Les Franco-Créoles
This category includes Franco-Mauritians, now known as Euro-Mauritians. These are the descendants of the first French settlers. Although they account for less than 2% of the population, they own most of the large sugar estates and hold some of the reins of the economy (notably banks and key companies). In her novel Le Bal du dodo, Geneviève Dormann paints an acid, sometimes excessive, but highly instructive portrait of the Franco-Mauritian community at the turn of the century.
Franco-Creoles were sometimes grouped together with other Christians in a purely theoretical community called the General Population. This includes mestizos and, above all, Créoles, descendants of African slaves from Madagascar and Mozambique, among other places. Evangelized in the 19th century, thanks in particular to the work of Father Jacques-Désiré Laval, the Créoles represent around 25% of the island's population. They are undoubtedly the poorest community, made up mainly of fishermen, small farmers and some workers. Most of them live in the villages in the south of the island and in the suburbs south of the capital.
The Sino-Mauritians
Unlike the Franco-Creoles, the descendants of Chinese immigrants, who arrived mainly from Canton in the second half of the 19th century, are few in number (around 3% of the population), but play a vital role in Mauritian society.
Originally, they set up small shops all over the country, where Mauritians soon got into the habit of making their everyday purchases. Today, some of them are at the head of veritable agri-food empires. Their children usually leave to study abroad, and go on to take up prestigious positions as doctors, pharmacists, engineers, lawyers, accountants and so on, leading to fears that small local businesses will soon disappear if the younger generation does not take them over. This small but powerful community makes a major contribution to the country's economic development.
The Indians
The descendants of Indian immigrants represent over 70% of the Mauritian population and are separated into two distinct communities, themselves largely subdivided into castes: Indians practicing the various Hindu religions (around half the island's total population) and Muslim Indians (around 20%).
Among the descendants of Indian immigrants of Hindu faith, Mauritians differentiate between those from North India, the Hindus, and those from the South, the Tamils - a misnomer, since Mauritian Tamils are also of Hindu faith, and not all originate from the Tamil regions of India.
The Tamils, who are in the minority, mostly arrived on the island at the time of French colonization. In the 18th century, they were among what were known as free colored people, as opposed to slaves. They were craftsmen (stonemasons, carpenters, construction workers, cabinetmakers) and had integrated into the city life of Port Louis. Their descendants were the first to lay the foundations of a small colored bourgeoisie, and today's politicians are careful not to overlook them in their speeches and actions. On the religious front, the Tamil festivals of Cavadee, during which devotees thread needles under their skin, and the fire marches that take place in January and February, are particularly impressive!
The descendants of immigrants from the North, the Hindus, mainly arrived under British colonial rule, when Indians were hired to work in the fields - the period known as "engagism", from 1829 to 1909. They have retained a socio-religious subdivision into castes. Few in number on the island, the members of the two upper castes (Brahmins, called Marazes in Mauritius, and the warrior kshatriya, called Badoudji) are grouped together under the common title of great-nations. They have the same claims and accept mixed marriages. The majority caste is that of the vaisyas (merchants, traders, landowners and bankers), known as vaish in Mauritius. Although tacit, the rule is that the Prime Minister must come from this caste. The lower caste of sudras, known in Mauritius as ti-nations, is made up of the descendants of coolies and is in fact the proletariat. Sudras still work in the cane fields or are employed in menial tasks. Having played an important role in the social struggles that took place before the Second World War, the sudras still defend their interests through lobbies.
Representing the majority of the population, Hindus have invariably held power since independence, which complicates political life in Mauritius considerably. Statesmen have to take into account the demands of the different castes, which exasperates the island's other communities!
Indian Muslims are among those most critical of the government. This community, too, suffers from social disparities: Muslims from western India (mainly from the Gujarat region) were traders, and their descendants now make up the bourgeoisie. Those from Bengal, on the other hand, worked in the cane fields, and their descendants are generally the poorest in the community.
The Ilois, an "erased" people
The last community in Mauritius, the Ilois, is the smallest and also the most recent. When Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam negotiated independence with the British in 1965, the latter demanded that he keep the Chagos, a small archipelago to the north of Mauritius. As England had decided to cede the use of one of the archipelago's islands, Diego Garcia, to the United States so that they could set up a military base there, the 2,395 inhabitants of the Chagos were ruthlessly deported to the Seychelles and Mauritius. Since then, they have lived in a state of general oblivion, punctuated from time to time by justified protest movements. In 2002, for example, a group of Chagos refugees decided to sue Great Britain and the United States for damages for the forced exile of their native island, which some today even describe as a "crime against humanity". In 2022, they acquired the right to British nationality. A number of Chagossians have been able to reside in Great Britain and benefit from Commonwealth scholarships. Since then, this thorny issue has made good progress, with the United Kingdom reportedly considering returning the Chagos archipelago to Mauritius, leaving Chagossians free to return to their homeland if they so wish.
Languages: Mauritian Creole and other spoken languages
While there is no real official language in Mauritius, at least not in the constitution, English is the language used in the Assembly, where French is also tolerated. Yet neither English nor French is the most widely spoken language on the island. The most widespread language, spoken by all ethnic and social communities, is Mauritian Creole or Morisian Kreol. The latter is an oral language, originally unwritten. However, it is now officially standardized, with an Akademi Kreol Repiblik Moris and a full-fledged dictionary. As the "mother tongue" of many Mauritians, Creole is a unifying cultural factor.
Its origins, diverse as they are, are rather vague. The language probably emerged in the second half of the 18th century, when the French, who had colonized the island, brought in thousands of slaves from the African continent and Madagascar. The colonists, many of whom did not speak French very well, had to establish a lingua franca to give orders to their slaves. This is certainly why, even today, the imperative is the predominant mode in the Creole language. In fact, there are no words for "please" or "thank you". Slaves quickly appropriated the language of their masters, enabling them to communicate with each other across the great diversity of their origins. Creole was born, and African dialects quickly disappeared.
During the 19th century, it was enriched by Indian contributions, as emigrants from India, while retaining the use of their original language, had to learn the language commonly used in Mauritius. This is why, even today, most Mauritians speak at least 2 languages, and often three, even four or five. Combinations of Creole, French, English and Bhodjpouri (an Indian language) are commonplace.
Reflecting the island's highly specific ethnic plurality, Mauritian Creole is quite different from the Creoles of Reunion, Seychelles, the West Indies and even Rodrigues - which is much closer to French. On the other hand, and this is a real mystery, it bears a striking resemblance to Haitian Creole... It's a dialect derived mainly from French, from which it borrows the vast majority of its vocabulary. Nevertheless, it has evolved over the years and through ethnic intermingling, to become a language in its own right, with its own pronunciation and distinctive features. For example, there are words in Creole that are pronounced differently from French, but have the same meaning: zardin (for garden) or manzé (for to eat). On the other hand, other French words exist in Creole with a different meaning: for example, sapé (to undermine), which means "to be lucky" in Creole, and not "to undermine" as in the French expression "saper le moral de quelqu'un" ("to undermine someone's morale"). Creole also has many archaisms: a newspaper is called a gazet, a pen a plim (= pen). Grammar, too, has its own specificities and differs markedly from French: in Creole, for example, gender does not exist. What's more, verbs are not conjugated in different persons, even if the notion of verb tense does exist.
