1 [This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter published by Routledge/CRC Press in India Migration Report 2019. Diaspora in Europe on 2019, available online: https://www.routledge.com/India-Migration-Report-2019- Diaspora-in-Europe/Rajan/p/book/9780367733216] Crossing Past and Present: Heritage and Identity among Hindu-Gujarati Diasporain Portugal Inês Lourenço Introduction Indian origin population started to massively settle in Portugal after de decolonization of Portuguese colonies in Africa where Indian communities had invested in life projects for several generations. They came mainly from the Gujarat, belonging to the small colonies of Daman and Diu to the Portuguese empire and consisted of a majority of Hindus and Muslims; from Goa came a majority of Catholics, with deep ties to the Portuguese colonial past. After the end of the Portuguese State of India in 1961, some Goan families had begun to settle in Portugal, but it was in the late 1970s, after the independence of the Portuguese colonies in Africa in 1975, that a mass migration of population originating in India - but with an already long migratory tradition – towards Portugal triggered. The set of population of Indian origin in Portugal is very diversified and complex, although they are seen by the broader society as a homogeneous group, whose distinct internal characteristics are ignored and amalgamated by the common citizen in Portugal. How it was already been explored (Lourenço 2013) the presence of Indian origin communities in Portugal is diverse in its composition and in its duration. According to the High Level Committee Report on the Indian Diaspora (Singhvi et al., 2001) they constitute 0.7% of the Portuguese population. They are, 70,000 (65,000 PIO’s and 5,000 NRI’s) and are divided according to their socio-religious specificities. Thus, there are Hindus (33,000), Muslims (Sunnis) (12,000), Ismailis (5,000), Sikhs (8,000) and Goans (mainly Catholics) (15,000); roughly speaking, Catholics from Goa arrived right through the twentieth century, while Hindus and Muslims came in the early 1980s; Sikhs and some Hindus and Muslims from other states in India arrived in the late 1990s. The division by religious communities is related to the way the different groups have been organized according to their identity priorities. Thus, temples, mosques or gurudwaras were first built on a provisional basis, and gaining different forms over the