| |
The
Independence Story
Unfinished
Business and Residual Problems
--
Paramanund Soobarah
It
was in an atmosphere of great sorrow and pending doom that,
thirty-eight years ago, this pearl of a nation was born.
No less than 44% of the population had expressed
opposition to its birth. Even so, those who had won had
little reason to rejoice.
How can you rejoice when there is so much sorrow,
anger and hatred in your brother’s heart?
Not only could strife ignite at any time, but also
the economic outlook was very dim.
So dim indeed, that the leader of the Independence
Movement, Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam (SSR) abstained from
touching that aspect of national economic life that it had
become fashionable for all newly independent countries to
address, namely land ownership.
While SSR was still considering his softly, softly
policies, impatient youths were calling him a stooge of
capitalism and were secretly preparing to take over the
government by organising industrial action to paralyse the
country. Their
dreams did not come to light until a few years later.
For the benefit of younger readers, here is the story
of events that led up to Independence and that followed it,
and that have also left their mark on the social fabric of
the country.
Before
Independence, many of the moneyed class had fled the country
with their money to invest in the new El Dorado that
Rhodesia under Ian Smith represented for them.
Rhodesia later became Zimbabwe, and we know what
happened there. Additionally,
many of the literate class with know-how essential to the
running of the economy and the administration had migrated
to Australia, leaving the country so much weaker at a time
when it needed the heads and hands of all its sons and
daughters. This
haemorrhage had started as a trickle ten years earlier but
in the months preceding Independence had grown into a flood.
The one inescapable characteristic of the flight, and
of the opposition to Independence, was its ethnic nature.
What
could have led the children of ill-treated slaves and of
hardly better treated coolies to hate one another so much?
Religious brain-washing, some say.
Political propaganda by the oligarchy through their
mouthpiece, Mr Noel Marier d’Unienville, better known as
NMU, his initials, and chief priest of ethnical and communal
politics in the fifties, others say.
NMU’s action was overt, and shamelessly directed
against Hindus, totally oblivious of the pains it caused to
sensitive souls. The
action of religious priests, if any, must have been covert;
without such action, many think, the deep-rooted hatred and
distrust that the rank and file of the mainly Creole
community displayed towards Hindus could not have come
about. This is
a field that research historians should look into, to
determine the exact role, if any, played by the priests in
the development of ethnic and religious hatred in politics
in Mauritius.
One
would have thought that in those dark days, simple
considerations of economics and social justice should have
kept the major communities together.
Indeed, not all gave way to the brain-washing, overt
or covert, if that is what it was.
There was a history in the country of politics being
driven by considerations of economics and social justice,
not by religion. The
elders in society knew that in a previous generation, Dr
Laurent and Raoul Rivet had pitted themselves against the
oligarchy, without religion being an issue.
In their own time, it was the same sense of economics
and social justice that drew Edgar Millien, Guy Forget and
Raymond Rault into the same fold as Anquetil, Rozemont and
Pandit Sahadeo, and so later on to Ramgoolam and
Seeneevassen.
Even
Jules Koenig, a blue-blooded representative of the landed
gentry, initially spoke and acted like a defender of the
economically weaker and unfairly treated classes regardless
of religion, and had gathered a significant following in the
Hindu community. But
that, sadly, was not to last.
With the rise in the number of electors of Asian
origin upon the introduction of literate suffrage for the
1948 elections and the call thereafter for adult universal
suffrage and responsible government by the Labour Party, he
succumbed to the call of NMU.
In an electoral meeting, he warned that if the Labour
Party were to win, a ‘bateau langouti’ (i.e. a shipload
of dhotis) would arrive in Port Louis harbour for all
Mauritians to wear, regardless of race, religion or culture.
This was raw, ethnic politics, calculated to frighten
all non-Hindus, and became crystalised in slogans like ‘le
danger hindou’, ‘l’hégémonie hindoue’, and later
‘malbar nous pas oulé’.
Universal Adult Suffrage was made out into a serious
threat to the material prosperity, culture and way of living
of non-Hindus. Jules Koenig was ably assisted in his mission
by Gaëtan Duval, a charismatic lawyer of the Creole
community, who later became the leader of their party, the
Parti Mauricien Social Démocrate (PMSD).
IFB
and the Labour Party
These
developments took place at a time when the Hindu community
was not even united. In
the forties and fifties, there was a great rivalry between
the Bissoondoyal brothers Basdeo and Sookdeo on the one
hand, and Dr Ramgoolam and his friends Seeneevassen, Vagjhee,
Beejadhur, JNR and others on the other, for the leadership
of the Hindu community.
There were some differences of philosophy between
these two groups. One was austere in its outlook, driven by Gandhian personal
ethics and admiration of Subhas Chandra Bose, a leader of
the Indian Independence Movement prepared to resort any
means to win Independence (they called their party IFB, for
Independend Forward Bloc, after Subhas Chandra Bose’s
party) and the other more accommodating in nature, and
driven more by the principles of the British Labour Party
and Fabianism. The
politics of NMU helped to swing the numbers in favour of Dr
Ramgoolam and the Labour Party, of which he had taken the
leadership after the demise of Rozemont.
Dr Ramgoolam was knighted by the British Government
in June 1965.
In early 1967, it came to the crucial issue of Independence,
the IFB shelved its animosity towards Labour and initiated
an alliance with it; after some initial disinclination this
proposal was agreed, and together with the Comité
d’Action Musulman (CAM) the three parties formed the
Independence Party to fight the general elections; the
Parliament issuing from these elections was expected to
decide one way or the other on the issue of the Independence
of the country. The
PMSD could not countenance a country governed by a party led
by an ethnic Indian, and decided to oppose Independence.
The
1967 elections were won by the Independence Party, and on 12
March 1968, Mauritius became an independent country within
the Commonwealth with Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam (SSR) as its
first Prime Minister. The
situation was grim. It
was not just the communal hatred and the division of the
country down the middle, practically. It was also the economic situation. National Unity and Economic Development became the leitmotif
of SSR’s policies and of his actions.
Most land and all other means of production were in
the hands of a few families.
However, as already mentioned, he never raised the
question of land redistribution.
He did not even introduce an inheritance tax that
would in the long run have brought some of the benefits of
land ownership to the population at large.
The British had allowed the landowners to concentrate
of sugar production to the detriment of other industries.
All cultivable landed was devoted to sugar; even milk
had (and still has) to be imported.
But given the dire economic situation of the country,
SSR felt that he needed the entrepreneurial ability of the
landed gentry and interfering with land ownership would
doubtless alienate them.
They were allowed to get on with sugar production.
The
rise of the MMM
SSR
developed relationships with their leaders, notably Sir
Claude Noel, a leader in the sugar industry and Mr Amédée
Maingard, a leader in the travel and hospitality business;
he enlisted the latter’s co-operation in the development
of a national carrier.
Thus was Air Mauritius born, and with it the industry
of tourism that it helped foster.
SSR also recognised the good work being performed by
Sir Guy Sauzier, another eminent and capable member of that
community, in England as representative of the Mauritius
Chamber of Agriculture, and assigned official missions to
him, putting him in the exceptional position of acting both
as a representative of both the private sector and the
Government. “In
the national interest”, he ditched the IFB and struck a
coalition with Gaetan Duval, his erstwhile enemy, in order
to secure the cooperation of the largest number towards
economic reforms. With the help of distinguished citizens
like Professor Lim Fat, a prominent member of the Chinese
community, he launched the Export Processing Zone with the
aim of employment creation.
Another prominent member of the Chinese community,
Hon. Jean Ah Chuen, also helped in that task by investing in
it and encouraging his foreign connections to do likewise.
But
SSR was seen as too close to ‘capital’ by an impatient
youth who organised themselves into a new movement, the
Movement Militant Mauricien (MMM).
Youths of all communities participated in this
movement, but it was slowly hijacked by those who were
overtly anti-Hindu. Most of the middle-aged supporters of
the new party were the former supporters of Gaëtan Duval
and still carried their anti-Hindu feelings; the younger
enthusiastic supporters did not see this drift.
The only Hindu supporter of the party who could not
be described as a youth was Mr (later Sir) Anerood Jugnauth,
who had joined the party ‘secretly’
after he was promised the post of Prime Minister in a
future MMM Government.
It is said that he drifted away from the IFB and the
Labour Party for reasons of caste.
Historians must elucidate.
But if caste it was, then he did indeed take a most
profitable step, because the other, the real, leader of the
MMM, Mr Paul Bérenger, had determined that his political
future in the country depended on a detailed, scientific
study of the caste structure of the Hindu community, and on
successfully playing off one caste against another, even
though such a policy flew in the face of traditional
Marxism. To the
wide open wound in the nation of a Hindu/Non-Hindu division
introduced by NMU and the PMSD, the MMM thus imposed a
caste-based fragmentation on the
Hindu community. These wounds are still open, and even if they heal, are
likely leave deep long-lasting scars on Mauritian society. Regardless of these developments, JOHin
SSR
pursued his moderate policies until his government was swept
away by MMM in June 1982 with the help of the electoral
system which he had himself helped frame.
The
Marxist policies of his successors lasted no more than a few
months, when they split.
They had no time to address an element that is
fundamental to Marxist ideology, namely land redistribution.
The new party that emerged from the split threw away
all thought of Marxism to the wind.
Taking advantage of the anxieties of Chinese
businessmen in Hong Kong following the rejection in 1982 by
President Teng Hsiao Ping of an offer by Mrs Margaret
Thatcher, the British Prime Minister, to run Hong Kong as a
British Colony for an indefinite period at the end of the
lease in 1997, the new government courted them to come an
invest in Mauritius. Many
did. Others
from South East Asia followed their example.
The ‘industrialisation’ of Mauritius, based on
the textile industry, began.
Unfinished
business
Thirty
eight years have gone by.
A new government has just come to power, led by Navin
Ramgoolam, son of Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam, on a pledge of
democratising the economy and ensuring equal opportunities
for all Mauritians. The nation is once again, by an unfortunate conjunction of
circumstances, in dire economic straits.
Communal hatred and caste rivalries, planted by
political parties in the past, are still rife: every single
action of the government is considered through these prisms.
The landed gentry are still sitting on the land,
making only timid efforts at improving productivity.
Much of their diversification efforts have consisted
of investing in other countries.
The agro-industry is yet to take off.
These are the residual problems and the unfinished
business of the Independence movement.
Is it not time they were tackled?
The
Marxist threat has disappeared from the face of the earth,
except in funny places like Nepal and Bihar. The landowners
do not feel the same need of cooperating with the Government
as they did way back at Independence time.
They earn enough for their purpose, which is to lead
a feudal life quite separate from the rest of the country.
Nobody wants to deny them this privilege; as
descendents of the first colonisers of this island they
probably think they deserve at least that.
Nevertheless, they should not be allowed to behave
like the dog in the manger.
Nobody wants Zimbabwe-style reforms.
Even so, in the national interest, the land should be
available for sale through normal market mechanisms to
people who are in a position to improve its yield, both in
terms of money and employment opportunities, and who are
willing to pay the price.
A notional inheritance tax on property above a
certain just threshold should also be considered.
Some think that a notional capital gains tax on
well-established industries and share transactions should
also be considered. These
are sure-fire ways of democratising the economy.
Prime Minister Navin Ramgoolam may wish to take note.
Communal
hatred runs deep. Last
week a Mauritian gentleman was speaking on Reunion TV about
a forthcoming ‘seggae’ festival.
The conversation naturally turned to Kaya, and his
unfortunate death in police custody.
The discussion then turned to the
situation of ‘seggae’ in Mauritius, and our
compatriot went on to explain that it was doing well, in
spite of the ‘repression’.
Is anybody aware of any form of repression being
exerted on ‘seggae’ organisations in the country?
Can we expect basic honesty from our compatriots when
addressing foreign media?
The question of education reforms has similarly been
communalised, even though everybody knows that the same
education will be delivered to all children in all schools.
For these things to happen the fears must be genuine.
Prime Minister Navin Ramgoolam’s Equal
Opportunities Act must make it clear that they are
unfounded. It
must also ensure equal pay for equal work, regardless of
race, religion, caste or sex, and that positions in both the
public and private sectors are accessible to all on
considerations of merit alone.
Dear
Prime Minister, we are all looking to you to address the
unfinished business and the residual problems of the
Independence movement, pull us all Mauritians together
around the national flag and grant us all equal
opportunities for each to enjoy, each according to his
ability. And
may God Almighty illuminate your thoughts and your
decisions.
Paramanund
Soobarah
soobarah.param@gmail.com
|
