Embracing the Unfinished Story: Reclaiming History through Word and Image

History

By Nandini Bhautoo

In the week following the celebration of Aapravasi Day on November 2nd, two cultural events stood out as direct responses to the legacy of this dolorous history.

The first was the launch of Geeanduth Gopee’s book on Adolphe de Plevitz, held at the Mahatma Gandhi Institute on Saturday, November 8th, 2025. More than a mere biography, this publication is the fruit of extensive archival research into documents from a pivotal period of Mauritian history – one that saw a foreigner rise against the entrenched injustices inflicted upon Indian indentured workers. These men and women, shipped from India like commodities, were subjected to a rigid colonial discipline that curtailed their basic human rights.

Geeanduth Gopee, author of Fighting Injustice for Indian Indentured Immigrants: A Tribute to Adolphe de Plevitz (1837–1893)

The author spent four years in the archives uncovering little-known documentary evidence from this era. Representatives from the Aapravasi Ghat Trust Fund also presented cutting-edge research in both history and architecture, revealing unexpected details about the diverse human lives shaped and scarred by the indenture system. The full title of the book is “Fighting Injustice for Indian Indentured Immigrants: A Tribute to Adolphe de Plevitz (1837–1893).”

Adolphe de Plevitz was not from an indentured background; he held French nationality, though his family was originally of German/Westphalian origin. But he was a man of conscience who became deeply troubled by the abuses of the indenture system that replaced slavery after its abolition in 1835. Educated and well-placed within the colonial hierarchy, he used his social standing to speak out where others remained silent. In 1871, de Plevitz helped organize and present a petition signed by over 9,000 Indian indentured labourers to the British Governor, Sir Arthur Gordon.

The petition denounced the harsh conditions on sugar estates, particularly:

* Low wages and exploitative contracts

* Physical abuse by overseers

* Lack of medical care

* Systemic injustice in the magistrates’ courts, which often sided with planters

This was the first major collective protest by Indian labourers in Mauritius and one of the earliest examples of organized working-class activism in the British Empire. The petition prompted the British authorities to launch the 1872 Royal Commission of Inquiry into labour conditions in Mauritius. Its report confirmed most of the abuses de Plevitz and the petitioners had described. Some reforms followed — particularly in estate administration and medical care — though the system of indenture itself persisted for decades.

Today, Adolphe de Plevitz is remembered as a rare moral voice who stood with the oppressed. His name stands alongside those of early reformers who shaped the island’s difficult transition from slavery to a colonial plantation society. A street and a primary school in Mauritius now bear his name, honouring his stand for justice.

A bust of Adolphe de Plevitz has also been put up in the precincts of the Mahatma Gandhi Institute (MGI), near the Folk Museum of Indian Immigration. It was commissioned by Beekrumsing Ramlallah, a key figure in the preservation and conservation of the Aapravasi Ghat. It was sculpted by Mala Chummun.
The Mauritius Times had previously serialised the book “Restless Energy: A Biography of Adolphe de Plevitz” by Loretta de Plevitz, which was published by the Mahatma Gandhi Institute in 1987.

Dharam Gokhool, President of the Republic, paying tribute to Adolphe de Plevitz at the Mahatma Gandhi Institute

*  *  *

Later that same evening, the Mauritian film Girmitya: The Unsung Hero was screened at MCiné Trianon. Produced by Varun Nunkoo with generous support from both the public and private sectors, the film dramatizes historical events through the genre of docufiction – a creative fusion of documentation and narrative imagination.

The simultaneity of these two events suggests a growing thirst to engage with history beyond the ritual commemoration of dates. Yet, to truly transform this impulse into an enduring cultural practice, we must give greater attention to the act of writing. Historical narrative cannot simply substitute for screenwriting, which is itself a complex and evolving art form — one whose classical paradigms we are far from mastering, let alone the new narrative architectures emerging through mise en abyme and experimental storytelling.

We must take a deeper look at the nature of creativity itself – how we can not only acknowledge history but also use it textually, philosophically, and conceptually to reimagine the relationship between the individual and society in contemporary Mauritius. At present, there remains a disjunction between the historical-artistic world and the lived realities of people. This is an unfinished project, one that demands our full attention in the coming decade, especially as other societies present seemingly complete narratives of “successful decolonization” that may not reflect our own.

Art remains the space where society confronts both its light and its darkness. No one truly believes that Mauritian multiculturalism is flawless, or that the wrongs of history have been entirely levelled out through economic redistribution. These goals, however idealistic, can still guide policy and artistic practice – not through binaries or nostalgia, but through an integration of the multiple inheritances that shape us.

Even as I write these lines, I am aware that they sound more idealistic on paper than in reality. Yet, like Arjuna aiming at the fish’s eye, we must keep our focus steady on the target. Only then can we align our creative and cultural resources with purpose – so that our technologies, narratives, and imaginations evolve together rather than apart.

Mauritius Times ePaper Friday 14 November 2025