An imaginary dialogue

“Après quarante ans d’indépendance, tu penses encore qu’on aurait du rester une colonie ?”

“Plus que jamais. Ca a été une grosse erreur, pire que ça: un coup monté par les politiciens de l’époque. Ils ont manipulé les hindous, en leur faisant croire que l’indépendance, c’était un moyen pour eux de s’affirmer face aux blancs et aux créoles. Cette vieille rancune des hindous contre les franco-mauriciens, c’est si utile aux politiciens…et les hindous sont tombés dans le panneau. Ils n’ont pas compris que l’indépendance, ça concernait notre rapport avec les Anglais, qui n’ont pas grand chose à voir avec les francos. Du coup, les politiciens ont pu se débarasser des Anglais, et devenir ministres. Quant aux francos, ils controlent toujours l’économie… on ne peut pas faire autrement. Par qui les remplacerait on ? Bien sur, on peut toujours encourager les compagnies étrangères à s’installer à Maurice, on peut aussi encourager un peu de compétition saine, mais au bout du compte, l’ile Maurice appartient aux francos. Au moins 80 % de l’économie, c’est eux, et des 20 % qui restent, une bonne partie entre chaque semaine dans les caisses de la MTC.. Mauricien Toujours Couyon”

“Mais les gens ont fait beaucoup de progrès sous l’indépendance. Avant il y avait tant de maisons en tole, de gens pauvres, souvent affamés”

“Qu’est ce qui te dit qu’on n’aurait pas fait de progrès sous les Anglais ?”

“Sous les Anglais, nous serions restés des assistés. C’est l’indépendance qui a donné de l’énergie aux Mauriciens. Regarde les Réunionais, toujours à vivre des allocations de chomage”

“L’erreur , c’est de nous comparer aux Réunionais. Il faut comprendre que l’Anglais n’est pas comme le Français. D’abord, l’Anglais n’est pas très généreux de nature, ce n’est pas là sa plus grande vertu. Il nous aurait donné une forte autonomie, et quant au dole, l’allocation de chomage britannique, tu peux toujours rêver. On n’aurait pas eu un rond. Non, on aurait eu à se débrouiller quand même. Ensuite, l’Anglais aime le commerce. Le Français est dirigiste de nature, il écrase les départements d’outre mer avec une législation sociale qui étouffe déjà l’économie métropolitaine, à plus forte raison des économies sous développées comme celle des Antilles ou de la Réunion. Et puis, le Français est un peu brutal, sur le plan culturel. Dès qu’on arrive en France, on s’entend dire qu’on a un nom à coucher dehors. Ca crée toujours un malaise. Le Réunionais vit aux crochets du Français, mais le déteste. L’Anglais, lui te laisse tranquille, du moment que tu gagnes ton pain et que tu ne touches pas trop à l’assistance publique”

“Tu viens de dire toi-même que l’Anglais nous aurait donné une forte autonomie et que nous aurions eu à nous débrouiller par nous même. Et que nous n’aurions pas pu nous attendre à grand chose en termes d’aide sociale venant de l’Angleterre. Dans ce cas, pourquoi ne pas tout bonnement prendre l’indépendance?”

“Parce que la présence anglaise assurait un contre pouvoir par rapport aux politiciens locaux. Avoir deux ou trois Anglais dans l’administration publique, c’était diminuer les gaspillages, casser un peu le coup au népotisme. Regarde notre administration publique, elle est complètement dominée par les politiciens et les organisations socio-culturelles. Et puis, regarde la corruption qui règne. Le politicien véreux aurait eu un peu peur de commettre de trop gros méfaits, car Scotland Yard lui serait tombé dessus”.

“En suivant ton raisonnement, les Indiens ou les Egyptiens n’auraient pas du demander l’indépendance, mais demander l’autonomie, afin de s’assurer le regard bénéfique de la justice anglaise…”

“Les Indiens et les Egyptiens n’avaient pas attendu les Anglais pour avoir des rois… Après avoir fait du commerce sur les cotes de l’Inde pendant plusieurs siècles, les Anglais ont profité du chaos résultant de l’afflaibissement de l’Empire Moghol pour bouffer un à un tous les petits royaumes dans lesquels s’était morcelée l’Inde. C’était un habile coup de main, et encore cela leur a-t-il pris un siècle pour y arriver. Mais le règne anglais en Inde a été bref, même s’il a été énergique et admirable dans bien des façons. L’erreur des mauriciens des années 60, a été de se dire que puisque toutes les colonies accédaient à l’indépendance, il fallait faire comme les autres. Les “autres” avaient existé, d’une façon ou d’une autre, avant de devenir des colonies. Maurice n’avait jamais été autre chose qu’une colonie. Réclamer l’indépendance, c’était entrer dans un combat qui n’était pas le notre. C’était presque présomptueux”

“Tu nous refuse donc le droit à la dignité ? Un peuple ne doit-il pas un jour se tenir sur ses deux jambes ?”

“ Etre digne, c’est d’abord ne pas être hypocrite. Savoir se regarder et avoir le courage de parler franchement de qui on est. Les politiciens nous parlent de “notre pays” mais beaucoup d’entre eux ont un passeport britannique ou français. L’élite indo-mauricienne nous parle de “la culture indienne” mais elle n’y va pas si souvent, en Inde. Ses enfants vivent en Angleterre, en Australie, au Canada. Je ne dis pas qu’il ne faut pas aimer les pays occidentaux. Au contraire, j’aime moi –même beaucoup la culture occidentale, tout autant que j’aime les cultures indienne et créole. Mais je n’ai pas de prétensions. Un de mes amis me parle depuis des années d’aller un jour travailler en Inde. Il a vécu dix ans en Angleterre, et n’a jamais fait que de brefs séjours en Inde. Nous sommes liés à l’Europe. Je crois que le fait d’avoir coupé ce lien naturel, historique a fait de nous des hypocrites, des prétentieux”

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On Coolitude

( I am trying here to develop some ideas which emerged from a recent conversation with Dr Khal Torabully, who has created the concept of coolitude)

Coolitude could be seen as one of six great branches of migration which have occurred in modern history, each one of these being marked by a different status to the migrant.

These six branches could be broken up in two groups: negatively-connoted, and positively connoted. The negatively-connoted group would comprise, in increasing order of status:

Category :
Slave
Place of Origin: Africa, India
Status:
Totally objectified, part of the master’s chattel. His Name,
Language, culture are actively destroyed

Category:
Coolie
Place of Origin: China, India, but also other countries
Status:
Legally free, but a combination of racial prejudice, slave –owner mentality in the country of destination and degrading conditions of work take him near to the condition of a slave ( brutal treatment, restriction on
freedom of movement, etc)

Category:
Migrant worker
Place of Origin:
Poland, Italy, Scandinavia, Ireland
Germany, Portugal, Maghreb countries
Status:
Legally free, but have to face difficult conditions and different degrees of social/racial prejudice


The positively-connoted group would comprise, in increasing order of status:

Category
Pioneer
Place of Origin:
Europe
Status:
Working class but seen in a romanticised light ( the Pioneers of the American West, seen as brave and stubborn figures)

Category:
Adventurer
Place of Origin:
Europe
Status:
A romanticised figure, the Adventurer is usually ated with the early stages of European expansion. He would settle in the “factories”, European trade posts on the coast of Oriental/African countries. Hinterland wars gave him the opportunity to engage in mercenary activity and even carve out his own fief

Category:
Investor
Place of Origin:
Europe
Status:
Highest status, is given wide range of priviledges ( tax benefits, large tracts of land, relaxation of labour laws)

The fact that there are positive, or negative values given to each type of migrant begs the question: who gives these values ? Obviously, this is the West, more precisely the upper class of the West. This can easily be seen in the fact that the highest type of migrant in the pecking order, is the Investor. This term may seem anachrostic if we are thinking in historical terms ( “investors” carries the idea of modern travelling businessmen) but we do see, even in the early days of European expansion, wealthy families buying large tracts of land in the Americas.

The scale of values closely follows the European social hierarchy, and is still resonant today, because in post colonial societies, one of the immediate questions which is asked when evaluating the social standing of someone, is : who is this person a descendant of ?

If that persons descends from a family of the European nobility, which settled in the colony and owned plantations and/or mines, he will get the highest possible marks on that score. Next, he may be the descendant of an “adventurer” , usually a black sheep son from a well-to-do family, who came to seek fortune in the colonies. After this, he may come a family of working class Europeans who were allocated a plot of land as the colonial power moved into the hinterlands.

“Migrant workers” are usually associated with the great urban/industrial centres of the West, so they are not part of the postcolonial social order. Skipping over this category, we see that the two negatively connoted categories of migrants are coolies and slaves. However many prestigious ancestors someone may have in the “positive-value” group, he only needs to have a single ancestor from the slave or coolie category, to be thrown out of the charmed circle.

The chronology and spatial ordering of these six movements are quite complex and offer interesting contrasts. In general, we tend to think of the three type of “negative value” migrants as following each other in history: the slave trade was followed by the arrival of the coolies, and since the early 20th century, we have seen large movements of migrant workers to the industrial centres of the West. In fact, a large number of “special cases” arises which makes any neat chronology difficult. In 19th century America, the North grew along the lines of an industrial society, attracting large numbers of migrant workers from Germany, Ireland and Scandinavia. At the same time, the South remained a plantation society based on slave labour. In Mauritius, we see skilled indentured workers coming from Madagascar, India and France during the times of the slave trade. The nature of their work – carpenters, cauldronners, masons – gives them an “air de famille” with the Migrant worker rather than with the coolie, who is more associated with back breaking, unskilled work.

Interestingly, the “Adventurer”, a figure which blossomed in the fluid days of early European expansion, and which disappeared once the colonial societies set up their rigid social codes, has made a tentative comeback in many fragile post colonial societies. He may be a mercenary ( the sordid adventures of Bob Denard in Comoros are a well publicised example in this respect) but he would usually prefer to pose as a “technical expert” or an “investor”. Another amusing twist in history lies in the figure of the “Investor”. Once the preserve of the European elite, this type of migrant has become faceless in the modern world. It is interesting to note the anger and discomfiture expressed in the press of the Western world, at the red carpet treatment which has to be given to Arab, Japanese, Chinese or Indian investors buying up Western companies.

The news of , say Lakshmi Mittal buying up a French steel factory sends waves of glee in Mauritian society, where many people are descendants of coolies. They see this as a revenge of history. In my opinion, it is not so much a revenge as a return to the configuration of the world before the days of European expansion.

Europe and Asia did not wait for Vasco da Gama to set his foot in Calicut to know each other. The deserts of Arabia, the steppes of Central Asia and the currents of the Indian Ocean were busy thoroughfares along which traders , missionaries and diplomats from countries all across this large land mass have come and gone on their business. It would be difficult to give here all the details of the extent of this large degree of interaction. One example may suffice: archaelogists have found such abundance of Roman coins in some parts of India, that it is suspected that the kings of those regions did not have to mint their own currency. The crucial point here is: before the days of European colonialism, with the ensuing pecking order, there existed another world in which Europe and Asia did their business in relative peace and understanding. It is a world touchingly like ours: the Indian herbalists and dancing girls who plied their trade in Ancient Rome find their echo in the Indian doctor or model living in today’s Rome.

It is in this curious “back to the future” situation that the idea of coolitude could be explored, because it is a crossroads at which all our ideas of the world explode in a fireworks of branches. The coolie is, in one sense, close to the slave, in that he experienced the worst kind of treatment in the days of colonialism. Yet the crucial difference is that he was always allowed to retain his culture. This has meant a tenacious attachment to the ancestors’ land. Yet there is a catch 22: the descendant of the coolie is not from India, China or some other ancestral land. He belongs , with each generation, more to his homeland than the ancestral land. Another contradiction occurs: to which India, or China, should one look at ? For the interaction between Asia and the West has always been complex. Which one is the real India ? That of the Vedas ? of Nehru ? of Bihar, or of Bombay ? Also, the coolie is, whether he wants it or not, also a child of the West, because he comes from the world of 19th century colonialism, of globalised trade in raw materials with their large mines and plantations. It is not always an easy burden to carry, because the world of the plantation was maybe one of the most brutally utilitarian and dehumanising systems the world has ever seen.

The world of the Industrial Revolution, has as its symbol, the great, dark textile mills of England, so well described in the novels of Dickens. Less famous is the Agro Industrial world of the plantation, which was no less implacable in its scientific organisation. In it, the coolies were little more than human robots. The owners, former slave owners smarting from the abolition of slavery, had quickly understood that the modern capitalist system had its advantages over the old slave system, in that it absolved them from any link between themselves and their employees. Under slavery, a slave may have been a household possession in the same way as a mule , but there was an obligation under the Code Noir to treat him with mercy, and to take care of him in his old age. Under the coolie system, there was only one obligation: to give the coolie his wages at the end of the week.

I am dwelling at some length on the mentality of the coolie system because it has had affected the behaviour of the descendants of the coolies to a greater extent than is generally believed. In the previous paragraphs, I had spoken of the fact that most often, the coolie is the descendant of Asia, and that , beyond the immediate past of European colonisation there has existed an ancient, culturally fruitful past of amicable trade and cultural exchange between East and West. From this, I could have said that all is well which ends well, because today we see the emergence of a multipolar world in which India, China, Brazil, South Africa are all major players on the world scene.

However, it is not easy, because the coolie’s ancestor may be from India, but he himself is not. He comes from the world of the plantation, and the latter has shaped his outlook on the world. In order to explain this, I will take the case of the Indo- Mauritians.

Mauritius is probably one of the few instances in world history where a labour camp has become an independent state. It has natural beauty, and its inhabitants can be charming, on a good day. But basically it is a place where houses are rough, basic concrete cubes surrounded by fields of that unappealing plant, the sugar cane. It has some writers and artists but basically most of its inhabitants don’t give a damn about the place. Its young are running away, and those who stay behind numb their minds with Bollywood films, religion, drugs and alcohol.

In Mauritius, the Indian community in general manifests a brutally utilitarian view of life, twinned with an incapacity to think of itself as a shaper and creator of the world around itself: it mostly craves to be a well paid subordinate. It manifests a bleak indifference to the natural beauty of the island, to the many instances of cultural creativity which exist despite our brutal history in our culture, and to intellectual discussion in general. It is a soulless, joyless community, maybe the gloomiest assembly of people in human history. To be fair, it is true that we come from Bihar, the most cruel, backward region of India, and that we have brought much of our profoundly dark outlook on life from there. But the least we can say is that our time in the sugar plantations has done little to improve our temperament and inclinations.

At night in Mauritius, everyone puts on the television, and then they are in the France of Canal Plus, the US of Hollywood, the India of Bollywood. Yet the Mauritian creole, in spite of everything, seems to have a genuine liking for Mauritius. He keeps writing songs in the local style, writing plays, even films short comic sketches, television series. He really enjoys being on the beach, dancing the sega, or even hanging around with his friends in the neighbourhood.

The coolie-born is different. He seems to be in a haze. Even when you talk to him, he seems impatient to go away. If young, you can bet that he is doing an MBA after work. He talks with a sense of almost physical pain about his cousin who is a nurse in England and has a big house with a car, and sighs crushingly. You almost feel like paying his air ticket. Yet when you meet him in London, many years later, he complains that the people are racist. Some of them are, but it seems that something else is bothering him, which he does not want to talk about. In a way, he is like other migrants around the world, but those others come from countries which they were really attached to, places in which their ancestors lay buried in since many centuries. Most of the time, the Indo Mauritian has only the faintest of ideas about Mauritius, especially if he comes from nondescript places like Palma, Centre de Flacq or Vacoas, which are neither towns, nor villages, blocks of houses that feel more like upgraded labour camps than places with a history.

I have never heard of any Indo Mauritian who went back to India to settle there. When living in London, the coolie-born is ambivalent towards the Indian community there. He will gladly walk around Southhall, marvelling at the existence of a Little India in the heart of what used to be the British Empire. He will buy his groceries and dine in its restaurants too. Yet he will complain of the dirtiness of the place and he will not feel completely comfortable in such a thoroughly Indian atmosphere. After all, he is not from India. Yet in Mauritius, he spends his free time and money building more and more Indian cultural centres. Inversely, in England, when people ask him to sing a song from his country, he often sings a sega.

One of my favourite films is 2046, Wong Kar Wai’s sequel of sorts to “In the Mood for Love”. In it, the main character settles in hotel room 2046 , because he and the love of his life once went to a hotel room of that number. He then writes a science fiction novel about a place called 2046, to which everyone tries to go to, because there, things are like what they used to be like, in the past. Of course, it is extremely hard to go there, and nobody knows what it is really like, because no one who has tried going there has never come back to tell. In the course of the film, the hero is attracted to women who remind him of his lost love: one because of her sensuality, the other because of her dreaminess. What makes things even more frustrating is that he never really had a love story with that woman.

The coolie-born is like this, in a way. He is attracted to an Asia he’s never really known. In any case, nobody ever “knows” India, or China. He keeps building Indian Cultural centres in Mauritius, yet feels crushed and overwhelmed in the huge crowds of Delhi or Mumbai. He cannot relate much to the terrifying poverty and corruption of Bihar, either – not even the local inhabitants seem to, for they spread out to the other parts of India to look for a living there. In the end, what he relates mostly to are Bollywood movies and religious rituals, which are both dreams and stories.

While writing this description of the mind of the Indo Mauritian, a word has come up in my mind, and I guess it’s come up in the mind of the reader : Post modernist. Is the Indo Mauritian post modernist ? Maybe he is. He could indeed be an evolutionary mutant, someone who has leaped, within the space of a few generations, from the feudal horror of Bihar, through the industrial horror of the sugar cane plantation, to a sort of post modernist state in which his whole life is based on the dream state of television, alcohol and religion. A fragmented mental state, full of fast channel switchings, in which , before going to sleep, he enters a maze like world of Bollywood actresses, Indian divinities, visions of cars and money.

The Indo Mauritian’s vision of the world is truly remarkable. Hinduism never had any interest whatsoever in history. It is founded on mythology. Even Christianity has to have some fleeting interest in history because Christ lived in the times of the Roman Empire. Islam similarly takes some interest in history because in the course of the Kuran’s revelation, a war is taking place between the followers of the new religion, who have taken refuge in Medina, and the polytheists in Mecca. Hinduism on the other hand places its events firmly in a nebulous past with only a few helpful topographical markers ( Lanka, Kurukshetra, Dwarka) and no plausible dates to rely on. For the average Indian, it is this mythological India which is the real past, not that of the Guptas and Mauryas.

To make things worse, or more interesting , from the anthropologist’s point of view, the Indo Mauritian has been brutally placed in a labour camp called Mauritius, a small island thousands of miles from anywhere. There, the sugar baron has , by means of a steady pressure of his leather boots, carefully grinded his face in the mud of the sugar cane fields for several decades. The results are indeed splendid to behold: the Indo Mauritian’s mind manifests a shining cultural blankness and a fascinating indifference to any forms of high culture. Like an alternating electrical current, his mind switches back and forth between the affectations of religion and the junk of modern industrial culture. He is as pure as snow of any notion of literature, history and philosophy. He is a beautiful child to behold, the worthy son of India’s obscurantism and the West’s dehumanising greed. Maybe he is the man of the future, a man without a past.

In what way would he be the man of the future ? In a menacing way: maybe – I am afraid I am wrong – the Indo Mauritian’s cultural desensitisation is unique only in the sense that he has gone faster through it than the rest of humanity. Coming from abject poverty in the cultural backwater of India, it was not difficult for his employers to rinse off any interest in culture from him. But the same process is also going on , at a slower pace, in the rest of the world: everywhere, young people find history and literature boring, and prefer the fast paced world of computer games and television. It is a worrying process. Bad culture drives out good. Of course, in the end, there will remain a tiny core – or a thin margin, depending on how you look at it – of persons interested in the humanities. But of what use is such a core, if they have lost their audience ? The aim of the humanities is the humanisation of our archetypal consciousness. Of what use is it to write great poetry if there is no one around to read it, except a few eggheads ?

Earlier in this essay, I had mentioned how the modern world is coming to look like the world of before the great European expansion, in that , once more, trade and cultural interaction are occuring in a peaceful manner between the great civilisations. India and China are becoming, once again, the great trading nations that they once were, and in the middle stands, as it always did (!), the Middle East : Dubai is, at the same time, the Arabia of the past and that of the future. Yet the world has since then changed, because we now have mass industrial culture, flooding the world with its junk.

Among the many types of people who have been thrown around the world by the great European expansion process, the fate of the coolie born, though small in numbers, will be of great interest to examine: will he eventually find back the notion of culture, the culture of culture ? Unbeknownst to him, there are many beautiful things he could create out of his tormented history, if only he cared. In today’s world, he is the possessor of many broken dreams, which he negligently wears around his neck like pieces of glass and coral. Out of these fragments, which he shored up against his ruin, he could yet weave a new poetry, and with its power, become the Silver Surfer on the waves of our modern culture. The works of VS Naipaul, the poetry of Khal Torabully, the efforts of some other writers give us hope in this direction.

Whether the coolie born will find back his soul matters , because his fate could prefigure that of humanity.