The Sunee Surtee Muslim Diaspora

Cara was born in Mauritius in 1949 and joined the Islamic Foundation in 1983. He is a founding member of Human Welfare League based in Mauritius. In the preface, he cites three Prophetic sayings which encourage Muslims to learn about their lineage but he admits that it took him several decades to return to his grandfather’s village Lajpur, in Gujarat, India.

The book under review has six uneven chapters, each building and linking to the previous one. The origins, motivations and destinations of the Sunee Surtee Muslim community are documented in the first. From the sixteenth century, they settled in every corner of the world and played an important role in the development of their adopted communities. The earliest migrants left Surat, hence Surtee, in Gujarat and its surrounding areas and headed to the remote Andaman Island, Myanmar, Reunion, Mauritius, New Zealand, the Caribbean, Singapore, not to mention South Africa, Canada, England and other places. In addition to travelling for trade and economic security, Cara notes that not all of them belong to this ilk. In fact, some were rich merchants and educated men who were adventurous. Others seized the opportunities of the invitation issued by Britain for its colonised citizens to rebuild the nation and spearhead the NHS. Cara thinks that some migrated to propagate Islam. The author is to a great extent correct to observe that wherever the Gujaratis settled, one of their earliest key objectives was to establish mosques and madrasahs. Mauritius was no different as they pioneered the same there as well.