The harvest festival of Pongal is celebrated with enthusiasm by the Indians be it in India or any other country. Tamils living abroad follow their cultural values throughout their significant festival. It is great to note that even the younger generation of Tamils living abroad come forward to contribute to the development of this harvest festival. Through various contributions in celebrating Pongal, the Tamil diaspora maintains and nurtures the cultural distinctiveness.
Today, Pongal has become a vibrant festival with a global presence. The dispersal of Tamils around the globe is not of recent origin and at the moment there are seventy million of them spread in over fifty countries of the world. Pongal festivities means a lot for the people residing in countries other than India. The festival gives them a chance to come out with vibrant colors to perform rituals and religious ceremonies. It gives a feel of motherland and its culture. A togetherness is tried to be rooted in the Tamil diaspora by celebrating the Pongal festival at a single place, where everyone performs the Pongal rituals and share their sweet memories of India.
The early settlement patterns of the Tamils could be traced to the sugar cane plantations of Mauritius, Reunion in the Indian Ocean; Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean; Guyana and Suriname in South America; plantations in South Africa; Malaysia; Ceylon (Sri Lanka); and to coal mines of New Caledonia off Australia. In Indonesia and Thailand. Britain with 300,000 or more, the USA with well over 300,000, Canada with over 300,000 and Australia with over 30,000 are some of the developed countries where the Tamil diaspora is well settled, having gone on voluntary migration from Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka.
Pongal in South East Asia: Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Myanmar and others.
Pongal in Africa : Mauritius,Reunion, Seychelles And South Africa.
Pongal in Oceania : Australia, New Zealand, Fiji.
Pongal in the Gulf : Bahrain,Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia And Kuwait.
Pongal in Europe : Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Denmark
Tamils in Americas : USA and Canada.
