Fiji, Politics of Illusion: The Military Coups in Fiji 0868401315, 9780868401317

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onies should be re11arded as havin11 'ri11hts and privile11es no whit inferior to those of any other class of Her Majesty's subjects resident in the colonies'. He had in mind discriminatory practices then operatin11 against Indians in Mauritius and the West Indies. His proposal was rejected overall by the 11ovemment of India; so, his words had no legal o r administrative force. But, though the principle enunciated had no bearin11 on the circumstances and assured prospects of Indian emi11rants to Fiji, it obviously could be seen as havin11 11eneral moral application. This century arter the abolition or Ind ian i ndentured emi11ration in 1916, with Fiji worried about its future labour supply, the colonial government of F'iji offered such assurances to the 11ovemment of India. Of course, the colonial government assumed it was committing the Fijian people too, the Taukei ni Qe/eor owners of the soil as they call themselveswhentheywishtodilferentiate themselveslromthe,asthey say, immi11rant peoples - Europeans, Chinese and other Pacific Islanders included: human archaeological remains extend back to 1500 BC in Fiji. But the colonial 11overnmentdid not much consult the Taukei ni Qe/eon the issue, knowin11 their reservations. It overlooked the hostility expressed in public as early as the 1888 mee1ing of the Council of Chie fs. Stereotypes denoting anxiety, suspicion and hostility had rolled out: 'a 11ood·for·nothin11 people, and thieves'; 'a bad and plottin11 people'; a people who had got the better of one speaker in a deal over some goats to the tune of £40 ...' Nearly a century later the principal charge was insensi tivity, both to others' aspirations and to Indians· actual, as opposed to idealised, situation in a country and an island re11ion where the i ndigenes accorded them as l ittle legitimacy as their own politicians allowed the Caldoches, the white seulers of New Caledonia. 'Our ancestors did not give up this land for their descendants to be ruled by Indians', say Fijians. or, less i ntransi11ently, 'They want everythi n11 i n their own l ifetime.' 11le Fiji Indian commun ity did at any rate detect the condition on which they lived there - that they had no prospect o f political ri11hts. They resented it, for they were, as one of their songs put it, 'a people from a land of cul ture' livin11 in Fiji under a repressive re11ime. And they had expected so much more, reconstructing expectation to match bitterness, that an inside observer, th i rd-generation Fiji-Indian, feels their historical experience has taken on the ima11e of a failed millennial quest.• They spent the 1920s and 1930s, led by emissaries from Gand hi himself, campai11ning for political equality with, speci fically, the OOmi· nant European business and planting group, in representation in the Le11islative Council. ln 1933 the Fijians, who re11arded the Le11islative Council as a dispensable sideshow anyway, nonetheless resolved in the Council of Chiefs:

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Fiji, having been ceded to Her Majesty the Queen ... the immigrant Indian population should neither directly nor indirectly have any part in the control of direction of matters affecting the Fijian race. 5 This represented fairly thoroughgoing rejection of political equality with a people whose numbers were rising by natural increase and free immigration. Their cultural adaptation proceeded not a great deal be)und largely abandoning caste, acquiring a taste for yaqona, sometimes the Fijian language, and sometimes again a slightly patronising affection for the people whose lands they leased and whose cheques - in the case of the few chiefs who had bank accounts - they wisely tried not to accept. A Fijian was always glad of a shilling in those days, said S. B. Patel, sent in his youth by Gandhi to raise political consciousness among the one-time helots of the Empire - which was how the overseas Indians felt they were seen - and by boycott and strikie action to hold out for equality of rights with Europeans. But the Fijian rejection was to some extent, in the changed constitutional circumstances following the 1970 independence arrangements, repeated in 1982 when the Great Council of Chiefs resolved that the independence constitution should be altered. Instead of the 1970 constitution's twenty-two seats for each community, the council wanted an absolute majority over the Indian members and the eight General Elector members combined, in virtue of Fijians' position as the hosts. None of this could be expected to be at any time palatable to FijiIndians. It would not be palatable to any people. Honour was at stake. Honour had been lost, as Gandhi taught, by generations of India's people being seen as a mere labour pool, as helots; it was to be regained through joining emotionally in the subcontinent's political struggles. Specifically, it was to be regained by locking horns - as smallholder sugar-cane growers - with the Colonial Sugar Refining Company, on the one hand, and with what they saw as an unsympathetic and repressive British colonial overlord, on the other. By the 1940s Britain was to be chased out of Fiji as out of India and Fiji to be made a republic. The Indian community held fast to the principle of universal humanity(quite as fast as in matters of marriage, say, or business, its members generally held to more exclusive cultural values). The Indian leaders - and, it must be supposed, the community at large which re-elected them, however internally fractured it might be - sought a common electoral roll, one individual, one vote, for the same candidates. From the 1930s onward they were answered by Fijian traditional leaders as well as by the supposedly radical Young Fijian Association in the same tone of suspicion, with the same charge - that given the demographic make-up of the colony this must lead in time to Indian domination.

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Tu.lkingtoconvinceoneself-poli,ic.ssincel970

Fijians did not asa rule see much reason to relish it. With a degree of sensitivity that caused Fijian members' eyebrows to rise, the major Indian leader A. D. Patel, speaking in a Legislative Council debate in 1948. offered to have Indians cany the Fijians through consti tut iona l change toward eventual self-government and independence if, as he said, they were not strong enough to march there themselves. A. D. Patel was a Congress disciple, greatly influenced by the Indian subcontinent's struggle for independence. He had returned from a visit to India in 1940 on the eve o f the Pacific War wearing Congress dress and telling his enthusiastic welcoming audiences he had assured Congress leaders that whatever they did in India, whether they danced, took off their clothes, or formed political parties, Indians in Fiji would follow suit. And, of course, once British India was gone, British colonialpolicy,post-WorldWarll,wasitselflargelylorsell-government - a prospect from which all Fijian leaders shied away. Their views on Indian domination were not ameliorated by the jaundiced opinion they formed or the post-independence subcontinent. Half-a-million people had been killed in the independence celebrationsol India and Pakistan by the time Gandhi himself was murdered by a Hindi extremist. Fijian spokesmen could never see how their Indian friends - as often they quite genuinely were - could go on pressing for a common electoral roll and internal self-government leading to independence when Fiji had internal divisions of its own. 'There would be no compromise", said RatuE TTu1vanua\IOUCakobau ah1ghch1elo!Bau Therewouldbea_.,....demand from the Fi11an side for a d1VJs1on o f the country Pa( ista i1i eml.x)Q '

Chapter4 Talking to convince oneself - politics since 1970 It was not always very clear how much attention Ratu Tui"s listeners across the parliament chamber floor ever paid to the actual as opposed to the idealised example of the subcontinent. A.O. Patel had come back from his war-time visit thrilled with the non-observance of caste and the absence of religious differences. Often it was not very clear whether he and his supporters listened much at all. "Gosh, )Ql can talk to convince )Qlrself. the then chief minister of Fiji. RatuMara. told Patel'sbrother, R.D. Patel, in thefoorth-lloorconler-

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Politics of Illusion

ence room at Government Buildings, during the series of confidential exploratory talks begun on 12 August 1969 between working groops of the Alliance and National Federation parties which led to independence on 10October1970. The parties had been formed in the 1960s. The Federation, as it was called before it acquired the support of a western Fijian splinter-groop in 1969, was foonded by A .O. Patel. Even after his death in October 1969 it was inspired by the Gandhian spirit of no compromise in any matter where a principle could be foond. Negotiating with it tended to be like playing with Tom Brown who in Tom Brown 'sSchooldays'never wants anything but what's right and fair, only when you come to settle what's right and fair, it's everything that he wants and nothing that you want'. The Alliance Party was formed by the Fijian establishment as represented by the Fijian Affairs Board and the Great Council of Chiefs, in combination with the European business,world; it usually showed a greater sense of immediate practicality and a more pragmatic perception of reality, not least because it was far more satisfied with the political status quo. There would have been no independence in 1970 if it had been left to the descendants of the Deed of Cession signatories and the heirs of the European planters, merchants, lawyers and financiers. The Europeans, having failed last century to remake Fiji into a white-dominated tropical image of New Zealand and Australia, because local colonial policy learned from those examples too, had latterly joined in making commoncausewithFijiansagainst~politicalissuesperceivedasaris­

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ing from the increasing numbers of the people who had been introduced from India between 1879 and 1916 as an essential support to that colonial policy. Dominion status was sought by the National Federation Party. It was not evident that their fractious and carping newspaper, Pacific Review, had got very far in converting anyone but the converted to antico1onialist principles. Succession disputes in chiefly families and Fijian grumbling might sometimes have given a contrary but misleading impression, as might personality conflicts within the Alliance Party. Scepticism from the Alliance side had greeted A .O. Patel's opening statement in favour of independence at the start of the confidential constitutional talks in August 1969. The Alliance felt the 1966 constitution was still viable, with its thirty-six seats divided foorteen to the 228 000 Fijians, twelve to the 256 000 Indians, and ten to the 28 000 Europeans, part-Europeans and Chinese comprising the General Electors category. At the London conference that agreed on this the Fijians had been under strong covert British pressure to yield even this two-seat majority, despite their published determination never to yield political control. 'Had it worked well, we would not have had by-elections', retorted A.O.

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Talkingtoconvin«ck workers had bttn preseflt, but no 'mysterious observers'. And the secretariat could hlWe added that Veitata was pretty quiet, while much more threatening noise was heard from theotherside.Emergencyregulatiompermitteddetentio11lortwenty· lourhourswlthoutauthority.alurtherlorty~ighthoursifauthorisedby

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someolthl!brdr«:konedhadruinedthl!ca.mtry. Bynowthl!rewas artt0rdnumberolliresinthl!pi~-plantationstohl!tpthl!cane-striller$

complete th!! job. some of th!! fires almost c"1alnly lit by some among Dr BaYMta"s Fijian supporten. Losses have bttn very hi!"")', up to an estll1Ul!ed22perc:ent.

Cbapter23 Coalition challenges His we51em supporters. still a minority among Fijian$ there, had, mean· time. Iailed in a direct political attempt to restore Dr &Yama through Fijian channels. or altmia~ Manie th!! eastern conlederacies, by establishing a breakaway go.oemment in western Viti Levu. A meetins o l 400 Fijian$ that wucalled at Viseisei on 23 May, to th!! beat o l th!! loliorslit·drum. resotvedto lormsuchago.oemmentundn"Or Bavad-a in p roolthatthl!suncouldriseinthl!west. Hetw:lpreclicted3000would come. Denunciation o l th!! coup apart. thl!400 resolv«l that thl!Great CooncllofChlefshadonlyadvisorypowersandshouldhavenosayin composlngthl!Councilo1Advisers,whichwu51illbelngboyconedby thl!co.lit lon. TheadvisersshouldbeO-awnfromelectedparfiamentariarl$ alone, not lrom th!! wider community u thl! gOYel'TIOf·ger>eral had achia!!y chosen them . That would have ruled out Jal Ram Rmdy too. 'Theco.li!lonalsoolcoursewantedlewerpeopleidentifledwith thl!Allianceonthl!council.Asenior loreigndiplomatwashl!ardasking how they could possibly sit with such people. 'The Council o f Advisen wereoltenactua.llyquite~tabltpeople.andnecessityor thl!

national advantage has bttn known to malre 51ranger political bedfellows. ·1 am th!! leaeYeTasanivalu - were much wanned by Rootstrata'soew, conditlonalgoodwill. Olher Fijians' heads~ tobeSttnshaken inquie! depreciation - thwgh it was known fol" wmrn to follow up theirnpreued distress that talk ol killing and burning in Ratu Meli Vesikula's sometime Myle was 'not Fijian'byaddingthat this5houldnotbetalkrdabout,but00oe. That was prob&bly rhetorical: b.Jt Taulrri Movement stro11g-ann men madethreateningphone·calLs.andcalledpersorlllllyonSirViiaySingh, whom they believed to have been manipulating thecane+farmeB' strikr, to te ll him he would bes.ale nowhere once the order had been given to have him killed. A man who claimed to hill'e started the May 20 riot stood ready to kill DrBavach himself if the Bure00sllg1 paramount Ro La.Ja gave the word. Pandit Kesha Prasad Stwma, ol Adelaide. SQ.Ith Aust ralia, twdly lmpl'OW!d the sillllltioo in 1 letter In the Fiji Surfs 9 July issueiden1JlyinsFiiil.'lislandschosenbyt.ordKrishr'lllfortheHinW -W-god's residence. "The HinWs came ln fulfilment of the Divine wish, thfOU&h what means is immaterial .' t.ordShiYa'swrath could be

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terrible. That, returned a Fijian correspondem two days later. was ·a glaring example of what we are ligh!ing against". CenainlytheTaulieigatheringsinJulyandAugustwhetltheGreat Council met again to co!"l$ider its submission to the constitution review committee were never more than a thousand strong. But when membersas.suredscepticsthateach marcherc.arriedampleproxies,thiswas borne out by provincial council resolutions from all ewer the islands supportingthiscutting-e::lgeofFijiannationalism.atleasttnthede$ire to haw. an end to democracy in name as well as in face, and to have the 1970ConstitutionamendedtoensureFijianpolitic.alpredominance Armypoliticale'based disllict councils. on thegroundsthattheJ)OSl·J967systemwasactuallylessrepresentative becal.ISol! the people ele'e been ten Hin