The power of unity

The problem we face today is that we have been made to believe that being divided yields better results than being united. We have for so long been divided that we cannot remember what unity feels like and with that, have come to believe that ‘sak zako bizin protez so montagne’ is the only way to success. Unfortunately, since independence, a time when we united against a common adversary, we have continued dividing ourselves to a point where it is now becoming a national emergency and one that could cause irreversible damage to our country if it is not reversed soon.

The RCC song saga has shone the spotlight on a history of subjugation and discrimination against Mauritians of African slave ancestry (MASA). Let’s for one second forget about the reactions from religious quarters as that’s what seems to immediately create divisions in our point of view. Instead, let’s focus on the human being for a minute. Let’s ask ourselves what the common ‘Nasion’ feels after hearing this, specially in the context of the history of being made to feel inferior to other human beings. Sit with that for a bit. Ask yourself how your ancestors felt like when they were being denigrated and abused by those who believed themselves to be a superior being, part of an ‘elite’. Ask yourself how you would feel like if those who are economically more powerful than you, joke about you in a derogatory manner. That feeling is still somewhere there in most of us. It’s just a matter of tuning in and empathising. This may have grown into a political issue however at the core, it is a human issue and one that we must not try to sweep under a carpet that now looks like a hill.

On my visit to Mauritius in Feb, I could observe a widening gap between Mauritians of all religious faiths. I observed a widening gap between Mauritians of Hindu faith and those of Muslim faith. Having lived at La Caverne for most of my life, I grew up in a very mixed environment. Over the years, I became very close to Mauritians of other faiths, and many of us still are close today. I have been to Catholic churches like many Mauritians and I have also been to mosques on Fridays with my Muslim friends. I have interacted deeply with Mauritians of African ancestry, as well as Mauritians of Muslim faith. I am well-placed, from my proximity to Mauritians of all faiths and ethnic backgrounds as well as my time away from Mauritius to observe severe degradation in the way we think and talk about one another these days. The way Mauritians of all different religious and ethnic groups, all think and the things we all say in private circles about other Mauritians is very harmful. 

We nowadays see fanatic groups like ‘Proud Hindu’ and ‘Proud Hindu Business’ on Facebook that are promoting the idea of protecting and only promoting Hindu businesses in Mauritius. The objective is to discourage Hindus from buying from Muslim owned businesses more than anything else. When I took issue with this and raised it with my Hindu friends and family, they would tell me that ‘Muslims do the same thing. Do you see Muslims coming to buy from Hindus? Go to Valentina Mall in Phoenix for you to witness it with your own eyes.’

I saw the other side of the same coin when I visited Valentina Mall. There, except for national brands like 361 or Panarotti’s Pizza, I could see a congregation of Muslim owned businesses housed under one roof in what seemed to be a very deliberate pursuit. My interest was in the casual leases of the shopping centres as the permanent leases can always be taken by whoever has a better business. Casual leases on the other hand often change owners and there, I observed that every single casual lease was held by a Muslim business owner. The centre lacked diversity and it lacked Mauritianism.

These two examples are just the tip of the iceberg, the visible part. The invisible part is scary.

This is the reality of the Mauritius we live in today. Hindus and Muslims are accusing each other of being fanatical and turning on one another. Christians/Catholics and Muslims feel that Hindus are becoming more aggressive and intolerant. The Mauritian of African slave ancestry is feeling that the Hindu has locked them out of economic progress, while the Hindu feels that the Mauritian of African slave ancestry is not doing enough to get himself out of the poverty cycle. Misunderstanding, apathy and intolerance is rife and unchecked. There are two groups that benefit from this, the Franco-Mauritian economic baron who still controls huge parts of the wealth of this country and whose continued control depends on keeping the rest of the population fighting among themselves and politicians who only know how to rule a divided lot.

While it may be in a developmental phase right now, what is scary about this decay in our identity is when we fast-forward into the future and ask ourselves what kind of an island will we be handing over to our children and grand children in 50 years time? Think about this for a minute. If change has been so rapid and destructive in the last 20 years, what do you think will happen over the next 20 years when extremism, specially imported, and communication is even more advanced than today.

A few days ago, an aunty of mine shared a Youtube video about Chanakya, a great Indian political strategist who helped defeat Alexandre and unite India under the Maurya empire. In the video, the presenter spoke of a concept called ‘Akhand Bharat’ which translated to ‘United India’, a concept of geographical unification of ‘Greater India’, that includes countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmay, Tibet etc… When my aunty reached out to ask me what I thought, I told her that I really enjoyed it but that I would have wanted to hear more about ‘Akhand Bharat’, not in how India will unite geographically, but how it will unite inside it’s current borders, how it will unite its Hindu and Muslim communities in India, when every passing day is a day when the divide is widening. Right now it feels impossible for much to happen in India other than growing intolerance and division, however a more united Mauritius is something we should all be able to dream of and even plan for. The future looks too uncertain and scary if we do not intervene in this rapidly spreading ‘cancer of the identity’, one that is drifting us further apart with every passing day.

The power of Unity

On 12th March, the Dandenong Market, one of Australia’s oldest markets, celebrated ‘Mauritian Independence Day’ for the 2nd year running. The featured image of this article is a full page image run in the Star Journal of Dandenong City Council. This is the second time in a row that Mauritian Independence Day has been celebrated by a non-Mauritian organiser. The whole market celebrated the event. Merchandise sellers were selling ‘loud’, tropical shirts, tropical themed fedora hats and tropical scented soaps. An Australian cafe was selling a Mauritian inspired vegetarian thali while an Afgani bakery was selling ‘Mille feuille’. A Malaysian restaurant was selling ‘Aigre-doux’ fish and an Italian pizzeria a curried pizza. La Caze Mama, our cafe at the market which has been pushing for Mauritian independence day to be featured as a regular event was the hero trader for the day. Mauritius had taken over the whole market, one that attracts 100,000 visitors every week. The market hired Sonik Waves, a Mauritian band in Melbourne to play and teach sega to the uninitiated on the day. On the day, we sold more hundreds of pairs of Dal Puri, all coming from Mauritius. The market welcomed more than 31,000 visitors on the day compared to ~ 23,000 on a Sunday, 8,000 extra visitors. Sonik Waves entertained the crowd, Mauritians and non-Mauritians alike, to the tune of authentic sega music and dance. The same Creole culture that in Mauritius is denigrated became what everyone was raving about after the event. The market told us that Mauritian Independence Day attracted crowds comparable to big festivals like Divali Night and All Asia night. Every trader absolutely loved the day and celebrated Mauritian Independence Day with great enthusiasm, as it was also great for their businesses as well.     

La Caze Mama, Australia’s largest importer and distributor of Mauritian foods, distributing Mauritian foods to more than 70 stores Australia wide, started because I could not find Steward Lazzat’s Briani powder, a product made by a Muslim owned business in Mauritius. The Mauritian community in Australia, by purchasing Mauritian products, supports more than 200 indirect jobs as well as 20 direct jobs in Mauritius, mostly low skilled jobs. This is the kind of potential unity unlocks friends. If my mother had decided that we should only buy spice mixes from a Hindu business owner, potentially none of what we have achieved as a community would have been possible. Don’t get me wrong. Communalism is present among Mauritians in Australia as well. Some Mauritians do not purchase our products because they see us as Hindus first and not as Mauritians. Those who love their country, love their culture, love their food, love their people and make decisions that are aligned with that love are the ones who are making a real difference to the lives of many, specially in Mauritius.

In the month I spent in Mauritius, another aspect of reality that I experienced was that many Mauritians, at surface level, carry a level of communalism, of ‘Noubanisme’ but when exposed to an alternative reality that comes from a more united identity, it blows away the leaves of communalism to expose a core that is very Mauritian. For a long time, communal propaganda has been a reality in Mauritius and it is true that many Mauritians have come to believe this propaganda, but it is also true that for many, the core is still dreaming of a more united identity. I lived this twice very strongly last month. One night, I was in a tavern in St Pierre where a group of 5, 4 Malbars and one Nasion, me including, started discussing Mauritian communalism in the most open of ways. After two hours of discussing, what had started as a discussion on how communalism is engrained in us and that this reality is here to stay, became a discussion on how important it was to break out of this sorcery around this idea that we are ‘comminal’ and that change is not possible, to the point that a follow up meeting was proposed for us to start building a plan around it. Another time, I visited a licensed general grocer in Lallmatie with another 6 family members. While having a beer, the 75 y.o Hindu shop owner ripped into communalism in a way that made me feel extremely empowered in what I consider to be a fight for our deepest part of our being, our identity. He blasted the idea that the ‘Hindu Belt, 4-14 constituencies are always going to only vote in a way that favours communal politics. He was a breath of fresh air in what remains a highly polluted environment.  

A possible way forward

Change is inevitable and the system we are living in will change. Medieval feudalism was a reality between the 9th and 15th century in Europe and while many could not see it change back then, it did. The British, divide and rule system is also out of breath, and the decay of that system has accelerated in these last few years. I compare the system to a 4 gear engine box that is now firmly stuck in 4th gear with the accelerator pedal fully pressed, yet we are not going any faster. The only way to improve speed will be to replace the whole gearbox and engine with one with greater capacity. That change is inevitable. The question I am asking myself is where could that change begin from. It certainly won’t begin in England, the motherland of such a system, and it won’t begin in India or China or the USA for that matter. They are too big to successfully test change. On the other hand, and as you will have read from what I have written, I believe Mauritius could be the ideal place for testing a new system. We have all the ingredients for it. We are a tiny place, hence could pilot test a new system more easily. We are an extremely diverse population with no indigenous population hence no one can claim to be ‘owners’ of the island and the difficulties of enacting change in a diverse population will help understand what can work and what cannot. There is a very wide economic gap on the island which is the kind that is ripe for correction and we have a political system that is completely out of breath leading to huge frustrations among the people. We are the island where the 3 major religions of the world merge, and that too in very interesting ways. In many ways, we have got a confluence of circumstances making Mauritius the ideal place to begin testing a new way of being and that’s where ‘UBUNTU’ could come in. In last week’s article, I wrote about a humanist African philosophy that is extremely powerful and unifying yet very little is known about it. This philosophy has the potential to change our focus from our what separates us to what unites us. It has the potential to upgrade our perspectives in a way that could resolve major differences between different belief systems, by focusing on the needs of the human being. You can read more about it here – https://girishramjuttun.com/2023/03/16/to-all-my-nasion-brothers-and-sisters-in-mauritius/

It will take forgiveness and love, universal values, right? Values that every religion promote, right? In his book, ‘No future without forgiveness’, Desmond Tutu, a South African bishop who went through unimaginable pain during apartheid, makes the case for forgiveness to not just be a heightened state of being but one that is psychologically required for our brains to move past what is holding it back.

We deserve better as a people. We are a beautiful people with a history of pain and hardship who never allowed that pain to make us bitter. Our sega, a music born out of pain is today a celebration of life. We have always overcome adversity and pushed back against oppression. Right now we are being oppressed but in a more subtle way. This story illustrates our reality. “The forest was shrinking but the trees kept voting for the axe, for the axe was clever and convinced the trees that because his handle was made of wood he was one of them.”

We should consider forgiving the past because when we do, we will be able to remove the glasses of division off our eyes, wipe the slate clean and start drawing from a blank canvas. It is possible. What unites us is greater than what divides us. Glory to the Motherland.