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An Elusive Dream: Multiracial Harmony in Fiji 1970 - 2000 A thesis submitted to the University of Waikato for the degree of Master of Philosophy, January, 2007. by Padmini Gaunder Abstract The common perception of Fiji, which is unique in the South Pacific, is that of an ethnically divided society with the indigenous and immigrant communities often at loggerheads. This perception was heightened by the military coups of 1987, which overthrew the democratically elected government of Dr. Timoci Bavadra because it was perceived as Indian-dominated. Again in 2000, the People’s Coalition Government headed by an Indian, Mahendra Chaudhry, was ousted in a civilian coup. Yet Fiji had been genuinely multiethnic for several decades (even centuries) before it became a colony in 1874. From then onwards, however, because of the policies of the colonial government, the society slowly became plural (in Furnivall’s classic sense) as the different races were separated in almost every walk of life. Until the 1920s there were hardly any conflicts between Fijians and Indians. From the 1920s, however, the Fijians were taught to be wary of the Indians. After independence in 1970, the Alliance government under Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara followed a policy of “multiracialism” with the stated aim of bringing the different ethnic groups together in a society where people achieved some degree of integration in terms of a common national identity, while retaining their own separate traditions. But, more than thirty years later, Fiji still remains an ethnically divided society with hardly any integration. My research explores the reason for this failure. My thesis is that the failure arose from the kind of democratic system that the country adopted at independence. That is, the Westminster concept of government and opposition can be problematic in a multiethnic society if political parties are divided on ethnic lines rather than based on political ideologies. Ratu Mara was one Fiji leader who recognized this problem and had said that the confrontational Westminster system is not appropriate in a South Pacific island with a multiracial population. While Stephanie Lawson, Peter Larmour, Futa Helu and others have made some important contribution to this debate, my thesis will focus on an argument put forward by Michael Goldsmith on the role of the opposition, making a distinction between two kinds of opposition, “confrontational” and “thoughtful”. This thesis contends that the Westminster system that Fiji adopted at independence failed to bring integration in part because the National Federation Party (NFP) degenerated over the years from a ‘thoughtful’ and effective opposition to a ‘confrontational’, ethnic opposition. ii Acknowledgements I would like to gratefully acknowledge the support I have had from several people and organizations without which this study would not have been possible. First of all, I wish to thank the University of Waikato for offering me a scholarship. I wish to thank Stephen Innes, the Special Collections’ Librarian at the Auckland University Library and his wonderful team for making me feel welcome as I spent several hours there, day in, day out, pouring through the Fiji Legislative Council/Parliamentary Debates. I also wish to thank the University of Waikato Library’s external borrowers’ section for promptly attending to my requests throughout my enrolment as an off-campus student. I am also grateful to the Waikato Centre in Auckland city where I often went and made use of the facilities. I also wish to thank the people in Fiji with whom I have had interaction for helping to clarify my doubts by answering my questions. While the policy of maintaining the confidentiality of the sources would not let me reveal their names, they know who they are. I also wish to thank the members of the Anthropology Department, the University of Waikato, where I have been an off-campus student, for their support in various ways whenever I came and spent a few days on campus. Last but most of all, I would like to thank my supervisors, Dr. Michael Goldsmith and Dr. Keith Barber, for their guidance and support throughout without which my thesis would have remained ‘an elusive dream’. iii Table of Contents Abstract ii Acknowledgements iii Table of Contents iv Preface v Introduction 1 Chapter 1 Fiji: the Historical Background 16 Chapter 2 Governing a Multiethnic Country 36 Chapter 3 Education the Foundation 65 Chapter 4 Worker Solidarities Emerge 93 Chapter 5 Sugar Politics 112 Chapter 6 Ethnicity in Politics 131 Chapter 7 Leadership for Preserving Fiji Fijian 166 Conclusion 201 References Cited 214 iv Preface When I first came to Fiji in 1966, I noticed that there were many similarities between the ethnic Fijians and the people of Kerala, the southernmost state in India, where I was born. These similarities included their food habits and way of dressing. So from the beginning I was shocked by the attitude of the Indians in Fiji to the indigenous people and their traditions. They tended, for example, to dismiss them as the ways of the ‘jungle’. The common Indian perception of the Fijians stemmed from a historical stereotype that probably points to a deep-seated cultural opposition between civilization and wildness. When the Indians started arriving in Fiji, from 1879 onwards, most of the land in Fiji had not been under cultivation, so they had the task of clearing the bush (‘jungle’ in their language) and planting mainly sugar cane. They had hardly any contact with the Fijian people but they knew that just two or three decades ago they were practising cannibalism. The stories they had heard about the Fijians, such as the one about Udre Udre (who was supposed to have been a notorious cannibal) confirmed the Indians’ belief that the local people were ‘junglees’ (people from the jungle). The Indians were wary of them until they got to know them in schools and work places. As an English teacher my interest in Fijian culture became stronger when in the 1970s the Ministry of Education in Fiji (and elsewhere in the South Pacific) successfully sought to add South Pacific/Fiji options to some of the subjects in the New Zealand School Certificate and University Entrance examinations to make them more relevant to the Pacific where students took these exams. In English it was decided to follow a thematic approach and every year certain themes were prescribed for study, with these themes featuring in the final examinations in essay topics, comprehension passages etc. One of the first themes to be chosen was Culture. So in class we studied Fijian and Indian cultures, the two dominant cultures in Fiji. There were no text books or other resources which could be used to facilitate the study of this theme. The Curriculum Development Unit of the Fiji Ministry of Education sent some material but this was never sufficient. So in the English v Department at Jasper Williams High School where I taught, we started looking for relevant material (mainly from the newspapers) and building up our own resource collection. It was a lot of hard work but at the same time very stimulating. It would not have succeeded without the active participation and commitment of all the members of the department. Jasper Williams High School was different from most of the other schools in Fiji at that time as it was more multiethnic and therefore more multicultural than most other schools. As a consequence studying ‘Culture’ became easier. We would often have discussions in class on the different practices of the two major communities and we were able to see a lot of similarities between the Fijian and Indian culture such as having extended families. In February 1987 I took leave and went to Perth to do postgraduate studies. Less than three months later the first military coup in the Pacific overthrew the one-month-old government of Dr. Timoci Bavadra. I was not surprised by the news as ever since the Fijian-dominated Alliance government was voted out I had expected some political upheaval. Perth at that time had very few students from Fiji, unlike the other Australian cities. Most of us knew each other and everyone was shaken by the political turmoil. I had the naivety to say to some of them, “What else did you expect? Call them ‘junglees’ and this is what you will get”. Most of them got annoyed with me and told me that the Indians had done nothing wrong. I quite agree with that claim and it was far from my intention to even remotely suggest otherwise. The point I was making was that while the Indian contribution to the welfare of Fiji and its people, including the Fijian people, has always been positive they had a wrong attitude towards the Fijians. Only one of them understood my point and he agreed with me and gave his own example.