I left you when I was on the verge of turning 20. You were in my mind, the most beautiful place on earth. You weren’t the wealthiest, yet you had a big heart. Your people who came from a number of different places, lived harmoniously together. You future was not the most promising, yet your people had high hopes for what they would build on this blessed land. Your people weren’t the most well-off, yet they lived a balanced life with a deep social fabric. You weren’t the perfect democracy, but you were on the right trajectory. You were a young country yet you had deep values that you had instilled in your people, values such as mutual respect, respect for other people’s religious beliefs and a deep sense of shared destiny. You weren’t corruption free, yet you weren’t corruption riddled. Your youth was not the world’s smartest yet they had learned how to be truly collaborate and to value one another. You were living proof that differences in people can be beneficial. You were a shining light and a beacon of hope in a world that had just turned nasty after the attacks on the twin towers.
I came back to you 20 years later and as I get ready to leave you once more, I carry a heavy heart. You are not that place that I had left 20 years ago. You are now more intolerant than since I was born. Your people fight amongst each other for supremacy over the other. Everyone has a great reason for why they are the way they are. The divide between your children of Hindu faith and your children of Muslim faith is widening everyday with each of them pointing the figure at the other for the growing divide. You have completely forgotten to look after your first children, the descendants of slaves. They continue to be treated as second class citizens in a country that they gave up everything to help build while the haves and the bourgeoisie continues to make as if that it is not their problem to deal with. Your politicians are mining this divide for gold.
What used to be your big heart is now a heart that only rewards those willing to pay up. The same money that used to be the means to a balanced life on one of the most beautiful islands in the world is today the end in itself. Greed and rivalry is now the new way of living. Hope has now been replaced by fear. Fear is everywhere. There is fear around voicing one’s opinion. There is fear of the police and of fabricated crimes. Government workers are scared to show their disapproval for fear of reprisal at work. Fear is so pervading that people even fear drinking your water. I visited you often over the 20 years but let me tell you that I have never seen this much fear in the eyes of your people.
There is hopelessness everywhere. Your people have given up. They are of the deep and almost unshakable belief that nothing can change for the better from here on. They have been struck with so much fear that they are scared to dream of a better future. How painful must being scared to dream be. Your children are leaving you in droves, and many, permanently because they feel that you don’t reward them fairly, that you don’t value their hard work. They are leaving you because they feel that they don’t belong to you anymore, that if they were born with a different name or hair texture or skin colour, that they don’t stand a chance at a fair go.
Religious extremism is on the rise on your soil. What used to be a country where people’s religious identities were starting to become secondary to a more common Mauritian identity is now a country where Hindu and Muslim religious extremism is not extreme anymore. It is not the 5% anymore. It is slowly becoming the familiar. The advances our people had made in becoming more Mauritian pre-2000 has been wiped out by religious fanatics who continue to increase religious tensions on your soil.
Your youth, that same youth that was the hope for a more equal and united Mauritius when I left, has gotten lost. It is in the middle of a drug pandemic and has lost its moral compass. It is looking for meaning and direction yet no one seems to care or to be able to hear them. At surface level, they seem to have lost those values of respect and community mindedness. Deep down, they are yearning to be heard and guided.
Your democratic progress has been halted and reversed. Your democratic institutions are today filled with self-interested groups who do not hesitate to use those same institutions that were created to guard the people’s interest, against them. Corruption is now rife in the corridors of power. From a path towards greater democracy, greater power to the people, you have become a feudal and outdated system where loyalty is bought and heavily rewarded by an all-powerful patriarchy.
Your children are suffering, O’ Motherland. Some believe that you are the promised land, a land where the world’s major religions can unite, a land where people’s physicality can make way for their humanity and spirituality, a land that belongs to all as much as it belongs to no one. I believe that too, and I still dare to dream that our best days are ahead of us.