Analysing “Rezistance ek Alternative” within the context of National debates on ethnicity and National

Identity.

Research Topic:

Analysing “Rezistance ek Alternative” within the context of National debates on ethnicity and National
Identity.

Introduction

This chapter will look at how the terms ethnicity and identity are defined. Then it will look at
how the Mauritian ethnicity perceives these terms. This will then lead to delineate how ethnicity
and identity is defined at the national level in Mauritius. The focus will be on analyzing the
rhetorics of “Rezistance ek Alternative” within the context of those National debates on ethnicity
and identity.

1.1 Ethnicity

Ethnicity is a cultural heritage shared by one category of people. It is a term that is open to much
debate. The word 'ethnic' is derived from the Greek word 'ethnos', and simply means 'nation' or
'people'. The meaning of the concept of ethnicity depends on the meaning of several other
concepts, particularly those of ethnic groups and ethnic identity. Discussion of ethnicity is
complicated by the variety of related terms used to designate similar phenomena, such as race,
tribe, nation and minority group. Depending on debates, some scholars use these terms
interchangeably while others treat them as unrelated concepts.

A variety of definitions of ethnicity have been suggested. The classic definition is that of Glazer
and Moynihan, stating that it is “the condition of belonging to a particular ethnic group.” 1 As
such, ‘ethnic groups’ are identified according to Jeffcoate(1984) 2 as a comparatively small and
powerless community whose culture differs in significant respects from that of the majority.
Cashmore’s definition3, similar to that of Glazer and Moynihan, defines ethnicity as:

“The salient feature of a group that regards itself as in some sense (usually, in many senses)
distinct… Once the consciousness of being part of an ethnic group is created, it takes on a self-
perpetuating quality and is passed from one generation to the next.”

However, it is not easy to allocate people to ethnic groups. Since culture is dynamic, it is difficult
to map boundaries where one culture ends and another begins. Ethnic cultures change and
develop and they borrow from one another. So their boundaries are always shifting. Therefore,

1
Nathan and Daniel Moynihan Glazer, 1974, Ethnicity: Theory and Experience, MA: Harvard University Press,
Cambridge.
2
Jeffcoate,R, 1984, Ethnic Minorities, Harper & Row, London
3
Ellis Cashmore, 2003, ““Ethnicity”.” Encyclopedia of Race and Ethnic Studies. ed., Routledge, London.
 Analysing “Rezistance ek Alternative” within the context of National debates on ethnicity and National
Identity.

according to Gilroy (1990)4, it cannot be assumed that each ethnic culture is internally unifom,
with every member equally committed to the ‘core’ values of the group.

Wells says that Modernity has, remade life in such a way that “the past is stripped away, place
loses its significance, community loses its hold, objective moral norms vanish, and what remains
is simply the self.”5 The result of this process has been a loss of identity resulting in
fragmentation and rootlessness (anomie) at the personal level and the blurring of identities at the
collective level. This in turn led to more fluid understandings of ethnicity. Eriksen comments,

“Recent debates in anthropology and neighbouring disciplines pull in the same direction: away
from notions of integrated societies or cultures towards a vision of a more fragmented,
paradoxical and ambiguous world. In anthropology at least, the recent shift towards the study of
identities rather than cultures has entailed an intense focus on conscious agency and reflexivity;
and for many anthropologists, essentialism and primordialism appear as dated as pre-
Darwinian biology.”6

Ethnicity is created in the dynamics of elite competition within the boundaries determined by
political and economic realities” and ethnic groups are to be seen as a product of political myths,
created and manipulated by culture elites in their pursuit of advantages and power.

The term "ethnicity" is used in many ways. Siniša Malešević debates on this issue in terms of the

"slippery nature of ethnic relations and the inherent ambiguity of the concept of ethnicity… Such a
plasticity and ambiguity of the concept allows for deep misunderstandings as well as political misuses."

As such, when speaking of ethnicity, the term Cultural identity' is inevitably present,which,
according to Stuart Hall can be viewed through two different ways. The first position views
'cultural identity' in terms of one shared culture, which is a reflection of typical historical
experiences and shared cultural codes. The second view relies heavily on the individual's
experience of their culture. Through this view, culture is always changing, it is not static as
claimed by the first definition. 'Far from being eternally fixed in some essentialised past, they
are subject to the continuous 'play' of history, culture and power'

Erikson described identity as "a subjective sense as well as an observable quality of personal
sameness and continuity, paired with some belief in the sameness and continuity of some shared
world image. As a quality of unself-conscious living, this can be gloriously obvious in a young
4
Gilroy.P, 1990, The end of anti-racism, Hutchinson, London.
5
Wells, Losing Our Virtue: Why the Church Must Recover Its Moral Vision
6
Eriksen, “Ethnic Identity, National Identity and Intergroup Conflict: The Significance of Personal Experiences.”, 42-70.
 Analysing “Rezistance ek Alternative” within the context of National debates on ethnicity and National
Identity.

person who has found himself as he has found his communality. In him we see emerge a unique
unification of what is irreversibly given--that is, body type and temperament, giftedness and
vulnerability, infantile models and acquired ideals--with the open choices provided in available
roles, occupational possibilities, values offered, mentors met, friendships made, and first sexual
encounters." (Erikson, 1970.)

1.2 Mauritian ethnicity

Mauritius, symbol of diversity of cultures is said to be reminiscent of pluralism and infuses

diverse social relations on the island. There have been several remarks that have suggested that it
is impossible to understand anything about Mauritius without reference to what is known as
intra- and inter-ethnic relations (Simmons 1982,Bowman 1991, Eriksen 1998). Mauritians rally
as a single nation in international affairs, at trade policy conferences or in world championship
track meets. But their emissaries always become members of discrete ethnic groups upon their
return to Mauritius. Like a dysfunctional family pretending otherwise for the benefit of outsiders,
Mauritius may appear united to observers who do not take a closer look.7 Ethnicity structures
public life in Mauritius, so it is reasonable to suspect that it influences the political economy of
the island. This chapter willestablish a relational taxonomy of ethnic groups to ground further
analysis of thepolitical and economic implications of ethnic diversity in Mauritius.

Devising an ethnic taxonomy for Mauritius is a frustrating exercise. While most observers agree
the population of Mauritius is both diverse and ethnically polarized, it is both conceptually and
empirically difficult to disaggregate the Mauritian population into discrete ethnic groups, let
alone speak intelligibly about their relationships. Before attempting to do so, it is first necessary
to advance a few theoretical requirements about the nature of ethnic taxonomies. Initially, ethnic
taxonomies capture general trends at the group level; they cannot claim to predict the behavior or
social attachments of every individual. Second, social divisions can be constructed and
interpreted in various ways and along different axes.

Ethnic taxonomies, therefore, are neither intrinsically valid nor invalid; instead, they can only be
situationally valid8. Different classifications capture different dynamics of the population and
expose various fault lines and relationships between subgroups. It is the task of the social
scientist to determine which cleavages are analytically relevant to the specific hypotheses s/he
7
Glazer, N., & Moynihan, D. (1975). Ethnicity: Theory and experience. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
8
Bräutigam, Deborah (1997). “Institutions, Economic Reform and Democratic Consolidation in Mauritius,” Comparative Politics
30(1): 45–62
 Analysing “Rezistance ek Alternative” within the context of National debates on ethnicity and National
Identity.

wishes to test. It is important therefore to understanding ethnic political economy in Mauritius

requires a relational taxonomy that effectively represents the principal political and economic
cleavages that separate ethnic groups on the island.9

Most of the theories proceed with the ethnic classification codified into the country’s
constitution, which divides Mauritians into one of four ethnic communities: the Hindus, the
Muslims, the Sino-Mauritians and the General Population (Dubey 1997)10. The first two
groups make up the island’s Indo-Mauritian population, and the vast majority of their members
descend fromindentured laborers who arrived in the mid-19 th Century (Eriksen 1999)11.
TheSino-Mauritians originate mostly from Hakka Chinese immigrants who arrived tobuild
mercantile and commercial establishments in Mauritius during the 19th century. The General
Population is a heterogeneous group that includes anyone who does not fall into the other three
categories. In practice, this includes the Franco- and Anglo- Mauritian white population, as well
as the “Creole” descendants of former African slaves (Eriksen 1999)12.

The 1973 census, generally understood to be the last official measure of ethnic groups in
Mauritius, disaggregates the population into the following proportions:

Table ………………………………………………………………………………………………

Official ethnic breakdown of the Mauritian population (1972)

Community Population Percent

Hindu 428,16751.8%

Muslim 137,08116.6%

Sino-Mauritian 24,0842.9%

General Population 236,86728.7%

Total 826,199100.0%

Source: 1972 census

Hindus are the largest official ethnic group, and Indo-Mauritians (Hindus and Muslims)
collectively constitute 68.4% of the population. Though collecting data on the relative size of
ethnic communities was prohibited prior to the early 1980’s census and no comprehensive
revisions have been made to these official statistics, the 1972 estimates are still used to
9
Hall, Stuart (1973) ‘Encoding/Decoding’, reprinted in S. Hall, D. Hobson, A. Lowe and P. Willis (eds)
Culture, Media, Language. London: Hutchinson.
10
ibid
11
Eriksen, “Ethnic Identity, National Identity and Intergroup Conflict: The Significance of Personal Experiences.”,
12
ibid
 Analysing “Rezistance ek Alternative” within the context of National debates on ethnicity and National
Identity.

distribute the communally based best-loser parliamentary seats after each election. Most
observers believe that these proportions have not changed substantially over the last thirty
years.

The inclusion of ethnic categories into Mauritian electoral laws might seem to suggest that a
four-fold ethnic classification accurately describes the ethnic dynamics of the political arena. It
is not clear, however, that this official classification satisfies the criteria for ethnic identification
or that it corresponds to relevant political aspect in Mauritius. Though Simmons (1982) 13 follows
this classification closely in her seminal study of Mauritian history, it has nonethelesscome under
fire by cultural anthropologists, who argue that Mauritian ethnicitiesare too complex to reduce
into four discretely bounded boxes (Eriksen 1998).Based on the criteria established in Chapter
One, one of the basic qualities thatdefines ethnic groups is that they participate in a mythology of
common descent.

Of the four major groups enumerated in official classification—the Hindus, the Muslims, the
Sino-Mauritians and the General Population—the first three might qualify as ethnic groups; the
fourth cannot, simply by virtue of its definition as a catch-all category.

Critics of this classificatory system argue that each category is itself too heterogeneous to
constitute a meaningful Mauritian ethnic community. In the case of the Hindu group, for
example, differences between individuals whose ancestors came from northern India and those
who arrived from southern states produce political distance between Bhojpuri-speaking Bihari
Indo-Mauritians and Tamils, Telegusand Marathis (Teelock 2001). Likewise, Muslim
Mauritians belong to a number of distinctly different religious sects. To complicate the taxonomy
further, none of these ethnic groups is hermetically sealed; religious conversion and
intermarriage complicate apparently simple distinctions. Many Tamils and Sino-Mauritians,
forexample, have adopted the Catholic faith, while intermarriage between Tamilsand Creoles,
while still rare, has become increasingly common (Eriksen 1998).

Furthermore, the General Population of Mauritius fails even the most basic test of ethnicity,
since it is a catch-all category for “cultural leftovers,” not a distinctly defined ethnic community.
Indeed, the General Population encapsulatesan entire gradient racial hierarchy similar to that of
Jamaica, where the continuumbetween ‘milk’ and ‘coffee’ corresponds roughly to one’s
socioeconomic status(Kurlansky 1992)14. The ‘general population’ includes, among others,
thedescendants of Franco-Mauritian plantation masters and their African slaves. Considering
their descendants members of a single ethnic group endowed with visions of a common origin
and destiny simply strains credulity.15
13
ibid
14
Bollen, Kenneth and Paxton, Pamela (2000). “Subjective Measures of Liberal Democracy,” Comparative Political Studies 33(1):
58–86.
15
Laclau, E., & Mouffe, C. (2001). Hegemony and socialist strategy: Towards a radical democratic
politics (2nd ed.). London: Verso.
 Analysing “Rezistance ek Alternative” within the context of National debates on ethnicity and National
Identity.

Some observers have attempted to rescue the ethnic taxonomy by sorting the Mauritian social
kaleidoscope into smaller and more precise categories. Social anthropologist Thomas Eriksen
(1998) has suggested a categorization of Mauritius that includes seven separate ethnic groups:
the Franco-Mauritians, the Creoles, the Hindus, the Muslims, the Sino-Mauritians, the Tamils
and the Coloured. According to Eriksen, these seven groups “are conventionally held to exist in
matters relevant for individual life spans, and this is widely assumed to be reflected in patterns
of employment, in politics, education, and the mass media”(Eriksen 1998). If these are the
categories that are relevant to social actors as they negotiate inter subjective encounters, they are
the most analytically useful way to detain ethnicity in Mauritius.

Unfortunately, Eriksen’s comprehensive categorization simultaneously provides too much and

too little information about the political and economic relationships between ethnic groups. If the
point of developing a taxonomy of ethnic groups is to shed light on the ethnic political economy
of Mauritius, then political and economic divisions should inform the way taxonomic lines are
drawn. However, because some ethnic groups are not distinct political actors, not all of the
groups Eriksen identifies are relevant to this taxonomy. At the same time, Eriksen’s
classification of ethnic groups does not provide a relationalaccount of ethnic interaction 16. It
offers no information about historical patterns of behavior, nor does it describe the normative or
taxonomic distance between the different ethnic groups.

16
Benhabib, Seyla (1992) ‘Models of Public Space: Hannah Arendt, the Liberal Tradition, and Ju¨ rgen Habermas’,
pp. 73–98 in C. Calhoun (ed.) Habermas and the Public Sphere. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.