{"id":47139,"date":"2026-11-03T11:41:00","date_gmt":"2026-11-03T07:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/?p=47139"},"modified":"2026-11-03T11:41:00","modified_gmt":"2026-11-03T07:41:00","slug":"adolphe-de-plevitz-voice-of-the-voiceless-in-colonial-mauritius","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/adolphe-de-plevitz-voice-of-the-voiceless-in-colonial-mauritius\/","title":{"rendered":"Adolphe de Plevitz: Voice of the Voiceless in Colonial Mauritius"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tribute<\/u><\/span><\/p>\n

By Harry Booluck<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

With the abolition of slavery in British plantation colonies in 1834, the bulk of emancipated slaves fled the plantations — an act that worked great havoc on the planters\u2019 community and forced them to desperately seek alternative sources of farm labour. The choice fell on the United Provinces of India (Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Orissa), which were found to possess the required labour force. Local planters sent agents and representatives to Calcutta to recruit these farm workers. These agents, in turn, recruited sub-agents in Calcutta to help engage Indian intermediaries (known as Arcotties and Daffaudars) in the hinterland to carry out the task. Guided by the premise that the end justifies the means, the latter used every possible trick to secure maximum recruits, as their rewards were paid on a pro rata basis.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

Unsurprisingly, all sorts of people were recruited and taken to the 13 Calcutta depots, where they were stacked awaiting the ships that would take them to their assigned colonies. According to accounts, a dramatic social transformation took place at the depots: irrespective of caste appurtenance, all were lodged under the same roof, eating, drinking, and sleeping together until the ships set sail for their ultimate destinations, with a few inter-caste marriages even being registered.<\/span><\/p>\n

The journey from Calcutta to Mauritius was long, though shorter when compared to the voyage to Caribbean colonies via the Cape prior to the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. En route, those who died were simply tossed into the sea. Prior to 1846, there was a severe shortage of women among the recruits, with a ratio of 90 men to every 10 women. To encourage more workers to come — and to foster conditions that would persuade immigrants to settle in the country — male workers were encouraged to bring their spouses and children along. Upon arrival at Port Louis (at the Aapravasi Ghat), the labourers were distributed among the various planters on whose behalf they had been brought. Early migrants walked to their respective estates and settled in the hangars left vacant by the emancipated slaves. Thus began the history of the indentured labourers (colloquially known as “coolies”) brought in to replace emancipated plantation labour.<\/span><\/p>\n

These workers had signed contracts with employer representatives in India stipulating, inter alia, food and clothing provisions, daily working hours, pay rates and intervals, medical facilities, contract duration, and a free return passage to India upon contract expiry. Additionally, the British appointed a Protector of Immigrants to ensure that the interests of the immigrants were safeguarded. In practice, however, the coolies soon found that planters ignored virtually all of these agreements, leaving workers entirely at their mercy. As for the Protector of Immigrants — such as H.N.D. Beyts — he was bought off by the planters and acted more as a “Protector of Planters,” a fact later exposed before the 1872 Royal Commission (evidence revealed the planters had offered him a plantation in Phoenix with all maintenance costs met by them).<\/span><\/p>\n

The Socio-Economic Environment<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Mauritius presented a very different socio-economic landscape compared to other British plantation colonies (such as Trinidad, Guyana, Jamaica, and Fiji) following the abolition of slavery. After the French capitulation in 1810 and the subsequent Treaties of Paris and Vienna, the plantocracy was guaranteed its culture, religion, property, and rights by Britain. This was reinforced by the traditional relationship between landowners and the descendants of slaves, as stipulated in the Code Noir. Although the formal Code disappeared with the abolition of slavery, the social convention it established persisted and was imposed upon the Indian population.<\/span><\/p>\n

This unwritten code was strictly observed by the gentry of the time; anyone transgressing it was branded a “traitor” or “social deviant” and subjected to persecution and punishment aimed at safeguarding elite privileges. Mauritian social history provides ample examples of such “code breakers” — individuals who consciously or otherwise challenged the prevailing order to improve the lot of slaves and indentured Indians, all of whom faced persecution: the Reverend Jean Le Brun, Father Edward Charles Clifford, and Adolphe de Plevitz. The role of the latter is of primary interest here.<\/span><\/p>\n

Up to the late 1860s, these wretched Indians had no one to defend their interests as they were used and abused, until the arrival of the steadfast Adolphe de Plevitz, born in August 1837. De Plevitz left France for South Africa before arriving in Mauritius in 1858 at the age of twenty-one. Given his stature, he was soon recruited as a forest ranger in the Forests and Woods Department. He married the daughter of Fran\u00e7ois Rivet, owner of La Retraite plantation in Notre Dame, Long Mountain, in the district of Pamplemousses, and soon became manager of the family estate. The small family should have led a comfortable life in the region, but circumstances were soon to change.<\/span><\/p>\n

De Plevitz subsequently accepted a position as administrator of a farm in Nouvelle D\u00e9couverte in the district of Moka, moving there with seven coolies from La Retraite. As was customary, de Plevitz needed to transfer the police passes of his workers from their previous district to Moka. Accordingly, he sent his seven workers at dawn with all relevant documents and necessary fees to the Pamplemousses Police Station to execute the transfer. When the workers failed to return home by evening, their relatives grew anxious and informed de Plevitz. The next morning, he went to the Pamplemousses Police Station to inquire about their fate.<\/span><\/p>\n

What he witnessed at the station transformed him: his seven workers had been dumped in a cell overnight without food, water, or bedding. Horrified, he asked the police officer why they were incarcerated when he had provided a explanatory handwritten note. Armed with the documents, de Plevitz left the station with his workers. Once outside, he turned back and declared, “One day I\u2019ll endeavour to change this.” And he set about doing just that.<\/span><\/p>\n

To better understand the plight of the Indians, de Plevitz learned their language and soon became proficient in reading and writing Hindi. He uncovered systemic abuses:<\/span><\/p>\n

– The “Double Cut”: <\/strong>Losing two days’ salary for a single day of absence — a practice that slashed planters’ wage bills by over 50%.<\/span><\/p>\n

– The “<\/strong>Sunday <\/strong>Corv\u00e9e”: <\/strong>Compulsory, unpaid Sunday labour.<\/span><\/p>\n

– Unreliable Wages: <\/strong>Salaries paid irregularly or withheld altogether by unscrupulous employers.<\/span><\/p>\n

– Exhausting Hours: <\/strong>Relentless work from dawn to dusk for meager wages.<\/span><\/p>\n

– The<\/strong> Police Pass <\/strong>System: <\/strong>The mandatory requirement to carry a pass at all times; those caught without one were extorted for bribes by police officers who knew Indians saved their money.<\/span><\/p>\n

– Estate Shops: <\/strong>Monopolistic stores that overcharged workers and manipulated credit books.<\/span><\/p>\n

– Substandard Housing: <\/strong>Cramped, unsanitary hangars offering little to no privacy.<\/span><\/p>\n

– Educational Discrimination: <\/strong>Government primary schools in villages were bifurcated — one type for Indians and another for non-Indians. (De Plevitz campaigned against this discrimination and secured its abolition, encouraging Indians to send their children to school to study not only their mother tongue but also English and French to understand Western civilisation and avoid falling victim to atavism.)<\/span><\/p>\n

– Inadequate Healthcare: <\/strong>Estate hospitals operated as a travesty with minimal medicine and understaffed facilities.<\/span><\/p>\n

– Abolition of Return Passages: <\/strong>The unilateral elimination of free return passages by planters in 1854, leaving ageing Indians stranded without homes or the means to return to India.<\/span><\/p>\n

Most of these harsh measures were introduced during the tenure of Governor Sir Henry Barkly in the mid-1860s and were collectively referred to as the “Indian Code Noir,” as the Governor himself owned a plantation in Jamaica and understood how to discipline labour. Flabbergasted, de Plevitz went to R\u00e9duit to voice his concerns to Sir Henry\u2019s successor, Governor Sir Arthur Hamilton-Gordon, who proved highly receptive and resolved to assist him.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Petition and the Royal Commission<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Sir Arthur drafted a nine-point comparative table for de Plevitz illustrating the treatment of Indians in Trinidad versus Mauritius (having served as Governor of Trinidad prior to his posting in Mauritius), which revealed that Trinidadians were significantly better off on every point. (Unsurprisingly, this document is missing from our National Archives at Coromandel, having likely been destroyed due to how damning it was to the planters of the time.) Given the gravity of the situation, Sir Arthur advised de Plevitz to petition Her Majesty Queen Victoria, denouncing the mistreatment of her subjects in the remote colony. It appears the 39-paragraph petition was drafted by Sir Arthur himself, bearing de Plevitz’s signature, as the English prose was impeccably crafted to secure Royal approval.<\/span><\/p>\n

De Plevitz began organising to gather the signatures and cross-marks of labourers across the country, starting in his home area of Nouvelle D\u00e9couverte. He encountered immediate opposition from planters who viewed the initiative as a threat to their interests. Branded a “social deviant,” de Plevitz faced police restrictions when crowds gathered at his home to sign the petition, while his agents were barred from entering estate camps. Undeterred, he relocated near the road junction connecting the districts of Flacq, Moka, and Pamplemousses (near today’s bus terminal). There, he successfully gathered a cumulative total of 9,401 signatures — almost entirely cross-marks, alongside a handful in halting Hindi. The petition was dispatched to London with the Governor ensuring it reached its destination safely and on time.<\/span><\/p>\n

News of de Plevitz’s campaign spread like wildfire. To the Indian labourers, he was a hero; to the oligarchy, he was a traitor bent on breaking the code and undermining their authority. He was physically assaulted twice in Port Louis but remained resolute. Seeking to remove him, Sir Virgil Naz QC, a member of the planters’ legal panel, asked Sir Arthur what he intended to do about de Plevitz. Sir Arthur\u2019s blunt reply was that he intended to request a Royal Commission of Inquiry to investigate the allegations made by the Indian immigrants. Consequently, the Crown appointed William Frere and Victor Williamson as Royal Commissioners in February 1872; they arrived in Mauritius in April of that year.<\/span><\/p>\n

The co-chaired Commission convened at the Police Canteen, Line Barracks, Port Louis, beginning its investigations in earnest. Alongside the commissioners sat the landed gentry\u2019s legal team — comprising Sir William Newton QC, Sir Virgil Naz QC, and George Guibert — as well as selected Indian indentured labourers. De Plevitz sat beside the commissioners to act as interpreter, given his fluency in both English and Hindi.<\/span><\/p>\n

The first deponent was de Plevitz himself, who explained the raison d\u2019\u00eatre of the Commission and detailed the abuses perpetrated against the Indians. The next deponent, Protector of Immigrants H. N. D. Beyts, was grilled so intensely by de Plevitz and the commissioners that he feigned illness and had to be hospitalised; when cross-examination resumed, he feigned illness once more before proceedings were adjourned, publicly exposing his compromised role. Indian workers testified in Hindi regarding the brutal conditions they endured.<\/span><\/p>\n

Upon completing their investigations, the commissioners returned to London to compile their report, published in 1875. They recommended abolishing the double-cut system, reducing Sunday corv\u00e9e to two hours before noon, better equipping estate hospitals, guaranteeing workers freedom to shop outside estate stores, ensuring regular wage payments, and fixing standard working hours. However, the victory was short-lived. Sir Arthur had refrained from dismissing Beyts, believing that “a self-confessed poacher is a better watchman than a new recruit” — a miscalculation, as planters quickly brought Beyts back under their sway once Sir Arthur departed for Fiji.<\/span><\/p>\n

Legacy and Aftermath<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Following Sir Arthur\u2019s departure, de Plevitz found himself isolated and relentlessly persecuted by the planter community. Advised by close friends that his life was in mortal danger, he decided to leave the country with his son, parting from his wife and other children. Seeking refuge in a British territory where Sir Arthur was stationed, a collection was organised among close friends to fund a sea passage via Sydney. In April 1876, de Plevitz departed in humiliation, leaving behind no immediate successor to champion the coolies’ cause.<\/span><\/p>\n

Despite the Royal Commission’s recommendations, conditions for the indentured labourers remained largely unchanged due to a lack of implementation. Workers spent their lives on plantations and estate camps — or in nearby privately owned plots — until Dr. Maurice Cur\u00e9 emerged in 1913 to champion the downtrodden in the sugar industry. The subsequent formation of trade unions, organising of strikes, establishment of the Mauritius Labour Party in 1936, and the gradual extension of the franchise ultimately fulfilled de Plevitz\u2019s vow: “One day I\u2019ll endeavour to change this.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Sir Bede Clifford, Governor of Mauritius from 1937 to 1942, symbolically broke the code by appointing Dr. Seewoosagur Ramgoolam — grandson of an indentured coolie and educated in England — as a government Liaison Officer in Education. Roughly ninety years after de Plevitz’s departure, political power transitioned in 1968 when Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam became the first Prime Minister of an independent Mauritius.<\/span><\/p>\n

Adolphe de Plevitz fought tirelessly because he recognized that the colonial elite subscribed to the slave-era dogma of “once a coolie, always a coolie” — the belief that the children of coolies were destined solely for plantation toil. This mindset drove the systemic educational discrimination that deliberately caused coolie children to fail exams, ensuring they remained trapped in agricultural servitude.<\/span><\/p>\n

For his monumental efforts to improve the lot of Indian laborers on the sugar estates — and the heavy personal price he paid for breaking ranks with the plantocracy — a life-size bronze statue of Adolphe de Plevitz deserves to be erected in a prominent location in the capital. Beekrumsing Ramlallah, founder of the Mauritius Times<\/em>, had previously donated a bust of de Plevitz, which stands at the entrance of the MGI SMAS Building in Moka. He also serialised \u2018Restless Energy: A Biography of Adolphe de Plevitz\u2019<\/em> — a historical biography written by Loretta de Plevitz and published by the Mahatma Gandhi Institute in 1987 — in the Mauritius Times<\/em> in the following years. These initiatives were fitting tributes to an unsung hero who sacrificed his livelihood and family for the indentured Indians of Mauritius, a figure who has been kept in the shadows for far too long.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is worth noting that the British colonial regime commissioned anthropologist Burton Benedict to study the fate of indentured workers in plantation colonies. His study on Mauritius, entitled Indians in a Plural Society: A Report on Mauritius<\/em> (Colonial Research Studies No. 34), was published in 1961 by Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. Regrettably, the book was considered an insult to local Indians and was promptly banned, though it offered an honest historical account rather than a curated narrative. Today, only a heavily edited version remains available at the National Archives in Coromandel. Similarly, Trinidad-born Nobel laureate V. S. Naipaul wrote about Mauritius in his 1972 work The Overcrowded <\/em>Barracoon<\/em>, which was also banned — earning Naipaul the status of persona non grata — though his uncensored insights sold rapidly in Britain.<\/span><\/p>\n

Harrykissoon Booluck, CSK, serves as the Chairman of the Mahatma Gandhi Institute (MGI) and Rabindranath Tagore Institute (RTI) Council.<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Mauritius Times ePaper Friday 30 October 2026<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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