Context :

• Prime Minister has launched the scheme under which a group of Indian diaspora will be taken on a government-sponsored tour of religious places in India twice a year.
• The first batch of 40 Indian-origin people at the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas will begin their tour.They will be taken to religious places of all major religions in India and the government will bear all the expenses including the airfare from their country of residence. All people of Indian-origin aged 45 to 65 can apply and a group will be selected out of them with first preference given to people from ‘Girmitiya countries’ such as Mauritius, Fiji, Suriname, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, and Jamaica.
• Girmityas or Jahajis are descendants of indentured Indian labourers brought to Fiji, Mauritius, South Africa, East Africa, the Malay Peninsula, Caribbean and South America.
• They were hired to work on sugarcane plantations for the prosperity of the European settlers and save the Fijians from having to work on these plantations and thus to preserve their culture.