Bhajan Jamming 2026 held in Fiji (Photo: Special arrangement)
New Delhi: About 400 people gathered at the University of the South Pacific on Sunday evening for Fiji’s first “Bhajan Jamming”, an initiative organized by the High Commission of India in Suva and the Indian Council for Cultural Relations' (ICCR) Swami Vivekananda Cultural Centre to draw younger Indo-Fijians back towards their devotional and cultural roots through music.
The event, styled Bhajan Jamming 2026, brought together devotional singers, musicians, students and members of Fiji’s Indian diaspora for an evening built around bhajans - Hindu devotional songs that have been part of Indo-Fijian community life since the arrival of indentured labourers from India in the late nineteenth century.
The high commissioner of India to Fiji, Suneet Mehta, opened the evening with an address in which he said devotional music remained a powerful medium for promoting peace, harmony and cultural understanding.
Mehta, an Indian Foreign Service officer of the 2007 batch who has previously served in Madrid, Washington DC and Canberra before taking charge of the Suva mission in December 2024, said the initiative was as much about strengthening people-to-people ties as it was about preserving tradition, and reaffirmed the High Commission's continuing commitment to promoting Hindi and Indian culture across Fiji and the wider Pacific.
The programme drew on prime minister Narendra Modi’s idea of “Bhajan Clubbing” - an effort to present centuries-old devotional traditions in a format that appeals to younger audiences by blending them with contemporary musical styles. That approach was evident through the evening, with performances from six groups: Bandish Group, Sukoon Group, Hanuman Chalisa Pariwar, His Masters Orchestra, Sound Groove, and the University of the South Pacific's own Indian Students Association Group, whose set drew particular enthusiasm from the campus crowd.
Certificates of appreciation were presented to all participating groups, singers and musicians at the close of the programme in recognition of their role in the first edition of the event.
Among those present were the president of the Fiji Hindu Society, Sumanta Rout; the president of the India–Fiji Friendship Forum, Sanjay Ambasht; the managing director of Supreme Fuel, Rajesh Patel; and representatives of Indian public sector undertakings operating in Fiji.
The vote of thanks was delivered by the High Commission’s second secretary for Hindi and culture and acting director of the Swami Vivekananda Cultural Centre, Ishwar Singh Yadav, who thanked the performers, volunteers and community members who had helped organize the event.
The turnout reflects a wider effort by New Delhi to deepen cultural engagement with Fiji, home to one of the largest Indian-origin populations outside India, dating back to the girmitiya system of indentured labour that brought tens of thousands of Indian workers to Fiji’s sugar plantations between 1879 and 1916. People of Indian origin today make up close to a third of Fiji’s population and have long played a prominent role in its political, business and cultural life.
The University of the South Pacific, founded in 1968 and owned jointly by twelve Pacific island governments, has itself become a frequent venue for such India-linked cultural programming, given its large student base and central location in Suva.
Cultural diplomacy has been a consistent thread in the India-Fiji relationship, which received a significant boost after Modi’s visit to Fiji in November 2014 – the first bilateral visit by an Indian prime minister to the island nation in over three decades – when the Forum for India-Pacific Islands Cooperation was launched with the participation of fourteen Pacific island countries.
The two governments have since expanded cooperation across health, renewable energy and community outreach; the High Commission handed over antiretroviral drugs to Fiji's public health system as recently as November 2025.
Organizers said Bhajan Jamming would now continue as an annual fixture on the High Commission's cultural calendar, alongside its existing programmes promoting Indian art, yoga, language and heritage across Fiji and the Pacific.
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