Islam in Mauritius is the nation's third largest religion behind Hinduism and Christianity. Muslims constitute over 17.3 per cent of Mauritius population. Muslims of Mauritius are mostly of Indian descent. Large numbers of Muslims arrived to Mauritius during the British regime starting in 1834 as part of the large scale indentured labor force from India. Mauritius became independent in 1968 and no official religion is defined in the constitution. Hindus make up about half of the population; Christians about a third and Muslims most of the rest. Several religious groups including Muslim ones are recognized by parliamentary decree and receive state subsidies according to their percentage of the population. History Some scholars believed that Muslims arrived in Mauritius with the Dutch as slaves from Arabia, but this view has been disproved as the Arabians who were with the Dutch were mostly traders. Muslims arrived in Mauritius during the British regime, starting in 1810. Indentured labourers arrived on a large scale from India, mostly from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Orissa, Bengal, and the cities of Kolkata and Mumbai. There were a total of 450,000 immigrants during the period from 1835 to 1907, and after 1909, the immigration of indentured labourers stopped. They were brought from India for a period of five years, after which they were returned. By 1922, only 160,000 had returned to India, while others settled down in Mauritius. There were a few families of wealthy Muslim traders from Gujarat which also settled along with the majority poor working classes. The population of Muslims is rumoured to have been 33% (no reference) of the total population during 1835, 64% during 1861 (no reference), but allegedly reduced to less than 25% by 1909. Traditionally Sunnis remained a majority, while other groups like Sunni Shafia, Shia and Bohra formed around 20 per cent of the total Muslims in the country. Cocknies, Kodjas, Bohras and Aga-khanities are believed to have arrived in Mauritius during 1910 from East Africa. Tawheed ideology, which was commonly followed in Mauritius was replaced by Islamic Circle Religious Group which culled out religious practices from India. The trend was changed after the evolution of oil-rich Arab countries in the 1970s. Communities {| style="clear:right; float:right; background:#ffffff; margin: 0 0 0.5em 1em;" class="toccolours" width="250" font-size : "90%" |- !style="background:#A8BDEC" align="center" colspan=2|Religious census |- |style="text-align:center;background:#A8BDEC"|Faith||style="text-align:center;background:#A8BDEC"| Total % |- |Hinduism||style="text-align:center;" |48 |- |Roman Catholic||style="text-align:center;" |26 |- |Islam||style="text-align:center;" |17 |- |Other Christian||style="text-align:center;" |6 |-