Geography of New Caledonia Geography of New Caledonia The geography of New Caledonia ("Nouvelle-Calédonie"), an overseas collectivity of France located in the subregion of Melanesia, makes the continental island group unique in the southwest Pacific. Among other things, the island chain has played a role in preserving unique biological lineages from the Mesozoic. It served as a waystation in the expansion of the predecessors of the Polynesians, the Lapita culture. Under the Free French it was a vital naval base for Allied Forces during the War in the Pacific. The archipelago is located east of Australia, north of New Zealand, south of the Equator,
Hinduism in New Caledonia Hinduism in New Caledonia Hinduism originally came to New Caledonia with Indians who worked as indentured servants of European settlers of the island. There are about 500 New Caledonians of Indian Tamil descent. They were known as Malabar and originally arrived in the 19th century from other French Territories, namely Réunion. New Caledonia has several descendants of Tamils, whose parents intermarried with the local population in the 20th century. New Caledonia requires a special study since a large number of Tamils went there as laborers and a report in a book published about 1919 states that of the Chinese, Indians