Some years after slavery was abolished, a group of Hindus from India came to Belize by way of Jamaica. They had entered Jamaica as part of an indensureship program which the British arranged to provide labour for various industries in the Caribbean after slavery was abolished. After these people had finished five years of indentureship, they were free to move to any territory in the West Indies to work. In Belize, the Hindus first settled in the Corozal District where they formed a community they called Calcutta and worked for the Mestizo and British sugar interests.
East Indians were believed to be better for lighter agricultural work than Africans or Garinagu. This racial stereotype meant that they were absorbed mainly by the British and Mestizo Sugar Estates in northern Belize as well as the twelve Confederate sugar estates in the south of the country. A wave of Hindus also arrived directly from India in the 1920s.