the French colonial period, most South Asians in Cambodia were Tamils from French-ruled Pondicherry, with substantial minorities from Gujarat and Sindh as well as smaller communities from the provinces of Madras and Bombay. The number of South Asians in Cambodia was nearly six thousand before dropping due to the Japanese invasion of French Indochina during World War II to 1,310 in 1949 and less than a thousand in 1963. Many Indians owned clothing shops around Central Market, while others worked as civil servants or, for those from Chettiar communities, as traders and moneylenders. Relations between South Asians and ethnic Khmers were reportedly poor due to the former's common professions and business practices, which were perceived as exploitative, and a superiority complex based around Indic influence. After the 1970 Cambodian coup d'état, most of the Indian businessmen left. When the Khmer Rouge took over in 1975, many of the remaining Indians fled, either by plane to Bangkok or being trucked by the Khmer Rouge to the Thai border from the French embassy with other foreigners. Those who couldn't escape were persecuted and even killed by the regime led by Angkar that ordered its elimination of Indian minority, leading to the near-elimination of the Indian community by 1980. As the political and economic situation became more stable in the 1990s, Indians professionals started to reestablish themselves in Cambodia. [3] [4]
Today, many Indians in Cambodia are involved in pharmaceuticals, the United Nations and businesses such as restaurants. The growing economy is also attracting more opportunity seekers from India. Unlike other Indian communities in Southeast Asia such as Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur or Singapore, the Indian population in Phnom Penh is too small to support a Little India quarter, but it remains an intimate and close-knit group that has integrated well into local society.
Indian culture is visible in Cambodia. Indian Hindu festivals like Diwali and Holi are celebrated by the Indian community. Thanks to satellite television, popular Hindi soap operas are shown daily while a small selection of Indian restaurants hosts weekly showings of the latest Bollywood Hindi films as well as cricket matches. Hindi film DVDs can be bought throughout the capital, and expatriates can peruse a number of Indian-based websites for the latest news and entertainment.
The history of Cambodia, a country in mainland Southeast Asia, can be traced back to Indian civilization. Detailed records of a political structure on the territory of what is now Cambodia first appear in Chinese annals in reference to Funan, a polity that encompassed the southernmost part of the Indochinese peninsula during the 1st to 6th centuries. Centered at the lower Mekong, Funan is noted as the oldest regional Hindu culture, which suggests prolonged socio-economic interaction with maritime trading partners of the Indosphere in the west. By the 6th century a civilization, called Chenla or Zhenla in Chinese annals, firmly replaced Funan, as it controlled larger, more undulating areas of Indochina and maintained more than a singular centre of power.
Phnom Penh is the capital and most populous city of Cambodia. It has been the national capital since the French protectorate of Cambodia and has grown to become the nation's primate city and its economic, industrial, and cultural centre. Before Phnom Penh became capital city, Oudong was the capital of the country.
The Chams, or Champa people, are an Austronesian ethnic group in Southeast Asia and are the original inhabitants of central Vietnam and coastal Cambodia before the arrival of the Cambodians and Vietnamese, during the expansion of the Khmer Empire (802–1431) and the Vietnamese conquest of Champa.
The Khmer Empire was a Hindu-Buddhist empire in Southeast Asia, centered around hydraulic cities in what is now northern Cambodia. Known as Kambuja by its inhabitants, it grew out of the former civilization of Chenla and lasted from 802 to 1431. Historians call this period of Cambodian history the Angkor period, after the empire's most well-known capital, Angkor. The Khmer Empire ruled or vassalised most of Mainland Southeast Asia and stretched as far north as southern China.
Funan was the name given by Chinese cartographers, geographers and writers to an ancient Indianized state—or, rather a loose network of states (Mandala)—located in mainland Southeast Asia covering parts of present-day Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam that existed from the first to sixth century CE. The name is found in Chinese historical texts describing the kingdom, and the most extensive descriptions a name the people of Funan gave to their polity. Some scholars argued that ancient Chinese scholars has found the records from Yuán Shǐ, the history records of Yuan Dynasty. "Syam Kok and Lo Hu Kok, formerly the Kingdom of Funan, were located to the west of Linyi Kok. The maritime distance was from the capital of Linyi Kok to the capital of Funan Kok. They are separated by about 3,000 li."
Hinduism in Southeast Asia had a profound impact on the region's cultural development and its history. As the Indic scripts were introduced from the Indian subcontinent, people of Southeast Asia entered the historical period by producing their earliest inscriptions around the 1st to 5th century CE. Today, Hindus in Southeast Asia are mainly Overseas Indians and Balinese. There are also Javanese and Balamon Cham minority in Cambodia and south central Vietnam who also practice Hinduism.
Islam is a minority faith in Thailand, with statistics in 2006, suggesting 4.9% of the population are Muslim. Figures as high as 5% of Thailand's population have also been mentioned. A 2023 Pew Research Center survey gave 7%. Thai Muslims are the largest religious minority in the country. As of 2024, there are approximately 7.5 million Thai Muslims in the Kingdom or about 12% of the total 62.5 million Thai populations.
Nuon Chea, also known as Long Bunruot or Rungloet Laodi, was a Cambodian communist politician and revolutionary who was the chief ideologist of the Khmer Rouge. He also briefly served as acting Prime Minister of Democratic Kampuchea. He was commonly known as "Brother Number Two", as he was second-in-command to Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, General Secretary of the Party, during the Cambodian genocide of 1975–1979. In 2014, Nuon Chea received a life sentence for crimes against humanity, alongside another top-tier Khmer Rouge leader, Khieu Samphan, and a further trial convicted him of genocide in 2018. These life sentences were merged into a single life sentence by the Trial Chamber on 16 November 2018. He died while serving his sentence in 2019.
Hinduism is a minority religion in Cambodia which is followed by about 1,000 to 15,000 individuals. Even being a small minority in the Buddhist majority nation it highly influences the vast culture and history of Cambodia with being prominent religion under the Khmer Empire. Today most of the Cambodian Hindus are Indians in Cambodia. Cambodia had always been a Buddhist nation since its conception, but before its independence from French Indochina, it had a significant Hindu minority, and several hundred years before that, it had been the most dominant religion in Cambodia as well as Southeast Asia.
Chinese Cambodians are Cambodian citizens of Chinese ancestry or Chinese of full or partial Khmer ancestry. The Khmer term Khmer Kat Chen (ខ្មែរកាត់ចិន) is used for people of mixed Chinese and Khmer descent; Chen Khmer (ចិនខ្មែរ) means Cambodian-born citizen with ancestry from China. The Khmer constitute the largest ethnic group in Cambodia among whom Chen means "Chinese". Contact with the Chinese people such as envoys, merchants, travelers and diplomats who regularly visited Indochina verifiably existed since the beginning of the common era. However, the earliest record of a Chinese community in Cambodia dates to the 13th century.
Jarai people or Dega are an Austronesian indigenous people and ethnic group native to Vietnam's Central Highlands, as well as in the Cambodian northeast Province of Ratanakiri. During the Vietnam War, many Jarai persons, as well as members of other Montagnard groups, collaborated with US Special Forces, and many were resettled with their families in the United States, particularly in North Carolina, after the war.
The largest of the ethnic groups in Cambodia are the Khmer, who comprise 95.8% of the total population and primarily inhabit the lowland Mekong subregion and the central plains. The Khmer historically have lived near the lower Mekong River in a contiguous arc that runs from the southern Khorat Plateau where modern-day Thailand, Laos and Cambodia meet in the northeast, stretching southwest through the lands surrounding Tonle Sap lake to the Cardamom Mountains, then continues back southeast to the mouth of the Mekong River in southeastern Vietnam.
Vietnamese Cambodians refers to ethnic group of Vietnamese who live in Cambodia or it refers to Vietnamese who are of full or partial Khmer descent. According to Cambodian sources, in 2013, about 15,000 Vietnamese people live in Cambodia. A Vietnamese source stated that 156,000 people live in Cambodia, while the actual number could be somewhere between 400,000 and one million people, according to independent scholars. They mostly reside in southeastern parts of Cambodia bordering Vietnam or on houseboats in the Tonlé Sap lake and Mekong rivers. The first Vietnamese came to settle modern-day Cambodia from the early 19th century during the era of the Nguyễn lords and most of the Vietnamese came to Cambodia during the periods of French colonial administration and the People's Republic of Kampuchea administration. During the Khmer Republic and Khmer Rouge governments in the 1970s under the Pol Pot regime, the Vietnamese among others were targets of mass genocides; thousands of Vietnamese were killed and many more sought refuge in Vietnam.
Cambodia–Vietnam relations take place in the form of bilateral relations between the Kingdom of Cambodia and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. The countries have shared a land border for the last 1,000 years and share more recent historical links through being part of the French colonial empire. Both countries are members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
The Kula people are the descendants of migrants from Burma who settled in the Pailin-Chanthaburi region along the Cambodia–Thailand border during the 19th century. To which Burmese ethnic group the Kulas belong remains uncertain, with some speculating a Bamar, Shan or multi-ethnic heritage.
Rugby union in Cambodia is a minor but growing sport. Its governing body is the Cambodian Federation of Rugby.
Cambodia–India relations, also known as Cambodian-Indian relations, are the bilateral relations between the Kingdom of Cambodia and the Republic of India. Cambodia has an embassy in New Delhi, and India has an embassy in Phnom Penh.
Cambodian genocide denial is the belief expressed by some academics that early claims of atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge government (1975–1979) in Cambodia were much exaggerated. Many scholars of Cambodia and intellectuals opposed to the US involvement in the Vietnam War denied or minimized reports of human rights abuses of the Khmer Rouge, characterizing contrary reports as "tales told by refugees" and US propaganda. They viewed the assumption of power by the Communist Party of Kampuchea as a positive development for the people of Cambodia who had been severely impacted by the Vietnam War and the Cambodian Civil War. On the other side of the argument, anti-communists in the United States and elsewhere saw in the rule of the Khmer Rouge vindication of their belief that the victory of Communist governments in Southeast Asia would lead to a "bloodbath."
The Cambodian genocide was the systematic persecution and killing of Cambodian citizens by the Khmer Rouge under the leadership of Prime Minister of Democratic Kampuchea, Pol Pot. It resulted in the deaths of 1.5 to 2 million people from 1975 to 1979, nearly 25% of Cambodia's population in 1975.
Sophal Ear is a Cambodian-American political scientist and expert in political economy, diplomacy, world affairs, and international development. A refugee from Cambodia, he studied at Princeton University and at the University of California, Berkeley. He has published extensively on Cambodian genocide and international aid and gives regular talks on these subjects.
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