This is the first study of the syntax of South African Indian English, as spoken in its natural home and neighbourhood surroundings. It is my belief that language study of this sort cannot be divorced from a historical and social context. Earlier studies of the dialect and prescriptive judgements by educators suffer in this regard. Unlike most earlier commentators, I do not believe that the dialect is deficient in any way. It is as systematic and logical as any other. If it has evolved many rules of its own, we must seek to understand the nature of these rules and establish the reason for their existence, rather than condemning them by some simplistic comparisons with the formal norms of upper-middle-class speech and writing. This work is both an attempt at understanding and a celebration of those rules, many of which turn out to co-exist in (new and old) English dialects all over the world.