KENT: I have a journey, sir, shortly to go;
My master calls me, I must not say no.
(KING LEAR)

For more than 50 years, my life has been driven by the belief that supra-ethnic values will eventually emerge to transform a multi-ethnic country into a rainbow nation. Reality has always told me to stop dreaming but I can’t. I have tried academic research, advocacy, political activities, literary creation and yet the rainbow keeps receding faster than my efforts to reach it. Should I throw in the towel? My thinking brain says ‘yes’ but my thinking heart says a categorical ‘NO’.

The present geopolitical landscape now makes nation-building efforts even more difficult as alien values are just obliterating local values with promises that the grass is greener elsewhere. The ‘Mahabharat-Chotabharat ideology’ moves on with new-found arrogance and is reinforced by the lure of great material gains. Supporters and diehards are found in government, in opposition, in different lobbies as well as at grassroots level, in big and not so big money… Promises of wealth and weal are already stultifying any form of resistance. The road to Mammon’s kingdom is now the direct route to the promised land.

The Agalega tragedy is a telling example of what is in store for us. A handful of peaceful islanders living a simple life in harmony with nature are suddenly in the net of a new imperialist power. Don’t be fooled by slogans from the past. The India of NON-ALIGNMENT and INDIAN OCEAN ZONE OF PEACE belongs to the past. Now India is governed by big money and rightwing populism. The caring India of Mahatma Gandhi has been swept away by neoliberal greed and ruthlessness.

In Agalega, soon there will be a few dozen native girls and women and several hundred randy moneyed Indian males. It does not take a genius to imagine the consequences in terms of mores, social evils such as teenage pregnancy, rape and violence, moral pollution besides environmental pollution. We know how European colonists behaved in Africa, Asia, Australia and the Americas. The same horrors will take place on the two beautiful Creole islands of which Agalega is made. We saw the glamorized and romanticized Walt Disney story of Princess Pocahontas, not the real story of a young woman who had known kidnapping, rape and poisoning. How many more Pocahontas must we have to start thinking? Colonists are known to treat natives as dirt. This is what our brothers and sisters in Agalega will experience, if it has not already started.

This is only the beginning. After Agalega, big Indian money, Indian/Hindu supremacists and local Hindu racists will spread their tentacles in “Little India”. The patriarch of the Jugnauth tribe is well-known for his anti-creole prejudices and now with the support of Modi extremism and Indian big money, we have to be prepared for the worse.

It is a pity and shame that many Mauritian political leaders (bann manzer banann dan de bout) are shy, coy and embarrassed to say in public what the present-day State of India really is. Let’s call a spade, a spade: The State of India (not to be confused with the people of India) is today a rising, very ambitious imperialist power. If not held in check, it will be the cause of much sufferings in our region of the world. It is using Mauritius as a springboard to pillage the resources of Africa and doesn’t give two hoots about our welfare or the future of the planet.
We, the inhabitants of Indian Ocean islands, have an important moral duty: prevent a further destruction of the Blue Planet. We, citizens of the Maritime Republic of Mauritius, have a solemn duty: build a Rainbow Nation. The struggle must go on with renewed intensity although for some of us ‘the end is nigh’.
07.02.19

©DEV VIRAHSAWMY AND ICJM

Good! The wreath-laying ceremonies are over. Do we have a clear conscience now? Should we forget the rest?

Should we forget that slavery is an integral part of our history? Should we forget that the sugar industry prosperity has been irrigated with the blood and sweat of our brothers and sisters from Africa, the cradle of humanity? Should we forget that Port Louis is what it is, thanks to the skills of our brothers and sisters from Mozambique, Madagascar and India? Should we forget that the slave trade has given us our national language? Should the promise of a museum to be, be enough to send us back to our selfish comfort zone? Should unimaginative celebrations done in a hurry be enough to remember the horror of slavery and then lull us to sleep comfortably in our nest of prejudice and ignorance?

“Remember us”, the souls of our brothers and sisters are telling us. Don’t forget, they say, that people who called themselves Christians, went to church, said their prayers, used human beings worse than animals and that the official Catholic Church condoned this. Don’t forget, they say, that the slave owners were compensated when slavery was abolished and the slave money was used to set up the most important bank of Mauritius. Don’t forget, they say, that the freed slaves were left to themselves, except for the voluntary work of Father Laval and Reverend Jean Lebrun.

UNDERSTAND THAT WE ALL HAVE OUR FAIR SHARE OF RESPONSIBILITY. Most of us will feel at peace because we were not there, forgetting that we have all benefited from the horrors of slavery and the sufferings of our brothers and sisters from Africa and India.

WHAT SHOULD WE DO NOW?

A museum is just the tip of the iceberg and focusing on this will become an excuse not to look after fundamental problems hidden underneath.

There is a social reality which we prefer to ignore. There is in the Maritime Republic of Mauritius an ethnic group which has emerged over a period of almost two centuries. They should be known as Afro-Creoles, the descendants of freed slaves, who have undergone a systematic process of miscegenation (métissage). Today, they represent 25% of the population and their history has been a rollercoaster ride. Political leaders have used them as pawns in the game of power politics; religion has used them to fill places of worship; their ignorance has been exploited to make them believe that God is white, hence consolidating the white tycoons’ economic and political power. The Afro-Creole elite has turned their backs on them preferring to whiten their offspring (as shown by Frantz Fanon) and making an alliance with Euro-Creole power and authority. Consequently, the Afro-Creole flock is without a good shepherd as it has failed to produce essential organic intellectuals to lead it to real emancipation.

Look at these figures: 80-85% of prison inmates are Afro-Creoles; the same percentage of inmates cannot read or write. A racist explanation is to be categorically rejected. The cause, the real cause lies elsewhere. Housing estates without proper amenities; rampant poverty and precarity; a language policy which ignores the fact that most Afro-Creoles are monolingual Creole native speakers are only some of the problems.

Two myths, Little France and Little India, and our anti-Africa racism, although humanity started there, prevent us to see our real problems and we thus fail to plan an enlightened future for one and all. Are we waiting for a violent social explosion to start thinking along new lines?

01.02.19