What if ‘Mauritius Times’ had not been part of the media landscape?

Personal Recollections

By Milan Meetarbhan

Celebrating Mauritius Times at 70 is not only going back over seven decades of our country’s history but it is also a celebration of perseverance and commitment to maintaining and providing a platform for intellectual debate.

The paper, founded by Beekrumsing Ramlallah at a time when reactionary forces were fighting against political emancipation of the country and denigrating those who opposed them, soon became the mouthpiece of progressive intellectuals. Seventy years later, the paper still remains as a unique forum for expressing views of all shades. That it remains so is due to the rare commitment and dedication of the Ramlallah family. Prakash followed in the footsteps of his father and gave a new boost to the paper and later, Madhu took up the torch from his elder brother. Their sister Nalini also held the front for some time by looking at the day-to-day management of the paper. Paying tribute to Mauritius Times at 70 is also a tribute to the relentless efforts of the Ramlallah family in keeping the paper going for so long, against all odds.

I first started writing for Mauritius Times when I was in Form Three at college. At that time there was no email or WhatsApp, and I used to send my texts by post to Prakash and made sure that these will still reach him in time for the next issue of the paper. My father who was a cautious civil servant asked me not to put my name to articles which could bear on controversial issues. I therefore wrote under various pseudonyms. Later when I was still in my teens I managed, with a group of friends, a weekly Youth Digest – a whole page dedicated to younger readers. I was told that some parents used to encourage their children doing GP at school to read Youth Digest regularly!

I remember how the team learnt a lot from the paper’s founder. He was of such rigour that once when he read an article which we had borrowed from an Indian magazine about a popular actress and had it translated into French, he told us “What if Rekha sues us for this article!” This statement became what in today’s jargon we would have called “viral”. It wasn’t only a standard joke among members of the team but also became a life lesson for all our budding journalists.

I have over the years been what the paper calls its “contributors”. In fact, over the seven decades of its existence the paper has been able to rely on an army of contributors, mainly professionals in their own diverse fields. Some have put their names to their articles, others writing under pen names often because they held official positions which meant that they had to refrain from expressing their views in public.

There has never been any other media in Mauritius which has enabled so many contributors to express themselves on such a broad range of topics. I am often told that whereas many (news)papers can be read furtively, some readers have to put away the Mauritius Times for comfortable reading on the couch over the whole weekend, enjoying all the opinion pieces in the paper!

I often wonder “what if” Mauritius Times had not been part of the media landscape in this country? What if a group of politically minded young people under the leadership of Beekrumsing Ramlallah had not been able to come up with a paper like Mauritius Times in the difficult years of the early fifties and had allowed the likes of Noel Marrier d’Unienville (NMU) to continue to hold sway unhindered? The history of the first 20 to 25 years of the Mauritius Times is inextricably linked to the political and constitutional history of Mauritius in the crucial two decades or so leading up to Independence.

Mauritius Times ePaper Friday 16 August 2024