'They are trying to steal our land.' Such is the accusation made by George
Speight's gang of usurpers against Fiji's Indian community in general and
the deposed Indian-led government, whose ministers it now holds hostage, in
particular. By one of the bitter ironies of the age of migration, the
insistence of the failed businessman on the basic cultural importance of
land is very easy for people of Indian origin to grasp.
However, Speight gives the land what might be called racial characteristics,
plainly assuming that it is, in its very nature, ethnically Fijian - and so
tips over into bigotry and folly.
Land, home, belonging: to Indians these words have always felt more than
ordinarily potent. India is a continent of deeply rooted peoples. Indians
don't just own the ground beneath their feet; it owns them, too. An orthodox
Hindu tradition goes so far as to warn that anyone who crosses the "black
water" - the ocean - instantly loses caste. The so-called Indian diaspora,
which has taken Indian communities and their descendants from their
overpopulous country across the world in every direction and as far as,
well, Fiji, is therefore the most improbable of phenomena.
Yet the journeying of Indians all over the planet is one of the great sagas
of our time, an epic replete with misadventures. Idi Amin's vicious
expulsion of the Ugandan Asians, the tensions between the black and Indian
populations of Trinidad and South Africa, "Paki-bashing" in Britain,
the
tough treatment of Indian workers in gulf states, and now Fiji: it's
tempting to conclude that the world has it in for these hard-working
migrants and descendants of migrants, that their single-minded dedication to
bettering their families' lot somehow comes across as reprehensible.
In the United States, many Indians speak almost shamefacedly of their lack
of racially motivated trouble; not being the target of American racism, they
have been until recently almost invisible as a community.
But there have been triumphs, too. With each generation, Indians and the
descendants of Indians have become more fully a part of Britain without
losing their distinctive identity; while in America, the enormous success in
Silicon Valley of Indian whiz kids has got people's attention and earned
their admiration.
In Fiji itself, the century-old Indian presence has been a success story.
Indians have built the sugar industry that is the country's main resource;
and, as the ethnic Fijian opposition to the Speight coup demonstrates,
relations between the communities are by no means as bad as the rebels make
out. In the Fijian Parliament, the government of Mahendra Chaudhry was
supported by 58 out of 71 members; 12 out of 18 members of the sacked
cabinet were ethnic Fijians.
Even among Speight's hostages, 14 of the 31 prisoners are ethnic Fijians.
Thus the Chaudhry government was in no sense a sectarian government of
Indians lording it over Fijians. It was a genuine cultural mixture. Since
its deposition, however, the Speight rebels, abetted by the craven Great
Council of Chiefs and by the martial law regime of Commodore Bainimarama,
have dragged Fiji back toward its racially intolerant past.
Under all this nonsense, the fundamentals of the land question have been
thoroughly obscured. The truth is that after 100 years, Fiji's Indians have
every right to think of themselves as being, and to be treated as being,
fully as Fijian as ethnic Fijians.
Preventing Indians from owning land was and is a great injustice: though
most of the land on the main island of Viti Levu is controlled by Indians,
they hold it on 99-year leases, many of which are coming up for renewal,
with Fijians retaining ownership. The Speight idea of taking over the sugar
farms as the leases expire compounds the injustice.
British Indians have fought to be recognised as British; Uganda's Indians
were grievously wronged when Idi Amin threw them out as foreigners. Migrant
peoples do not remain visitors forever. In the end, their new land owns them
as once their old land did, and they have a right to own it in their turn.
We don't want Fijians fighting Fijians - our common enemy is the Indians,
Speight says, but the unintended consequence of his stand is that his brand
of "ethnic cleansing" is leading Fijians and Indians in western Fiji,
the
most prosperous part of the country, with most of the sugar cane operations,
some gold mines and the best tourist resorts, to make common cause against
him. Secession is being seriously discussed.
The choice facing Fiji's remarkably inept political class may therefore soon
become a stark one: abandon the fundamentally racist notion that your land
is ethnically tied to one racial group, or lose the best of that land to
those who find your bigotry, and your weakness, impossible to bear.
Author Salman Rushdie's column appears monthly in The Age.
This story was found at:
http://www.theage.com.au/news/20000610/A51066-2000Jun9.html
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