Maha Shivaratri, Thaipoosum Cavadee and Indian Languages

Lessons from History

Our ability to celebrate religious festivals and uphold our faiths in a pluralistic society founded on equality and social justice is largely due to the struggles of past generations

By Sada Reddi

Anyone who has participated in or simply observed the religious processions of Maha Shivaratri and Cavadee this year would be impressed by the fervour with which devotees recited prayers, vocalized hymns, or chanted in their respective languages. I am referring especially to small groups of pilgrims, particularly young people, dressed in white or other colours.

What is also fascinating is that these prayers and verses, which date back a thousand years or more, have been passed down to present generations and are preserved and enthusiastically embraced by their followers — even after living far from Mother India, the sacred land of their faiths, for more than two centuries.

This makes us wonder how all of this could have been possible without the use of language, which has been indispensable in transmitting religious and cultural heritage — rituals, prayers, sacred writings, and values. Another key reason is that, for many Indians, language, culture, and religion are deeply interconnected, unlike in other contexts influenced by Enlightenment philosophy, which led to the desacralization of the Divine and the separation of language, culture, and religion.

In a colonial context where colonizers looked down on Indian languages and religious practices — and even sought to erase them — it must have been a heroic struggle for the subalterns to preserve their heritage. Yet, thanks to their resilience, we can continue celebrating the religious festivals of our choice today. In this brief article, we will explore how, against all odds, Indians managed to safeguard their languages and religions.

It is well known that when indentured labourers from India set foot in Mauritius, after a gruelling day in the cane fields, they met in the evening to recite their prayers, and even when the majority of labourers were illiterate, the few who were literate (about 10% according to Patrick Beaton), improvised as priests to read the sacred books to their fellow compatriots or recite them as many had learnt their sacred works by heart. Right at the outset, they claimed agency on their lives and religious practices. They celebrated a few festivals like Goburdhun and Pongol as well as participated in the Yamse, the Muslim festival of Moharram. They built kalimayes, Kovils and Chapels so as to continue to fulfill their religious needs in a society where everything was foreign and alienating.

In Port Louis, indentured labourers in the docks built Kovils, chapels and Kalimayes which still exist today at Caudan. At Stanley, Rose Hill, a Kovil, a Shivala and a Chapel stand by cheek and jowl, and in Sadally Road, Vacoas, a Shivala, a Mosque and a Kovil stand on the same plot of land only separated by a wall. Indians could not live without their religion, and Indian indentured laborers built so many places of worship that Governor Sir Hamilton Gordon remarked, ‘It is impossible to travel many miles in any direction without coming upon some idol temple, many of them handsome and substantial structures of stone and lime. There is hardly a place where the sound of the gong calling men to worship the false gods of the Indian pantheon does not penetrate. I hear it daily from the ravine below my house. I doubt not my Lord, similar sounds are as distinctly heard in yours.’

Though indentured laborers conducted their prayers in their respective mother tongues, colonialism and the colonial setting gradually contributed to the erosion of their languages in an attempt to undermine their religions and convert them to Christianity and Western values. However, there was resistance. At first as a strategy to convert them, even Indian languages were used. In 1880, Christian organizations sold 2917 Bibles. These comprised of 522 in Hindustani, 45 in Marathi, 305 in Chinese, 82 in English, 3 in English and 446 in French, 1 in Greek and English, 1 Greek and French,17 in Gujarathi, 486 in Hindi khiti, 209 Hindi Nagri, 4 in Malagasy, 202 in Oruga, 341 in Tamil, 243 in Telegu. These bibles were sold by hawkers who were paid to do so and fewer than 23 were converted.

Later it was the school system which served the colonial mission. For more than a century, indentured parents refused to send their children to government schools as they were seen as engines of proselytization. There were economic reasons for doing so but generally they stuck to their languages which were inextricably linked to their religions and culture, and where possible opened their own schools on sugar estates. In 1850 at Mahebourg Government School, there were some Indian children, but they were the children of sirdars, job contractors but not of labourers. In 1908, out of a population of 70,000 Indian children, only 700 were enrolled in schools. Resistance to conversion was not limited to the school system but extended even to prisons. Several Indians, such as Gujadhur in 1841 and Ramsamy in 1850, resisted conversion and chose to die in their faith despite continuous pressure from priests while on death row.

The policy of Westernization was not limited to Mauritius but prevailed across all European empires. In India, Lord Macaulay expressed his disdain for Indian knowledge in his famous Minute, stating that ‘a single shelf of good European literature was worth the whole literature of India and Arabia.’ He went on to advocate for English as the medium of instruction in schools. He viewed money spent on maintaining Sanskrit, Arabic, and Persian institutions as a waste. While he explicitly stated that the goal of Western education was to create a class of ‘black Englishmen’ to serve as intermediaries between the colonial government and the people, he also acknowledged elsewhere that the destruction of Oriental culture was a sine qua non for consolidating and perpetuating British rule in India.

It was the same policy which informed British education policy in the colonies and was reflected in the Ward report of 1941. Ward had served as the Director of Achimota College in Ghana, where his education policy aimed to socialize African students into values that reinforced colonial rule. At Achimota, under the leadership of Reverend Fraser, the institution was, according to Jennifer Beinhart, engaged in ‘replacing African values with European ones — in religious beliefs, language, codes of behavior, and clothing.’

In October 1940, W.E.F. Ward was appointed Director of Education, and in November 1941, he submitted a comprehensive report covering all aspects of the educational system, from the curriculum to teacher training, infrastructure, and equipment. While the reforms could be justified as being designed for a colonial agricultural society — where pupils, as new citizens loyal to the empire, ‘would realize their place in society and adopt new social habits’– the report remained a conservative document. It was tailored for colonized subjects, whom Ward perceived as having limited intellectual abilities.

While several aspects of the reform did not face significant opposition, the language issue sparked the fiercest controversy. Ward was firmly opposed to Indian languages and sought to remove them from the curriculum. At its core, the conflict was between two competing visions of education: a colonial vision that rejected Indian cultural identity in favour of a homogenizing system based on Western values, and an Indian perspective that saw education as an emancipatory project that should respect the rights of all colonial citizens. The removal and downgrading of Indian languages were perceived as an attack on Indian religions and cultures. Given the deep connection between language and religion, many Indians believed the true intent was to Christianize them.

The reforms faced vigorous opposition from radical politicians Basdeo Bissoondoyal and Sookdeo Bissoondoyal. At the Port Louis Theatre, where Ward was set to explain his report to a packed audience, Sookdeo Bissoondoyal, then a primary school teacher, walked out with his followers, prompting most of the audience to leave as well. They boycotted Ward’s explanatory campaign.

Debates on the Ward Report in the Council led the government to appoint a select committee to review it. Within the committee, Dr S. Ramgoolam and G.M.D. Atchia defended the inclusion of Indian languages, and the issue was even discussed at the Colonial Office. Sir Christopher Cox, an adviser to the Colonial Office, ultimately decided to retain Indian languages, which began being taught in schools in 1948 and continue to be part of the curriculum today.

Many other aspects of Ward’s reforms were also modified or abandoned. The proposed boarding Normal School — intended to induct teachers into Western social habits and disseminate them across primary schools in Mauritius — was scrapped. Instead, a Teacher Training College was established, and the 1944 Education Act was passed after consensus was reached among all parties.

This brief article reminds us that our ability to celebrate religious festivals and uphold our faiths in a pluralistic society founded on equality and social justice is largely due to the struggles of past generations. They fought hard to preserve our living languages — languages bequeathed to us by our ancestors, carrying our collective memory, religious heritage, and moral and social values, all of which are indispensable to living with dignity.

Mauritius Times ePaper Friday 28 February 2025