Mauritian Independence

MAURITIUS INDEPENDENCE: Marginalism and political control (part 2) Article paru dans Le Mauricien | 4 mars, 2012 - 15:00 Mauritius and its dependencies were, as a whole, a genesis of colonialism, a purely novel French and predominantly British creation. In theory, a return of power to a non-existent indigenous society (decolonization) does not arise. There would simply be a transfer of power in 1968. Despite the terms of the Capitulation Treaty of 1810, which allowed the conquered inhabitants to preserve their property (Article 7) and allowed them to conserve their religion, laws and customs (Article 8), there was a lingering mutual distrust between them and the British. The Franco-Mauritians and elite Creoles, staunch Catholics, regarded the British as foreigners, and disliked Anglicanism, English language and British culture. Most British Governors, in their despatches, suspected the loyalty of Franco-Mauritians and elite Creoles to the British Crown. But a symbiotic relationship developed between them arising out of economic needs. The Franco-Mauritians needed to maintain their established plantation economy with a constant supply of coerced labour. The British needed money-tax derive from the plantation economy which would provide revenue to administer the island and maintain law and order. A diarchy evolved : the Franco-Mauritians controlled the economy, and the British controlled the policy and the administration. However, the Mauritius sugar-based economy created institutional structures and a socio-economic hierarchy. At the top were the Franco-Mauritians and elite Creoles, quite happy with their sugar estates, factories and lucrative commercial concerns. They were culturally content as long as Britain did not interfere with their sentimental attachment with France. In the middle were the coloured Creoles and christianised Indians, who had interest tied to their jobs in the Civil Service, in the plantation and mercantile hierarchy, and in liberal professions. However Francophile they could pretend to claim, they could not afford to be too anti-British as well. At the bottom were the black Creoles, descendants of slaves, and the Indian coolies, descendants of indentured labourers, all busy struggling to earn a meagre living and understandably apathetic on question of political participation. Among these three clearly identifiable socio-economic groups, there were no common grievances or any common cause or ideal. And in such conditions, a nationalist movement could not rise. It can be argued that for well over a century (1810 to 1930), Mauritian politics remained essentially and crudely a debate over questions of colour, race and ethnicity, and voting rights. The reform movement There were five identifiable movements in the island from 1810 to 1930. We have to briefly look at them to have a feel of the flow of our History. In the 1830's, the following representation made to the Colonial Office by Franco-Mauritians led by the advocate of Slavery, Adrien d'Epinay, the British Government agreed to modify the 1825 Constitution of the Council of Government by Royal Instructions dated 20 July 1831, to include token representation of "seven persons elected (nominated by the Governor) from out of the Chief landed proprietors and principal merchants of the island in the Council of Government". Though content with only advisory role in the decision-making process, the Franco-Mauritians also secured from Whitehall press freedom. In the early 1880's, again a tight circle of Franco-Mauritians, but now joined by some elite coloured Creoles, unified by their opposition to social and political emancipation of black Creoles and Indians, and helped by Irish catholic rebel Governor Sir John Pope Henessy, demanded political changes (the Reform Movement). By Letters Patent, dated 16 September 1885, from Queen Victoria, elective elements were first introduced. Port-Louis elected two members, and the rest of eight districts one each. Elections were held in January 1886 and regularly every five years until 1936. Then, in 1910, an attempt was made by professional middle class led by Eugene Laurent and Indians, joined by Manilall Doctor, Gandhi's envoy, to check the power of Franco-Mauritians by the formation of a political party, the "Action Libérale". But that party disappeared in around 1914, when World War I put an end to political activism. In 1920, the Retrocession Movement (return of Mauritius to France) was a middle-class Creole movement led by Maurice Curé. The Franco-Mauritians and intellectual Indians looked down upon the retrocessionists as disloyal British subjects. Colonial Office and the French-educated Governor Sir Heskett Bell threatened them. The retrocessionists were heavily defeated in the General Elections of January 1921. Between 1922 and 1928 a "Revision Movement" became very active. Led by Gaston Gébert, this was yet another middle-class Creole political aspiration. Gébert and his handful of supporters claimed for Mauritius a form of responsible government or, failing that, a Constitution similar to that prevailing in Barbados, Bermuda and the Bahamas. They believed that under such a system, Creoles would return several members to the Legislative, thereby increasing their political influence. Again, Franco-Mauritians and educated influential Indians viewed the movement with apathy and suspicion. It must be said here that there were attempts twice by two of our political stalwarts, Nairac and Roger Pezanni, to amend, by way of motion, our Constitution for a more representative government. Sir Edouard Nairac, Senior elected member of Port-Louis, brought a motion on 28 April 1925 and Roger Pezanni, elected member of Plaines Wilhems, brought another motion on 22 March 1927. Sir Nairac's motion was defeated and Pezanni's motion was not put to the vote (had it been, it would have met with a crushing defeat). The Mauritian revolution of the peasantry The socio-economic hierarchy of the sugar-based economic structure had to adapt to the international capitalist economy on which it was dependent for its exports (and imports). Moreover the Mauritian economy suffered from a chronic lack of local and foreign investments. The Franco-Mauritian landowners, more often also mill- owners, devised an ingenious plan to raise capital. They resorted to selling marginal, less productive land to the thrifty, tight-fisted, hard-working Indians who could afford to buy. The "Grand Morcellement" of the 1860- 1885 was followed by waves of smaller morcellements. The rise of small planters and self-employed petty contractors engaged in haulage, transport and trade, was an economic revolution. Indians (Hindus and Muslims) moved to villages from estate camps, which they looked down as structures of exploitation by the plantocracy. The knelling of the bell for political demands came with the riots of 1937 and 1943. The inauspicious day, Friday 13 August 1937, is a turning point in the socio-economic and political history of Mauritius. On that day, three casual labourers were shot dead and several others were severely injured at the, ironically, Gujadhur's Union Flacq Sugar Estate, in a confrontation between, on the one side, labourers and small planters and, on the other side, police and sugar estate personnel. This was the Mauritian revolution of the peasantry at the grass root level. The meek and docile Indian now became a political activist. At the elite level, the former retrocessionist, Dr Maurice Curé, who was defeated by Pierre Hugnin in the January 1936 General Elections in Plaines Wilhems, would launch the Mauritius Labour Party (MLP) in February 1936, during the administration of Governor Sir Wilfrid Jackson (August 1930 – June 1937) with the help of Emmanuel Anquetil, an unemployed trade union activist deported from England. The catholic and aristocratic Governor Bede Clifford ruthlessly clamped down on the activities of Cure's MLP which, despite its original popularity, began to decline and by 1942, was virtually non-existent. Clifford deported Anquetil to Rodrigues a while and put Curé under house arrest. However, soon after World War II, Anquetil, joined by popular Guy Rozemont, president of the powerful Engineering and Technical Workers Union (ETWU) grouping nearly all the artisans of the island, revitalised the MLP into a party mainly dominated by Creole artisans and dockers. Exiling Basdeo Bissoondoyal to Diego Garcia During the same period, Harryparsad Ramnarain organised Indian labourers and small planters under the Mauritius Agricultural Labourers' Association (MALA). Soon after the 1943 riots, Basdeo Bissoondoyal conducted vigorous campaigns of teaching illiterate Indians, both men and women, the Hindi language. Helped by his paramilitary styled disciplined group, the Swayam Sevak Samithi, he also gave regular sermons on Indian culture often punctuated by clashes with colonial authorities. Governor Sir Donald Mackenzie-Kennedy, in a secret despatch also enclosing intelligence reports, dated 2 December 1948, to Arthur Creech-Jones, expressed his intention of exiling Basdeo Bissoondoyal to Diego Garcia and Ramnarain to East Africa. But almost on the eve of his departure, he refrained from doing so because of possible backlash. In deep contrast to the Bissoondoyals, Ramnarain and even Anquetil and Rozemont, all called "agitators" by the colonial authorities, emerging western-educated – mainly anglophile urban Indian elite – will collaborate with the British for a neo-colonial Mauritius. Seewoosagur Ramgoolam will be nominated in

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