It is my understanding that there once was an American military base of some sort in southern India during WWII and that one of the servicemen played Hawaiian slack-key slide guitar. He apparently mixed with locals while off duty, and the locals took to the guitar with a vengeance adapting it to Indian music. There is a tradition now of Indian slide guitar.
Canadian guitarist, Harry Manx, is a follower of this tradtition.
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With the popularity of all things Hawaiian in the early 20th Century, and especially music, the Tau Moe Family went on a worldwide tour that lasted for about 60 years, with only short visits to back to thier native island.
They were popular everywhere and especially in India. One of Tau and Rose's kids was born there and several of the group's scarce 78s were recorded there.
Someone who heard them was a young musician named Brij Bhushan Kabra, who was inspired by their steel guitar guitarist to convert an archtop F-hole guitar into a lap steel, and to learn to play classical Indian music on it with a slide. He studied with Ali Akbar Khan.
Brij was the first to play raga on guitar, and was the inspiration for everyone who came after. The "mohan veena" (guitar) became more elaborate, being constructed with additional drone strings (and tuners up the wazoo) like the sitar.
Vishwa Mohan Bhatt was one of Kabra's musical children. He made a Grammy-award winning album with Ry Cooder. (I can a take a tiny bit of credit for that. I arranged for the album's distribution. Water Lily, the label, had been only available by mail order or in a few audiophile equipment stores before we negotiated national distriibution terms with them. The record sold like crazy, and its being made widely availalble brought it to the attention of the Grammy committee.)
Kabra's records (the first one came out in the'50s) are very hard to find, and expensive when they turn up. Only a couple of his 20 or more albums were issued in the U.S., one them part of a series of Indian music albums issued by World Pacific in the late '60s, which sometimes turns up in used record stores.
Four of the ones only issued in India were recently reissued on LP, out of the UK I think -- possibly bootlegs.
There have been a couple Tau Moe records, including a full album (Rounder) and a recent CD of their rare 78s (Grass Skirt Records).
Lots more info out there. See the entries for "Tau Moe" and "Brij Bhushan Kabra" on Wikipedia for instance.