Old France Lingers In Tiny British Isle

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31007, 12 March 1966, Page 5

Old France Lingers In Tiny British Isle

ARE the beautiful children who play on the wide shade-blotched lawns of the Park Hotel, Curepipi, every afternoon from four to six ? Like the First French Reader come to life, ‘•Pauline a une poupee. Phillippe et MarieFrance jouent avec une jolie balle jaune.” To see them there, under fond eyes of their dark-skinned, nurses, one could believe that the intention for Mauritius of its first French settlers has remained intact. These settlers were well-to-do and aristocratic families who had been astute enough to foresee in 1715 the situation already building up to explode in “The Terror.” Their intention to recreate, in the peace and security of this tiny island, their former gracious way of life seemed simple and auspicious. Small Chateaux Mauritius was to be no dumping ground for the raggle-taggle of humanity. Yet Mauritius lags far behind the twentieth century, trapped in a bog of social, economic and political contradictions. One sees reminders of the intention everywhere here, especially in the grand central design of Port Louis, where the two hands of the harbour, cupped at the end of attenuated palm-lined arms, extend a regal welcome from the three-tiered early eighteenth-century body of Government House. Old homes, dotted through the suburbs and over the green sugar - encrusted landscape, express the same elegance. Some are small chateaux, complete with towers and turrets, their steeply piched, wood-slatted roofs edged with iron lace and with cuckooclock windows. Some have degenerated into utter squalor, while others have been charmingly restored. But most strongly the intention lingers in the outlook and manners of the remaining pure-blood French families. The visitor may see their names engraved on cathedral pews, their exile nostalgia recorded on the old maps—Nouvelle France, Mon Reve. Bon Espoir, Petite Retraite, Mon Desir. Hands as soft as kid may be proffered him with an old-

world air of noblesse oblige, tea served from china of museum-piece delicacy—relics of families that escaped the guillotine only to be slowly throttled, some two centuries later, by those who once sustained their privileged seclusion. Crowded Schools Where then did the intention fail? Who are these thousands of other children spilling into the overcrowded schools; these youngsters with faces and limbs like polished jarrah, bright-eyed, cleanly dressed in spite of the hovels from which many emerge, pouring through the streets of the towns and villages, making a mockery of clinics hopefully labelled: “Mouvement pour le Planning Faminial”? Who owns the gleaming cars that contest the road with hand-drawn carts and teams of water buffalo? Why, in the open country where the sugar plantations stretch in all directions, is there not a single tractor to be seen? The answer to the last question is probably the simplest. Because the ragged thousands, trailing along the roads at evening with their little bundles of grass, are totally dependent on work in the fields Mauritius dare not mechanise. Sugar Industry The bewilderment of the newcomer clears only with some understanding of the

island's history. The breakdown proper began in 1835 with the release of the African slaves, whose labour established the local sugar industry. Their former owners had expected them to carry on in much the same way for the payment of a pittance, but the Africans refused to return to the plantations. Some, unable to believe that they were

clines him to extreme Leftwing politics. After the release of their slaves, the sugar planters brought in farm hands from India on two year terms of indenture and later decided on the seemingly cheaper policy of importing Asian migrants to provide a permanent labour pool. In one mighty lift, 20,000 Indians were brought in and dumped around the fringes of Port Louis. Hindu Shrines This fecund nucleus of Asian humanity, increased by independent migrants from both India and China, has by this- time multiplied to 80 per cent of a total of 750,000 people packed into an area of roughly 30 or 40 square , miles.

Hindu shrines and temples today outnumber Christian churches—the great Moslem mosque a pool of tranquiliity< the multi-roofed Chinese temple dominating the hillside.

The present governing Labour Party, under the leaderhip of Dr. S. Rangoolam, a Mauritian-born Hindu, has become a unifying element for the diverse majority.

period of prosperity and development under tactful and co-operative British administration. The French, however, nursing their wounded pride, retreated into the past from which they have never since emerged. Significance Lost After the opening of the Suez Canal, Mauritius lost its

English Governor’s residence became a centre of no more than social importance. The present Governor, Sir John Rennie, upholds Britain’s present-day policy of colonial independence. “Independence” is here, as elsewhere, subject to various interpretations. For England it is simply and rather impersonally part of her post-Empire policy.

Political ferment under the slipshod day-to-day life of the island contains all the elements of explosion, although

is not, of course, independence, but increased dependence, not separation (except from the out-moded patterns of thought on both sides of the political fence), but integration. In fact, this is probably what is occurring, although through the fog of intrigue and manoeuvring no one can see the wood for the frees.

Mauritius is just another example of a dropped stitch being caught up and woven willy-nilly into the exciting fabric of the modern world.

strategic significance and the ELIZABETH DURACK, Australian author and artist, has been visiting Mauritius. Here she discusses the social and political problems now troubling this tiny British colony which is still steeped in the traditions and customs of its original French settlers.