The Journal of Pacific Studies, volume 8, 1982: 83-94

REVIEW ARTICLES

RATU SIR LALA SUKUNA : BETWEEN TWO WORLDS

R. T. Robertson

R,3tu S ukuna: Soldier, Statesman, Man of Two Worlds By: Deryck Scarr Ma cmillan Education Ltd (for the Ratu Sir Lala Sukuna Biography Committee), London, 1980, pp. 220

~atu Sir Lala Sukuna has been hailed as Fiji's greatest twentieth century leader. Yet in this, the latest of Dr Scarr's forays into Pacific his­ tory , the character and role of Ratu Sukuna does not emerge clearly. In the foreword Ratu Sir Kamisese / I Mara defines Ratu Sukuna as the "translator and in­ j tercessor" of two cultures. Scarr pursues this description throughout his book. To him Ratu Sukuna is a man caught between the demands of two entirely different social systems, as the suo-title of this biography states a Man of Two Wor} d s. Yet ~ :;_':'l :~ u Sukuna saw himself differently. He saw his task was to bridge the gap between the old tribal world which colonial capitalism challenged and the emerg­ ing world of the near future when Fijians would stand on their own feet. The last two decades of his life were spent on trying to influence the character of that newly emerging world.

Born into the paramount House of Bau in 1888, Ratu Josefa Lalabalavu Vanaaliali Sukuna was reared as a Fijian spokesman who could operate in Western terms with effect. In 1903 he was sent to the Wanganui Collegiate for secondary education, and on

83 his return was appointed a clerk-translator in the Colonial Secretariat (1907) and later became a school teacher and master between 1909 and 1911. Two years later he sailed for England to read law at Oxford University but interrupted his studies in 1915 to join the French Foreign Legion on the Western war front. Unlike many of his companions he survived, and one year later was back in Suva curiously annoyed at being so far from the war. But his war service, together with his chiefly status and advanced edu­ cation assured bim of a more productive future as a high-ranking civil servant in the Colonial machinery. He became a member of the Native Regulations Board in 1926, of the Legislative Council in 1932, Native Land Reserves Commissioner in 1940, first Secretary for Fijian Affairs in 1944, and finally, the first full-time Speaker of the Legislative Council in 1956, only two years before his death.

All of Ratu Sukuna's life was spent under a co­ lonial regime. Ultimately this circumstance most influenced his role as an administrator. Scarr ac­ knowledged that "what struck him was the way his people were being reappraised in a manner that seemed to him more progressive in an inappropriate British sense than explicable to Fijians or prudent" (p. 20). It was necessary, therefore, to mediate between Colonial desires and perceived Fijian needs. It was this task which occupied much of Ratu Sukuna's ener­ gies and ultimately shaped his political stance.

At first his efforts were concentrated on coun­ tering the belief in some elements of the Colonial Government that Fijians had no future. Increasingly he saw the need to act more positively. In November 1945 he told the Council of Chiefs that "the old regime is finished - today there are many new in­ tricate problems to consider and guard against". One of these was the role of the chiefs themselves. Although Ratti Sukuna spoke strongly against using the Fijian administration as a pretext for upholding the status quo and perpetuating outdated customs, at no time did he propose to halt the growing feudal

84 characteristics of tribal Fijian society. This con­ tradiction is extremely important and it is unfortu­ nate that Scarr fails to present more than a cur­ sory analysis of the conflicting forces which con­ fronted Ratu Sukuna and his schemes .

. Early twentieth century Fijian society was static,.Scarr notes. "In social affairs and opin­ ions the people were still led by their chiefs, men who were largely unimaginative and overwhelmingly concerned that change should not destroy their privileged positions" (p. 46). When Scarr talks of British policy being "destructive" and "retrogres­ sive" it is mostly because British policy failed to c r eate a n effective s u bstitute lito fill the mental aspect of the autocracy, the class that alone in exer (' ~·_.:;" . c' the cen t u ries had been in the habit of .::. t h e mi nd" (p. L+9).

It is not unnatural then that Scare should crit­ ici z e Eu r opeans for seeing the dominant problem fac­ i ng Fijian society in terms of Turaga versus Leweni­ vanua, the chiefs against the people . Yet because o f his own declared stance, he falls into the same narrow perception himself. Hence development is seen only in terms of two opposing tendencies - ~o mmuni a lism and individualism. It is unfor tunate that Scarr a llows himself to become too jdentified wi th his sub ject. Ratu Sukuna, a product of chiefly society, c an at least be excused for the beliefs he he l d . It i s l e ss easy to explain the motives of his ~iogya phe y . In November 1922 Ratu Sukuna told the Council of r,h i e fs at Bau that Fijians viewed capitalist economic d e vel opment with apprehension because owe have not y et acquired the mental equipment necessary to a l ife o f individualism. . our life still depe nds e n t i rely on custom" (p. 72). Faced with the inevitab ility o f change, Ratu Sukuna tried desper­ 1 ately "to crea t e the Fiji of his shildhood '. In eff e ct t hi s meant e nsur ing the continued paramountcy of chi e f ly interes t s . "Where you have tribalism", he once stated, "there i s no public opinion" (p. 114). The whole idea o f democL3cy was anathema to

8 5 Ratu Sukuna, simply oecause he believed only the chiefs were capable of wielding authority. Because he regarded the Lewenivanua as ignorant, democracy would only mean rule by "ignorance and prejudice!! (p. 112). Hence he cond~mned the commoner Apolosi Nawai because his Viti Company challenged chiefly authority. Ratu Sukuna makes the justification:

Accustomed to an autocratic power that would have instantly punished with death any such utterance, the native cannot conceive any such statement be­ ing made except by a superior about an inferior (p. 50).

What Scarr fails to connect is the traditional Fijian rivalry between Bau and the West which obvi­ ously shaped Ratu Sukuna's attitudes. Scarr notes that the only time when Ratu Sukuna was critical of chiefly rule was in conneccion with the West. "Their main characteristic of importance," Ratu Sukuna wrote (no date) of the Western people, " ... is their dis­ regard of all authority outside their own tribal chiefs, who are regarded as the repositories of ini­ tiative and judgement, and the first court of appeal in all matters" (p. 136). What might be acceptable in the East was clearly unaccepfable in the West particularly if it conflicted with Eastern paramount­ cy. Scarr choses not to comment, but later says in another context:

He was very much the great Eastern Chief . . . insisting on the use of Bauan rather than the local dialects when he sat formal­ ly, and made all the more powerful by his government offices. As Talai he was just below God and the King, with only the Governor intervening (p. 137).

The interests of the chiefly class were fore­ most in Ratu Sukuna's mind largely because he could not conceive of the Turaga and Lewenivanua as separate. Nevertheless, he recognized that this might not always be so. Against such a development,

86 he urged higher education to be restricted to a select few. An intelligentsia would be potentially subversive , "undermining and confusing authority for t h eir own needs" (p. 146). But the growth of a conflicting intelligentsia was not his only concern. Police reports in the early 1950s (no dates or sources given) suggested that "people had suffered enough from the chiefs who, brought up in a high, dignified manner, did not understand the poor man's difficulties". Earlier the young Ratu Mara had written to Ratu Sukuna from Oxford (again no foot­ notes) that if the Chiefs went: . . . the full hog in the process of Europeanization we would be drawing a "social curtain" between the Tura­ gas and the Lewenivanuas, that is the anathema which vilifies all societies but the Fijian (p. 173).

Ratu Sukuna was fully conscious of this danger. Previously in 1945 he wrote:

We need clearly to understand, and be always conscious of, the fact that we can only be sure of our people conti­ nuing to follow us provided they ap­ preciate that our authority is better than anyone else's. If we con- fine ourselves to pleasure seeking only, no useful purpose will be served in our maintaining our claim to chiefly status (p. 147). Ratu Sukuna's clear class perception and awareness that chiefs had to adopt a more positive (and justi­ fying) role, drove him deeply into the area of development after the mid-19 30s. Here again Scarr fails to corne to terms with Ratu Sukuna's perceptions preferring cursory comments intermingled with numer­ ous lengthy details of mekes and traditional wel~ comes to any analysis of Ratu Sukuna's strategies and development theories.

In the first instance, Ratu Sukuna was obviously

87 discurbed by the expanding material gap between his people and the growing pros perity of the Chinese and Indian communities living in Fiji. He felt strongly that something h ad t o be done . The experimental projects fois ted on Fijians by Europeans such as Stuart Reay i n t he 1 930s, which resettled Fijians on individual plots of land, not only disrupted vil­ lage life but were c learly unsuccessful. It was also suggested by i mplicat ion that v illage agricul­ ture could never be the basis for development, some­ thing Ratu Sukuna strongly disagreed with. When the government abolished taxe s in kind after the turn of the century, i t had effectively ended the market­ ing of Fijian produce and hence Fijian economic pro­ duction. The village system itself was not at fault. I f markets could again be found, Ratu Sukuna believed, village agriculture would become viable. He had this i n mind in 1 936 whe n he first rec ommended the estab­ l ishment of a Native Land Trust to the Council of Chiefs. Yet he was also conscious that unless Fijians could demonstrate that they were doing something with t h eir l and, they could hardly justify holding on to it when the pressure of population in the col­ ony alone dema nd ed that more land be used pr oductive­ l y. Scarr doe s not quote the remainder of Ratu Sukuna's speech in which he says:

. i t is not consistent with present day cond itions that we should do something that wo uld br ing about the resentment of those that live a mongst us. We want to live, they want t o live . We work for Fiji, they work for Fiji. You should know that economic activity is an act of mutual exchange. 1 This reali s m is an aspect of Ratu Sukuna rarely d iscussed. No r i s there a ny sub s t a ntia l account of Ratu Sukuna ' s relations with I nd ian s . What i s clear, however, is that Ratu Suku na d id not, as is often suggested , a gree with r igid racial s e pa rat ion. In late 1946 h e t ol d t h e Legisla tive Council that " . i n thi s s mal l country we cannot without i rrev- ocab l e h arm to ourselve s c ontinue to live in what a r e and wh a t wil l be watertigh t cultural compart­ ments". The implicat ions of t hese and other state-

88 ments by Ratu Sukuna are quickly passed over, pos­ sibly because they do not easily conform to Scarr's picture of the rigid defender of the Fijian commun­ ity; or could it be that they raise further contra­ dictions of the sort Scarr would rather not expose, or risk analysing:

The desire to build on the past for the future and to ensure the continuation of the chiefly class remained the two dominant drives behind Ratu Sukuna's schemes. Development would serve the dual function of preservation and modernization by Fijian initia­ tive. The latter was a particularly important com­ ponent in his schemes, and in this Sukuna was in­ fluenced by Sir Donald Cameron's notions of in- direct rule in administration as practised in Tanganyika which emphasized devel opmen t from wi th- in. 2 It was not unnatural, therefore,that he should seek to refocus .attention on the village. In a report he made the following justification:

. with its ready-made organization and its inherited sense of cooperation, the village community, more especially the large village community, being of native growth and an attempt to solve the local problems of life in its own way, is the most important natural, the most convenient and the cheapest unit of administration and for bestow­ ing most effectively those. inestimable gifts [ofJ ... civilization (p. 140).

Land and loyalty were obvious bases for develop­ ment even if Ratu Sukuna's loyalties dicated that they be from the top down. The Fijian Administra­ tion, relaunched in 1944, would become a new de­ velopment coordinating body. "What is needed," Ratu Sukuna wrote, "is a plan of campaign drawn up by the Provincial Commissioner, .based on the labour of a ready-made social organization and put into action by a Roko" (p. 137). Ratu Sukuna's development strategy offered a unique way of fostering development without the so-

89 cial disruption and inequalities the colonial capita l­ ist model thre atened with its emphasis on ur ba nization, individualism, and export productton. His strategy had the further advantage of encouraging the welfare nature of the Fijian social system, which Rat~ Sukuna felt was desirable to retain so as to provide some protection during future economic and social change.

Yet for all this, his development scheme met immediate difficulties, none of which are satis­ factorily dealt with by Scarr. The amalgamation of villages into viable economic units met opposition from villagers with a close attachment to their own immediate environs. Often little finance was available to begin the task of amalgamation and Ratu Sukuna was forced t o consider cash cropping as an alternative way of initially raising funds to enable amalgamation. Though the failure to find ready-markets for village produce remained a per­ sistent stumbling block, the scheme's administra­ tion likewise suffered from inexperience. None of these teething problems should have been insurmount­ able given government support and determination. Here again Scarr makes no comment, and the reader is left with the feeling that given the time Ratu Sukuna took to have his ideas implemented, opposition to his plans must have been considerable. Also, by the late 1940s a new generation of Fijian leaders had emerged who did not share Ratu Sukuna's faith in communally-based development. Home from Oxford, Ratu Mara saw the Fijian Affair's regulations as "relics of past custom" that would never keep pace with Fijian aspirations (p. 182). It is likely that their long-term aims did not differ greatly, but merely the way how to achieve them. Nevertheless, Ratu Sukuna pushed on, convinced that large communal villages were "the only possible course if our population is to increase in the fu­ ture so that the areas of land now vacant may again become populated" (p. 154). To make development viable he pressed for the establishment of a Fijian Development Board in 1951 to buy and market Fijian crops and to use the profits (greater because of the removal of middlemen) to finance infrastruc-

90 tural development within village communities. By 1953 the Native Land Trust Board was raising capital for communal development by selling off ex.tinct Ma taqali and other Crown land, or by leasing unused land. Direct government initiatives were being used to further development, reserves of land were being brought into cultivation through the power of kin ties (a~d guided by status), and social service authorities were being used to draw up economic development programmes. Given the vital impor~ tance of this experiment and Ratu Sukuna's faith in his alternative development strategy, it is one of ' the book's greatest weaknesses that no explanation is given of the scheme's progress in later decades. Because Scarr identifies too much with Ratu Sukunq) he is unable to see the question of development in , terms other than the oft-repeated individualis~ versus chiefly-dominate~ communalism. It was pre- , cisely because .Fijian ~ociety was not static, that Ratu Sukuna saw the necessity to introduce changes which would ensure guided progress with the minimum of upheaval. The strategy's place within the ideol­ ogy of development is neglectfully passed over. This failure reflects the narrow nature of Scarr's perceptions. He fails to place Ratu Sukuna adequately within the historical process. Except for occasional excursions to New Zealand and Europe, it is almost as if Ratu Sukuna did not live in a ' country ruled by a foreign power and half populated by Europeans, Indians, and Chinese. Whenever Scarr comes across criticisms from these groups he fall~ back on dogma for justification - this is the Fijian way. At times he scoffs at those who are no~ as accepting as he. Of the Spate Report in 1958 he concludes, "It did nonetheless take a startling pre- science, not to say enviable self-confidence,. . to conclude, as Spate felt able to do after less than a year's residence . .. " (p. 188). Later, . when siding with Roth's view that the only way of gaining Fijian opinion was through tikina and yasan~ councils, not directly from the people, Scarr ad­ mits that this is a bit like "going to Julius against Caesar" but he continues to. applaud Roth's opinion's, despite producing no evidence to support them other

91 than a recent study of Fijian customs by a foreigner whose "correct" attitudes presumably ensures his freedom from Scarr's normal condemnation of outsider's view (p. 194).

On other occasions Scarr tries to make up for lack of detail and evidence by semantic word games. The effect is confusing .. Of Ratu Sukuna he says "His view of society still remained basically organic but verging on the static. His own organ notes were always playing a hymn of praise to the plural society and singing damnation to democracy" (p. 171). What is worse, though, is when no evi­ dence exists and Scarr takes it upon himself to speak for Ratu Sukuna. The result is a final chapter beset with ungainly phrases like "might have thought" or "might have seemed to him" (pp. 185~6), and culminating in the classic "If alive, Ratu Sukuna could, of course, have replied that . .. " (p. 188). Sometimes these liberties result in Scarr deliber­ atively twisting Ratu Sukuna's belief in communal activity. On page 188 he says that Ratu Sukuna would not have been surprised at and would have found ac­ ceptable individual schemes which use labour from an owner's mataqali. No evidence is given to support such a departure from Ratu Sukuna's amalgamated vil­ lage schemes. On page 148 the reader is informed that "When a point like that was put to Ratu Sir Lala, his reply was likely to be ... ", and earlier that "Nothing much had changed at the centre, then Ratu Sukuna is likely to have reflected as he glanced at this" ( p. 130). The result of Deryck Scarr's biography of Ratu Sir Lala Sukuna is never really portrayed in terms of the times in which he lived. His attitudes are simply accepted rather than explained or critical­ lyanalysed. Nor does Rat~ Sukuna's character clearly emerge from the work, only Scarr's political por­ trait. Scarr, like this reviewer, is an outsider and yet he takes perverse delight in belittling the views of other outsiders, not on the grounds of evidence but too often because they are simply outsiders. At the end the reader is left with only a hazy appre­ ciation of how r a tu Sukuna was accepted by the

92 British colonial masters or indeed by his own people. The reader knows little about his schemes, how they fared, how they contrasted with past and future development. The sheer lack of historical perspec­ tive and analysis makes what should have been an exciting and revealing study a disappointing sketch.

Wh~t Scarr fails to perceive is that Ratu Sukuna was caught not between two cultural worlds, but between the old tribal Fiji of the past and the newly emerging chiefly-dominated middle class of the pres­ ent. He saw the gap which existed between his people and the newer arrivals to Fiji, and sought a way to narrow that gap while at the same time fostering what he believed to be the best aspects of Fijian tradition - its rural and hierarchical communal way of life. Ratu Sukuna's other biographer, Filipe Bole, has stated Ratu Sukuna's intentions so much more clearly:

It does appear that what is needed is not so much the pruning of Fijian social in­ stitutions so that what is left conforms to a western-oriented economy, but a care­ ful riveting of western economic ideals into the weaker links of the Fijian society.3

III this respect Ratu Sukuna is the Fijian equiv­ alent of the Maori leader, Sir Apirana Ngata, with less power perhaps although certainly, under les~ pressure. If we know little about Ratu Sukuna's relationship with the colonial power, we know even less about his relationship with the leaders of the Fiji Indian community as well as other Pacific lead~ ers who found themselves and their people faced with forces never before encountered and which experience and tradition provided few solutions.

Scarr's biography of Ratu Sukuna continues the tradition of writing history within a limited frame­ work. It is to be hoped that future biographers of Fijian leaders will examine their subjects in the wider cultural context of Fiji's development. - 93 Footnotes:

Filipe Bole, "The Life and Work of Ratu Sir Lala Sukuna", MA thesis, Victoria University of Wellington, 1969, p. 69.

2 D. Cameron, My Tanganyika Service and Some Nigeria. London, 1939. See also Bole, pp. 85-86. 3 Ibid., p. 138.

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