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Constitutional reform: A hard choice for Governor Mackenzie-Kennedy (1947)

20 juin 2014, 09:44

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The number of electors leapt from 11 000 to almost 72 000 all of a sudden

following the 1947 decision.

 

 

It is said history applauds only a pivotal moment that charts a country’s course. So the award of a new Constitution, after a long period of 62 years, when the elective element for the Legislative Assembly was first introduced in 1885, during the administration of Sir John Pope Hennessy, was hailed as a major landmark in the political history of Mauritius. The 1947 Constitution set Mauritius on the democratic path when the property and sixth standard qualifications were quashed. It was significant in that it widened the voting franchise making any man or woman eligible to be an elector by passing a simple literacy test, that is, writing his or her name and address, in any one of the languages written or spoken in Mauritius. The great beneficiary of the new Constitution was the Indian community which gave all indications that it would henceforth shape the political contours. It could well be argued that  the advent of the 1947 Constitution was the root cause that set the political cauldron boiling in the 1950s and prop up bitter communal rivalries with the element of fear dominating in the background for a long time to come.

 

Although praise is lavished on Governor Sir Donald Mackenzie-Kennedy, for his “kind heartedness” in having piloted the 1947 Constitution and brought it to a fruitful conclusion, he was deep down hardly convinced that a change of Constitution was warranted because, he said, barring the Franco-Mauritians, “the bulk of the people are unprepared for democratic institutions and do not understand them”. It was “unwise”, he said “to introduce universal adult suffrage at this stage”. However, circumstances prevailing in the island could not but impel him to act. While the oligarchy’s lobby had been running solid as a rock since 1885 to the extent that no Governor ever dared intervene to shake the foundation of the old Constitution to make room for a wider participation of the population, the social and political landscapes were undergoing dramatic changes with a series of “popular movements” that made to the Colonial administration wake up the ground realities, more precisely the “general dissatisfaction” manifested by the Indian population which being left out of the circuit of political power for long felt “somewhat defrauded”.

 

Another element that prompted Mackenzie-Kennedy to act swiftly was the trend of Colonial policy in not holding forth without any justification the first steps towards a more democratic system of government in colonies. As far as Mauritius was concerned, the Governor was of the view that the island was not ripe on account of racial and religious differences for the application of the democratic device of universal suffrage as such a move could lead to “confusion and, perhaps, chaos”.

 

That the island was prone to the outbreak of troubles was a weighty factor in  the assessment of the social and political situation ever since the unrest on sugar estates took place in 1937, when the first salvo was fired by the Indian labourers rallying round the founder of the Labour party, Maurice Curé. That caused large ripples in the placid water of Mauritian life, taking Governor Bede Clifford off pedal and compelling him to make pathbreaking concessions with the setting up of trade unionism and a Labour department to regulate labour conditions and address grievances. By way of appeasement of the Indian community, the Governor proceeded with the nomination of two members of that community to the Legislative Council. Then the flaring up of disturbances in the North in 1943 again showed the rebellious nature of estates’ workers who could wreak havoc if their grievances were ignored.

 

But the 1940s also witnessed the flow of an undercurrent of identity politics which gave a shudder to Sir Donald Mackenzie- Kennedy. Whipped up by Basdeo Bissoondoyal, seen by the Governor as “a malevolent man of straw” who “can do untold damage to a credulous people”, a Hindu cultural revival and the sense of unity it generated gathered momentum. That revival was to impact on the political life of  the island too for Governor Scott, Mackenzie- Kennedy’s successor, was to allude to the “strong nationalist tendency” in the political field that was increasing of late. The Bissoondoyalist socio-religious movement so much worried the Governor that what was termed as the “Indian problem” was feared to “clearly become more difficult in future”. While lashing out in virulent terms at Basdeo Bissoondoyal in the Assembly and in correspondence sent to the Colonial office, Sir Donald chose at the same time to dampen the Indian community by not only showing himself in a favourable disposition to improve its social conditions but also decided to propose a “more liberal Constitution” than what was originally proposed in 1943 in order to inject the Indian community into the mainstream of the electoral system. As such, the Governor was intent on deflecting the simmering discontent and keeping the “Bissoondoyal type of propagandist” at bay.

 

Thus, Mackenzie-Kennedy lost no time by setting up of a Constitutional Consultative Committee in 1945 to seek the “views” of a circle consisting of hand-picked figures on a likely Constitutional reform without first putting forward his proposals. The Consultative committee was nothing more than a flash in the pan, with lots of babbles the usual rhetoric of politicians looking for their own personal advantage-and ended in a “stalemate” as the Governor himself put it. But still viewed from a historic perspective, the Consultative Committee served Sir Donald’s purpose in a way, for as a master tactician, he succeeded in his two-fold attempt, first at calming down the Indian community and second, he was able to tap into the sentiment of the strong Conservative elements in order to better market the idea of constitutional reform and give them a taste of what was looming in the horizon.

 

Caught on the horns of a dilemma between accommodating the Indian in a new proposed electoral system and dismantling the statusquo that had been favouring the oligarchy, the Governor found himself faced with a hard choice. That was evident from the letter dated 21 April 1947 he wrote to Arthur Creech Jones, the Secretary of state for the colonies. The letter speaks volumes about his uneasiness. He had to cope with the growing “resentment” unleashed by the “exclusion of the bulk of the labouring classes”; on the other hand, he feared a swamping of the “General population” by the “Asiatic population”. He was not so keen either to deal a blow to the conservative community, including the “few successful Indo Mauritians”, which had been enjoying an array of influence guaranteed all the way through by the 1885 Constitution.

 

The “problem” of Mackenzie-Kennedy was then “how to bring the diverse elements of this heterogeneous population into the proper channels of political development without at the same time running the risk of political domination by an ignorant and illiterate electorate…..”

 

Having weighed all the options, Sir Donald Mackenzie-Kennedy was left with no other alternative than to accept “taking the risk now” as he said to ‘broaden’ the franchise to absorb the mass of the population in the electoral system while at the same time he ensured safeguards were provided for adequate representation of all the communities in the Legislative Council. The number of electors leapt from 11 000 to almost 72 000 all of a sudden. A bold decision, indeed, which was to burst the citadel of the oligarchy like a firecracker godown at the 1948 general election.