LITTLE INDIA? PEYNA SIME!

The racist and fascist Hindutvawalas want my motherland Mauritius to become Little India, a springboard for their evil plan to loot the resources of Africa. They will fail as thoroughly as those who campaigned to build La Petite France here.
Mauritius is and will be a Creole island forever and a day. The Dutch colonisers started the creolisation process of the island when by accident they caused the extinction of the dodo, cleared ebony forests for their precious wood, introduced sugarcane to brew arrack and brought domestic animals and deer from elsewhere. When they abandoned the settlement, it is believed that they left behind a few Africans (freed slaves) who may be considered as the first inhabitants of Mauritius. The French colonisers went into widespread cultivation of sugarcane and brought in thousands of slaves from east Africa and a few slaves and craftsmen from Pondicherry, India. About a century later the English colonisers took over, abolished slavery and brought in thousands of indentured labourers from India. The creolisation of Mauritius was almost complete.
What next?
Mauritius is an independent and sovereign state but not yet a nation. We are not using the word ‘nation’ as a selfish destructive ideology generating pride and arrogance but as a tool that helps to develop a supraethnic identity, a political and cultural necessity when ethnicity is generating communalism, division, tension and different racist reflexes.
Do we have the necessary resources to build this supraethnicity? Yes, we do!
• We have a common history. We are all the children of immigrants from Africa, Europe and Asia;
• We have a common cuisine made of adapted recipes from Africa, Europe and Asia (specially India and China).
• We speak TWO creole languages, namely Mauritian (MC) and English.
• We have beautiful specimens of a creole architecture (lakaz kreol) and creole furniture (meb kreol). Unfortunately, these are in danger of disappearing because of our tendency to ape and massproduce cheaply.
• Moreover, we must not forget that humanity (homo sapiens) was born in east Africa about 200,000 years ago. Some of them, later, decided to emigrate and thus started, over dozens of millenia, to people Planet Earth. So according to the “Out of Africa” hypothesis which is studied by great specialists in paleontology and genetics, all human beings have a common ancestry. Basically we, all of us, belong to the same race and are all, in a certain way, AFRICAN.
At present there are in Mauritius TWO conflicting racist ideologies: Hindutva and Anti-Hinduism. Both are lethal. TWO WRONGS DO NOT MAKE A RIGHT. Hindu, Muslim and Christian progressives must unite to tell racists and fascists: La Petite France? Little India? PEYNA SIME!

16.01.21

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