Indian Languages in Mauritius: Milestones of a Struggle

Opinion

In recent decades, Mauritians have continued to defend Indian languages, cultural identity and historical recognition.  Today, that struggle has entered a new phase, with a renewed demand for equal recognition and civic rights, including in the National Assembly

By Sada Reddi

The petition sent by Dr Sarita Boodhoo to the President of the Republic, the Prime Minister and the Human Rights Commission, and her interview in L’Express, claiming the cultural and human right for Indian languages to be included alongside other languages in the National Assembly, reminds us that not only has language always been a perennial issue in Mauritian society and politics, but that it is also part of a long and continuous struggle for equality and freedom in our multicultural society.

An incursion into the past reveals that its genesis can be traced to the early years of colonisation, when the language of the coloniser was used as a proxy to deliberately and purposefully root out the language, culture and religion of the subalterns, whether they were people enslaved in Mauritius or free inhabitants: artisans, indentured labourers or even traders.

Nevertheless, as we all know, colonialism, however powerful and repressive, was never totalising in the face of resistance and resilience from below. Yet its impact is still felt. Despite the rhetoric of decolonisation and post-colonialism, the politics of exclusion — a colonial hangover — has never disappeared; instead, it has taken more subtle and insidious forms. From this perspective, Sarita Boodhoo’s initiative, along with those of other organisations, represents the continuation of a 250-year struggle for language rights begun by our ancestors when they first set foot on Mauritian soil.

Today, we often overlook the fact that, despite our rhetoric of decolonisation, we remain shaped by colonialism — not only in our daily garb, but also in a colonial mentality inherited, assimilated and internalised from the past. Yet many have successfully managed to preserve their cultural identity by embracing the cultural, linguistic and religious heritage bequeathed by their ancestors and developing a critical distance from the hyper-rationalism of the European Enlightenment.

Colonisers’ strategies have been explored by various writers and theorists and need not be elaborated here. In Mauritius, the colonial project started by enslaving and subjugating people, giving them a new name with which they hardly identified themselves.

Instead of dwelling on the various forms of resistance, one example may suffice to illustrate the resistance to identity erasure. Many enslaved people adopted two names: one used by their masters and another among themselves. Maroons used their authentic original names, like Caetan, Machabe or Diamamou.

Enslaved Malagasy are known to have used two names. That process of erasure continued in the 19th century through evangelisation, colonial education and other repressive measures, which also resulted in many people’s languages, cultural practices and religious beliefs being eroded, though never completely.

In the 1770s, a Tamil Hindu organisation was suppressed and replaced by the Syndic des Malabar, headed by a Catholic, Denis Pitchen. Nevertheless, the colonial steamroller was never able to sweep subaltern experiences, religions and languages out of existence, as exemplified by the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Plaine Verte, which existed long before the state’s formal land grant, and by the continued celebration of the Shiite festival of Yamsé.

Linguistic and religious pluralism survived and was consolidated by the terms of the Capitulation of 1810, which guaranteed the inhabitants their religion, customs and laws. Among those who signed the capitulation terms were Indians, who signed both in European characters and in Tamil. No wonder, then, that Governor Farquhar’s storekeeper, procurement officer and business associate, Velliavel Annasamy, built the first Kovil in Mauritius around 1823 on his estate at Bon Espoir.

In the 19th century, the colonisers’ strategies were once again deployed to ‘civilise’ those whom they regarded as ‘hordes of savages’, but also, paradoxically, to ‘colonise’ the French colonisers themselves. Both the Anglican and Presbyterian Churches and the colonial elites competed to use English or French as instruments of Christianisation.

The French elite, too, did not escape the trauma of the imposition of English in the law courts, and that trauma still lingers today among some Franco-Mauritian descendants, who contemptuously resent the ‘bruitish’ language spoken in our National Assembly.

In the 1850s, the French elite and the Catholic Church fought against Governor Higginson’s ordinance advocating the use of vernacular Indian languages or compulsory education for the poorer classes, particularly Indians. For the colonial state and the religious authorities, the religious motive remained uppermost in their minds.

Resistance by indentured labourers took various forms, and one of them was the boycott of government schools, which they rightly regarded as engines of proselytisation. Indentured labourers remained deeply attached to their languages, religious beliefs and practices, so much so that Governor Hamilton Gordon could write that he hardly stepped out of his house without hearing the gong from various places of worship calling people to prayer, and he could hardly walk one mile without coming across a place of worship.

In the 20th century, Indian cultural resistance obtained a fillip from Manilall Doctor’s cultural and political initiatives and the Arya Samaj movement. Indians embraced Western languages strategically for social mobility but studied Indian languages concurrently, such as at the Young Men Hindu School in Port Louis, which prepared a Tamil elite versed in three languages. A most notable example is Renganaden Seneevassen.

During a meeting of the Select Committee on the Ward Report in June 1943, Dr Ramgoolam reminded us that Indians, though very poor, ‘are spending part of their wages, a part of the money which they very much need for their food and clothing, for night schools’.

Even after acquiring competence in their own languages and in Western languages, especially in English, which they discovered, like the Coloured population in the 19th century, was also a language of power to counteract Franco-Mauritian dominance through French, Indians met with a wall restricting their social mobility. Christian religious criteria were used to deny access and promotions in the civil service unless one was baptised.

Other pressures were exercised to get maids or other employees working for Franco-Mauritians to change their names, and this was the fate of hundreds of families on a few sugar estates and in many localities, particularly in Curepipe.

There is a story of a driver working for the administrator of Trianon Sugar Estate who used to drive the administrator’s son to Royal College. Then the driver’s own son won a scholarship and a place at Royal College. Both the administrator and the driver were faced with a dilemma: the driver could not leave his son at the bus stop while continuing to drive the administrator’s son to college.

Finally, the situation was resolved: the driver was allowed to drive his son on condition that he was baptised and took a foreign Christian name. The son went on to become a politician and was elected to the Legislative Council, but he never gave up the language in which he was fluent and retained his religion. He left special instructions to be cremated according to his ancestral religious rites. Such examples can be multiplied across many family histories.

In the 20th century, language became the subject of a major controversy when Ward recommended the abolition of Indian languages in government schools. Sookdeo Bissoondoyal staged a protest at the Port Louis theatre, where Ward was due to speak at a conference. Dr Ramgoolam lent his voice to the protest in the Council of Government and before a Select Committee on the Ward Report, where he and D. M. Atchia argued in favour of retaining Indian languages.

Dr Ramgoolam reminded the committee:

‘We may spend all our life learning other languages and imbibing other cultures, but until we know what is our own, we will never be able to become a man in the full sense of the word, nor will we be able to understand and cherish our culture. The study of languages other than our own, however excellent and useful, must occupy a secondary place in our heart if we are to preserve our identity and make a special contribution to the sum total of the happiness and welfare of the people.’

He added that ‘the Indians in this country loved their languages and will not tolerate for any moment anyone asking them for their abolition’. He concluded with some remarks which resonate today in the present situation:

 ‘If there is any feeling of uneasiness among them today, the government has provided the germs for it, the government has sown the seed, it is natural that it should reap what it has sown. You, as government, have done nothing for those toiling in the fields… the Indians of this island must be taught their languages, and that properly and effectively, because that is the only way in which they can preserve their culture, and also because, they have not the least intention of being denationalised in the process of time.’

In recent decades, Mauritians have sustained the struggle to maintain Indian languages and did not retreat when examination grades in Indian languages were to be counted for admission to secondary schools, nor did they accept the erasure of their history when an attempt was made to deny them a public holiday on 2 November.

A new stage in their struggle for equal recognition in the National Assembly has started, and nothing would stop them from claiming their right to civic equality in all walks of life, including the National Assembly.

Mauritius Times ePaper Friday 4 September 2026