The Indian Ocean - Michael Pearson [201]
While there certainly is some tension between the various groups just depicted, some have claimed that because everyone is a relatively new arrival, with no indigenous population, this is a relatively successful multicultural society of about 1,000,000 people. The linguistic situation reflects this, for the formal languages are English, French and standard Hindi, but the domestic languages are Mauritian Creole and Mauritian Bhojpuri.33 Most people speak three or four languages. The political system is more or less open and free.
This relative harmony is at least in part based on the way the economy has been able to make a transition from total reliance on just one export crop, sugar. Tourism, as we will see, has expanded rapidly, and more generally the government hopes that the island will become an Indian Ocean Singapore. To this end in 1970 they set up Export Processing Zones where textiles are produced: sugar now makes up only 23 per cent of export earnings. Investment in the zones was encouraged by such inducements as the forbidding of strikes, free repatriation of profits, and a ten-year income tax holiday. As a result foreign investment rose from $US11 million in 1998 to $US 47 million in 1999. Yet any export product can suffer fluctuations: in 1988 the European Union, which had provided guaranteed access for Mauritian textiles, decided that they were too successful, and restricted imports from there.34
Reunion hosts an equally complex mix of peoples. The island, along with the rest of the Mascarenes, was taken by the French. The British took all three of the areas early in the nineteenth century, but at the end of the Napoleonic wars gave Reunion back to France. It is now a Department of metropolitan France. The population includes people descended from migrants from Europe, Africa, India, China, Madagascar and Comoros. As in Mauritius, the sugar industry initially used slave labour, and later indentured Tamil Indians, who today make up about one-sixth of the total. Being part of France is a mixed blessing. On the one hand it means a large tourist influx, and a guaranteed market for sugar. On the other hand, wages are the same as in metropolitan France, and obviously then Reunion cannot compete with cheaper labour in the other islands. Consequently industry has failed to develop.35
The mixture of religions in Reunion is both complex and interesting. The Tamil labourers were mostly low caste, and in the nineteenth century the French authorities actively encouraged conversion. As coercion eased in the twentieth century an interesting mix of Catholic and Hindu practice became evident on such occasions as baptisms and marriages. One example of a tolerant folk religious practice on the island where all the different communities could sometimes embrace the same cult figure is St Expédit, whose career was sketched earlier (see pages 244–5). But as regards the Hindu population, over the last few decades this rather tolerant situation has changed, as Tamil Brahmins have come in and actively sought to purify Hindu practice on the island. Over just a few years they have been more successful in eradicating folk Hinduism than were the Catholic authorities over a period of more than a century. As an example, in the old syncretic time most Tamil families gave their children a western first name, often John or Mary. However, the first letter of the second name was chosen according to Hindu astrology to give the child an auspicious name. Today young Indian parents choose an Indian first name for their child (rejecting the Christian influence once in force) and without taking account of the first letter of the name according to the date of birth (rejecting previous folk Hinduism).36
We need to say little about the last of the Mascarenes, the Seychelles, for their history is analogous to the other two areas. Again there were slaves and sugar and