Gujaratis in New Zealand: how many, where they came from, and why the language is fading

Gujaratis are one of the oldest and largest Indian communities in New Zealand, and one of the least documented as a distinct group. Here is what is actually known.

How many Gujaratis live in New Zealand?

There is no clean official figure, and it is worth being straight about why. Stats NZ counts ethnicity as "Indian" rather than by regional community, and counts languages spoken separately. At the 2023 Census there were 292,092 Indian New Zealanders, up about 22 percent in five years. Gujaratis are among the largest components of that number, but the census does not publish them as a line item.

What we can say with confidence: Gujarati speakers number in the tens of thousands, Gujaratis were the first substantial Indian community to settle here, and they remain concentrated in the upper North Island.

Where did New Zealand's Gujaratis come from?

Overwhelmingly from two districts: Navsari and Surat, in southern Gujarat. This is unusually concentrated even by chain-migration standards — large numbers of New Zealand Gujarati families can trace themselves to a small cluster of villages, which is why surnames repeat so often across the community and why two strangers at a wedding in Auckland can frequently find a shared relative in three moves.

When did Gujaratis arrive in New Zealand?

Steady migration began in the 1890s. The numbers were tiny at first — around 46 Indians in the whole country in 1896, rising to 181 by 1916 and 671 by 1921 — then grew through the 1920s and 1930s.

Early arrivals took the work that was available: flax cutting, drain digging, scrub clearing. From the mid-1930s many moved into market gardening, and as capital accumulated, into fruit and vegetable retailing — the Gujarati-run fruit shop being, for decades, a fixture of New Zealand town life. Others moved into hotels, manufacturing and food processing.

Where do Gujaratis live in New Zealand?

Mostly the North Island, with Auckland the largest centre by a distance. Established communities also exist in Wellington, the Waikato, Bay of Plenty, Taranaki and Manawatū. (Punjabi Sikh migration followed a different path, concentrating in the Waikato around dairy farming — the two communities have distinct histories that often get flattened into one.)

How did the community organise itself?

Through associations, early and effectively. The Auckland Indian Association came first, followed by eight regional associations around the country. A national body, the Central Indian Association, was formed in 1926–27 — specifically to respond to the White New Zealand League, an openly racist campaign of the period that agitated against Indian and Chinese settlement.

By the middle of the twentieth century those associations were predominantly Gujarati and Hindu in character, and they remain the backbone of language teaching today. The Auckland Indian Association's Mahatma Gandhi Centre has been running for roughly eighty years and currently teaches around a hundred students a week.

Is Gujarati still spoken in New Zealand?

Yes, and it is thinning generation by generation. The pattern is consistent and well documented across diaspora communities: the first generation speaks the language, the second understands it but answers in English, and the third neither speaks nor understands.

Most New Zealand Gujarati families are now somewhere in that second stage. It rarely feels like a crisis while it is happening — conversation at home still works, because the parents understand what the grandparents say and the children understand what the parents say. The break becomes visible only when the grandparents die and nobody left in the room can hold a conversation in Gujarati.

Why isn't Gujarati taught in New Zealand schools?

Because no Indian language is. Despite Hindi being the fourth most spoken language in the country and Punjabi the fastest growing, there is no Indian language available as an NCEA subject. By way of comparison, over twelve thousand students were enrolled in Japanese in 2024.

A couple of Auckland schools offer some Hindi — Papatoetoe North School runs bilingual Hindi classes for Years 3 to 6, and Papatoetoe High offers it to junior students — but there is no curriculum pathway, no standardised resources and effectively no funding. Community leaders have been making the case for years that a country this multicultural should do better.

The practical consequence for a Gujarati family: nobody is coming. Whether your children speak the language is a decision you make at home and maintain yourself.

What can families actually do?

Three things, in order of impact.

Find a class if there is one. Auckland and Wellington both have Sunday schools run by the Indian associations; details are in our guide to learning Gujarati in New Zealand. Two hours a week with other children does something no book can — it makes the language normal rather than a family eccentricity.

Protect one weekly conversation. A fixed call with a grandparent, in Gujarati, with a small job attached for the child. This is the single highest-return habit available to a diaspora family and it costs nothing.

Do ten minutes most days at home. Not two hours when you remember. Consistency beats intensity by a wide margin at this age.

If you are not confident in your own Gujarati — which describes most parents in the second generation — that is a solvable problem rather than a disqualification: teaching your child when you are not fluent yourself.

Resources for New Zealand Gujarati families

Historical detail in this article draws on Te Ara — the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, and census and schooling figures from Stats NZ and RNZ reporting. If your family history adds to or corrects any of this, we would genuinely like to hear it.

Back to blog