Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Indian indenture system was a form of indentured servitude in which more than 1.6 million Indian workers were transported to labour on colonial plantations across the Caribbean, Africa, and the Pacific. Workers signed contracts called girmit for five years of labour, but historians have documented that many were deceived, coerced, or kidnapped. Historian Hugh Tinker characterised the system as "a new form of slavery."
The system began in 1834 with the Atlas voyage from Calcutta to Mauritius, though the first formal regulations were set on the 18th of January 1826 by the colonial government of Reunion. British Indian indentureship lasted until 1917, when the Imperial Legislative Council abolished it under pressure from Indian nationalists and because of declining profitability.
After the abolition of slavery in the British Empire in 1833, plantation owners in the Caribbean, Natal, Fiji, and elsewhere needed a cheap labour force. Newly freed slaves refused to work for the low wages planters offered, making Indian indentured labour an attractive substitute for maintaining profitable sugar production.
A total of 1,601,935 labourers were transported under the Indian indenture system. The largest recipient was Mauritius, with 453,063; British Malaya received 400,000; British Guiana, 238,909; Natal, 152,184; and Trinidad and Tobago, 147,596. Between 1842 and 1870 alone, 525,482 Indians emigrated to British and French colonies.
Gopal Krishna Gokhale, a moderate Congress leader, tabled a bill in February 1910 in the Viceroy Legislative Council to end the export of Indian indentured labour to Natal. The bill passed unanimously and came into effect in July 1911. The British-led system for other colonies was abolished in 1917.
Mauritius has the highest share, with 66 percent of its population of Indian origin. Indo-Guyanese make up 39.83 percent of Guyana's population; Indo-Trinidadians, 35.43 percent of Trinidad and Tobago; Indo-Fijians, 37.50 percent of Fiji; and Indo-Surinamese, 27.40 percent of Suriname. Significant Indian-origin minorities also exist in Malaysia (7 percent), Singapore (9 percent), South Africa (2.60 percent), and Sri Lanka (4.2 percent).