ICLA/2004 Hong Kong
Surname: Koike
Personal Name: Rie
Institutional affiliation: Fuji-Tokoha University(Shizuoka, Japan)
Proposed Title of Presentation:
“Creole Pasts, Mauritian Futures:
a Role of Dev Virahsawmy in Making a Mother Tongue of Mauritius”
Abbreviated version of title:
“Creole Pasts, Mauritian Futures”
1. Introduction
In recent years an inspiring subject for study has been the writing on “Creole.”The meaning has been extendedfrom a person born and naturalized in the West Indies, etc., but of European or of African to the languagespoken in those ex-colonies. There is now a variety of writing about “Creole,” even by those who themselves are Creoles. There are some fundamental questions to be explored: What is Creole? Who is Creole? What is the language of Creole? Who is the rightful owner of the language and how can we define Creoleidentity? What is the narrative of Mauritius as a Creolenation? Do the narratives on Creoles by themselves add some force to the literature of a multicultural nation? In Mauritius at the present time there is an Indian descent writer who has endeavored to answer those questions.
Mauritius is a country of cultural hybrids who bring together dissimilar cultural traditions. Understanding this helps us to connect the scattered dots, to make the lines that form their homeland, Mauritius. One writer who creates in Creole language plays a significant role in uniting the dots and making theirhomeland.
Salman Rushdie says, “Having been born across the world, we are translated men. It is normally supposed that something always gets lost in translation; I cling, obstinately, to the notion that something can also be gained” (Imaginary Homelands ). This presentation is interested in issues of cultural translations and Creole identities in Mauritius. I look specifically at a role of Dev Virahsawmy and examine how cultural and social markers, and hybridity in Mauritius get defined by him with an idea that Creole language as the new condition of the future Mauritius.
General Information
Located in Southern Africa, island in the Indian Ocean, east of Madagascar, discovered by the Portuguese in 1505, Mauritius was subsequently held by the Dutch, French, and British before independence in 1968. A stable democracy with regular free elections and a positive human rights record, the country has attracted considerable foreign investment and has earned one of Africa's highest per capita incomes. Recent poor weather and declining sugar prices have slowed economic growth leading to some protests over standards of living in the Creole community.
Ethnic groups:
Indo-Mauritian 68%, Creole 27%, Sino-Mauritian 3%, Franco-Mauritian 2%
Religions:
Hindu 52%, Christian 28.3% (Roman Catholic 26%, Protestant 2.3%), Muslim 16.6%, other 3.1%
Languages:
Although their official language is English, most Mauritians speak Creole on daily basis, then French, and Hindi, Urdu, Hakka, those languages from their ancestors.
- Meanings of “Creole”
When you hear the word “Creole,” what do you imagine or think of? Language, culture, people, in which there are many countries involved such as Caribbean countries, Reunion, and Mauritius. Dev Virahsawmy1 prefers to call their mother tongue Morisien2, the national language of the Republic of Mauritius, instead of Creole.
The word Creole has several meanings: a language,an ethnic group, a type of architecture, a type of food,and certain types of furniture. Now when a word has too many meanings, it will be dangerous because it may lose all meanings. When Virahsawmy started to work on the language,he was conscious of the danger that the ethnic group called Creole in Mauritius would one day say, “Well, Creole is our language. The Indians have Hindi or Terugu. The Chinese have theirs.The French have theirs. However we Creoles don’t have any our own language.” So what would happen then is that although this language has a mission to bring people together,it would be used to divide people still more, and that is why Virahsawmy has kept on insisting that it should be called Morisien.
We should understand that Creolization is not a final status, but just a process in the development of languages. Even a language like English used to be a Creole language. Robert A. Hall Junior said that Creolization is to be considered as a stage in the development of contact languages.
In Mauritius, Creole should not be in the shadow of French. It should be a language on its own and the symbol of an independent nation. Now there are some peoplewho use the word Creole for that ethnic group.There are in fact two types of Creole: the Afro-Creoles of African origin, and the mixed blood Creoles.Therefore, Virahsawmy suggests that they should use Morisien as their mother tongue instead of Creole in order to avoid the problems.
Virahsawmy himself is the produceof mixing of people and of cultural fertilization from a cultural point of view because Mauritians represent a mixture of Western, Eastern and African culture with people of different origins. So if they have to define their identities, they are citizens of the world because in theiridentities, there are elements from the east, the west and Africa.
3. Virahsawmy’s Aspiration
Virahsawmy and Politics
People, in general, have a lot of prejudices against “Creole.” Therefore, Virahsawmyhas translatedthe world classics into Morisien in order to prove that their language has the same value as English or French. Over 35 years, he has, to some extent, succeeded in changing people’s attitudes.In a certain way,his creative worksare related to language planning, for he would like Morisien to become the national language. It is the best way to bind different ethnic groups together. So his writing is also political with a desire to contribute to the building of a nation and to bind people together. It's part of a nation building. So there is a political dimension to his works as well, even if most politicians prefer to ignore the language issue.
Virahsawmy has been in politics and opponents used it against him, ridiculed himfor proposing Morisien as the language of education, social development, basic training, and national unity. However Politicians prefer to win votes by saying that the ancestral languages must preserved or you must learn English.
However some business people3 have realized that proper training of the workers should be done in Morisien. They want their workers to learn to read and write and to become literate in Morisien.
Literacy in Mauritius
At this point, the question of literacy is necessaryfor a better Mauritius. With the development of information and technology, and with modernization of social and cultural life, the concept they need is advanced functional literacy, which means that people should be able to read very complex documents, charts and diagrams.They should be able to handle all sorts of equipment to live a satifactory life in a modern world. According to Virahsawmy, if you ask all Mauritians over the age of 12 onwards to write a coherent statement in any language they want in 150 words, which can be read and understood by others, only 40% of the population would be able to do that. Then if it is functional literacy, probably less than 30% would be able to get through. Now if it is advanced functional literacy, less than 15%. It will be the biggest obstacle against development if they want to build a modern economy as in the US or Japan. In Mauritius, at the most about 20% of the working population possess advanced functional literacy.
The big question is leading people to use them efficiently. Virahsawmy insisted in an interview with Koike4 that you could not aim at building a literate nation if you wouldn’t start with the mother tongue. Now according to the latest census, Morisien is officially the language of 70% of the population.5In fact, however, it is the mother tongue of over 80% of the population and the remaining 20% speak it as a second language,and so it is the language of the republic of Mauritius. You can never think of building a modern nation without the most precious resource for development. The question of literacy is at the heart of Virahsawmy’s vision for a better Mauritius.
There are considerable changes of attitudes of people. The latest census report has shown that people are no longer afraid to say Creole is their language. Officially it is still old Creole. 70% said that it would betheir language.In the past,less than 50% accepted it as their language. Secondly, there are some people except Virahsawmy who now are writing in Morisien, which is also very important improvement. More books , including plays, poems, novels and short stories,have beenpublished in Morisien. Thirdly, there have been major advance in the world of theater and entertainment.In the past,they saw plays in French and a few plays in English. Today the most popular plays are in Morisien:Makbess, Toufann,Zozef ek So Palto Larkansiel that was translated by Virahsawmy with Father Sullivanfrom Joseph and His Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat.Moreover the MBC (Mauritian Broadcasting)TV now has a special news report in Morisien,which is new. Then the bible is being translated into Morisien. Soon the gospel is going to come out in Morisien as well.There is a graduate course at the University of Mauritius on Creolistics. So things are moving. There has been considerable progress in the way they write a language.
In 1967, when Virahsawmy started the movement, he had to give a shock to the people of Mauritius. So he used a system far remote from French in order to break with the past. In the meantime,Virahsawmy has made amendments; basically the orthography has been remained the same.The final major adjustments have been made by a few Catholic priests and Virahsawmy, and all other users have welcomed the new way. So it is likely that the new orthography, which now Virahsawmy uses in his books, is going to become the standard orthography for the language accepted by Mauritians.
As far as orthography is concerned they are moving towards an agreement. But the most difficult task lies ahead. Although plays and poetry are relatively close to the oral or spoken form, prose should be written far from oral. Virahsawmy is moving towards the development of literary prose in Morisien. Attempts have been made before him by people who are more interested in trying their hand at prose. However, the most important thing is how do they build a standard language. It is not only a question of standard orthography. Writers should be the creators of standard languages. Dante, an Italian poet, in fact, builds modern Italian. Shakespeare, an English playwright, used about 18,000 words in most of his plays. So it is a clear indication that writers are the builders of standard language. In this sense, I hope textbooks in Morisien will be taught in schools near future.
Mauritian Literature
English literature has not yet taken off in Mauritius. Thoughit is their official language, it cannot be their mother tongue. Therefore, it is difficult to use it for creative works. In my opinion, English will remain a language for administration oreducation. It will be very difficult for Mauritians to reveal the soul of the country in English because it did not involve the myth of nation-building.
In French, the successful ones are only those who emigrated and after total immersion in France, they started tocreate good works,such as Ananda Devi,6 born in Mauritius and received her PhD in London, and now lives in France.
Virahsawmy’s Creative Works
Virahsawmy writes plays, poems, short stories, songs for children and also translates important classics from English and French into Morisien. He wrote his first play Li while he was in prison as a political prisoner. It has been translated into French and English, and I translated it into Japanese in 2003.7 Recently one of his plays, Toufann was translated and performed in London in English.8 The play originally written in Morisien was translated into English by a professional actor whose wife is a Mauritian. It is interesting because Toufann is a play inspired by Shakespeare’s Tempest.In his play, Caliban, the monster in Shakespeare’s play, becomes his hero who is the new generation of people culturally and genetically mixed, and his Kalibann(instead of Shakespeare’s Caliban) takes power in the end.Moreover several of his works have been translated into French. He has also done a lot of translation, especially from English into Morisien. Some of them are: Julius Caesar, Much Ado About Nothing, Macbeth and also the musical called Les Miserable. It’s a musical based upon Victor Hugo’s novel. In Mauritius, the shows in Morisien have been a great success.
Virahsawmy and Shakespeare
First,Virahsawmy was impressed by Shakespeare’s use of language. Second, by translating his works,Virahsawmyhas proved that Morisien is a strong language.Third, Mauritius is a country where people can easily be offended. If he writes about social problems and uses local names, he has to use Christian names, Hindi names or Chinese names, otherwise, people could argue. They would try to give an ethnic dimension to the works. In imaginary worlds of Shakespeare,characters belong to the literary world, and so Virahsawmy uses people from the literary world and they become characters in his world.
For example, Virahsawmy has a play in which all the characters are from Shakespeare and the main character is a doctor Hamlet because he will have to help his mother to die. There’s a girl who gets pregnant; her name is Juliet. Virahsawmy usescharacters from an imaginary literature world, the world of Shakespeare, because these are characters who are known for what they are. Hamlet is an element of love. Juliet symbolizes the love. With characters from Shakespeare,he plants them in Mauritius and makes them grow into Mauritians in the language of Mauritius.
In this way, there is that special relationshipas if Shakespeare helps Virahsawmy not to get entangled in barren discussions. Therfore, Shakespeare is not only a spirit and an adviser,but also the one who offers certain facilities. There is another important thing. Sometimes Virahsawmy turns Shakespeare upside down as he did in Toufann,Which is inspired by Tempest. It is an inspiration only, but in Tempest you have Prospero, the one who does white magic and on the island there is Caliban, the monster. His play also takes place on an island.He has taken Shakespeare and placed him in his play asKalibann who is the hero of mixed blood. In the end, Kalibann will marry the daughter of Prospero and become a king. His message, therefore, is that the future in Mauritius will be in mixing up things, not in separate development. Hisidea of cross-fertilization of genes will produce better human beings not worse human beings. So it’s all part of his vision for the future Mauritius.ThereforeKalibann is not a monster but the future of mankind.
In his play Prospero is a person who tends to think about the past and he gets very bitter. His message here is we have to be very careful with people who have suffered in the past, because in the present or future they could become dictators, aggressors,or tyrants. Prospero starts to behave like a tyrant, the daughter says to him “Don’t talk about the past. In the past, you were a victim but now you are a guru.” And this is what’s happening in the world. They were victims in the past; today they are the aggressors. And this applies to the Hindus in Mauritius. In fact Prospero symbolizes the Hindus in Mauritius. They did suffer, including Virahsawmy’s ancestors. But now the Hindus have political power and they’re misusing their political power. They’re using it against the Creoles. So Yesterday’s victim has become today’s aggressor. All these messagesare in his play,Toufann.The title Toufann,is a Hindi word. For several reasons, it starts with the letter “T,” the sound of Tempest,but then because it is also a foreign word. It is an invitation to create psychological distance, but also a way to say to the Hindus you have become the Toufann, you are victims of Toufann of the past, today you are the Toufann because you are a threat to other people.
4. Conclusion
It is true that more and more people from overseas: England, the U.S, Canada, Germany, Holland, are now more interested in his project. There is Norwegian Professor, an anthropologist who has written something on Virahsawmy and his works: the title is “AOne Man Culture Movement.” Some of the people have now started to understand what he was trying to do for their language and which will eventually help other languages. English is going to be very important; at the same time their own local language. So the two languages of Mauritius are bound to be English and Morisien. But not well established like Morisien or Reuion or all the different languages of Africa. Now if what he has done for Mauritian can help people to formulate and devise strategies which could help their language to develop as well.
Notes
* I am grateful to Mr. Virahsawmy and Dr. Wong for their valuable information and advice on Mauritian Literature. I am also grateful to Japan Society for the Promotion of Science for its sponsoring a trip to Mauritius with grant-in-Aid.
- Dev Virahsawmy was born into a business family in 1942. He has received a master’s degree from Edinburgh University. He is a well-known writer who writes in Morisien.
- “Morisien” is a word that Virahsawmy has created to describe the Creole spoken by most Mauritians as Mother tongue of Mauritius and he first used the word in his thesis, “Towards a Re-evaluation of Mauritian Creole.”
- Among them, there is Lindsey Collen who writes several books for laborers in Morisien.
- See Appendix II in “Dev Virahsawmy and Birth of Mauritian Literature: Language Policy and Literature in Mauritius.”
- See ibid.
- Although Ananda Devi was born in Mauritius and received Ph.D in London, she now writes some books in French and translates her own French books into English. Her sister is a chair of Mahatma Gandhi Institute in Mauritius.
- See “Li and Five Poems by Dev Virahsawmy.”
- It was translated by Nisha and Michael Walling and presented by Border Crossings at Africa Center in London, in 1999. Nisha was born in Mauritius and now lives in London.
Works Cited
Koike, Rie. “Dev Virahsawmy and Birth of Mauritian Literature: Language Policy and Literature in Mauritius.”Bulletin of Fuji Tokoha University #3. 2003, 123-146.