These Indians also entered a world whose cultural assumptions were completely alien to their own. Nineteenth-century Trinidad was deeply divided by race, class and colour. The indigenous Amerindian population had been almost totally eliminated by wars and diseases. The society which evolved, was one deeply rooted in the white master-black slave relationship of plantation economy although actual slavery in Trinidad was relatively short.

On the cultural level, a creole society with both European and African elements was emerging, It was difficult to locate Indians within the existing social structure or to absorb them in the existing cultural milieu, and for all intents and purposes Indians functioned, for a long time, as outsiders, with alien religious practices and a strange culture.

Moreover for about twenty years or so after the first East Indians arrived, they did not think of Trinidad in terms of permanent residence because their contract included return passage to India after the initial indenture period. After 1869, however, Indians were encouraged not to return to India and were offered the incentive of land in order to settle in Trinidad. It is from about 1869 onwards, therefore, that Indians began to sink their roots into Trinidad soil.

Ironically, around the very time that East Indian immigrants were attempting to make their home in Trinidad, the nationalist movement was beginning to gain momentum in India against the British, Nationalism in India tended to increase the militancy of East Indians in Trinidad as well as to reinforce their ethnic pride. As a consequence, a kind of Indian agitation for a more secure place in Trinidad society began to take root here in the 1890's. The more focused agitation of the 1890's was foreshadowed by the rather spontaneous Hosay Riot of 1884.