Anjani Murden’s ‘Le Bhojpuri mauricien’: Unveiling the Story of Bhojpuri in Mauritius

Identity, Culture, and Language

By Nandini Bhautoo

On Thursday 6th February 2025, saw the launch of Anjani Murden’s book at Hennessy Park Ebene called ‘Le Bhojpuri mauricien… Étude sociolinguistique du bhojpuri à Maurice : Histoire, situation, survie’. The book is a condensed version of her doctoral research conducted under the auspices of the Open University.

\Anjani Murden’s ‘Le Bhojpuri mauricien’ launched by Minister Kaviraj Sukon

Anjani Murden has used classic sociolinguistic methodologies to assess the current situation of a language that is often compared to Creole, as it exists in a similar dyadic relationship with Hindi as Creole does with French. However, it is important to stress here that this equivalence is not totally correct. For whereas Creole was created as a language of contact in plantation societies, using the semantics of French and the basilectal grammar of African languages, early forms of Bhojpuri were already in use in North Eastern India, mostly among the rural folk, who brought their dialect with them in the middle passage of indenture. From there it has evolved by adopting new vocabulary, semantics and phonetics, while in turn infusing Creole with some of its own cultural colours, this process of mutual interconnection, being a natural process of dynamic language use and evolution over time.

Anjani Murden’s book uses interviews, focus group discussions, ethnographic interviews, studied social variables in order to study the evolving attitudes to the language over the generations. One element which emerges is that Bhojpuri is very much related to affect and intergenerational intergroup relationship permitting bonding over the generations within the family circles. But the data seems to indicate a lessening of use. One of the worrying aspects which the sociological study highlights is that the old people have preserved the memory of their times through Bhojpuri. Once these speakers suffer the inevitable passage of time, we might lose precious knowledge about the past of lived communities and their narratives of struggle and survival.

Bhojpuri and the Indian Indenture System

It is good here that we remind ourselves that Mauritius is far from being the only territory where Bhojpuri is spoken outside India. The migration of Bhojpuri speakers to various colonies was primarily driven by the British colonial system of indentured labour, which replaced enslaved African labour after the abolition of slavery. Between 1834 and the early 20th century, thousands of Bhojpuri-speaking labourers were taken to sugarcane plantations in the Caribbean, Fiji, and Mauritius. These migrations not only led to the linguistic and cultural dispersal of Bhojpuri but also resulted in its transformation through sustained contact with European languages and local vernaculars.

Bhojpuri’s evolution in Mauritius

Mauritius, home to a significant Indo-Mauritian population, became a fertile ground for the development of a distinct Bhojpuri dialect influenced by Mauritian Creole, French, and English. While Bhojpuri was historically a primary spoken language among indentured labourers and their descendants, it has gradually declined in usage due to socio-linguistic shifts and the increasing dominance of Creole in everyday life.Read More… Become a Subscriber

Mauritius Times ePaper Friday 14 February 2025