The idea for this essay first began to germinate after I was asked to present a paper on religious life in Mauritius at the Institute Cardinal Jean Margéot in October 2014.Footnote 1 At the time, I didn’t have anything specific in mind, although I had recently taken photographs of a cemetery to the north of Port Louis, the capital, named Bois Marchand, which provoked some interesting thoughts. A significant number of the graves and tombstones were painted either red, green, or light blue and were grouped together in specific sections of the cemetery; upon closer inspection, I was able to discern that the groupings of red tombstones were for Buddhists, those painted green were for Muslims, and those painted light blue were for Catholics (see fig. 1). There were also some Hindu tombstones, but none of them were painted a distinctive color.Footnote 2
Catholic tombstone
I had gone to the Bois Marchand cemetery to look at the shrines of Muslim saints for which the cemetery is renowned. But upon arriving there, I was struck by the color schemes I could distinguish among the cemetery’s tombstones and their association with the religious identities of some of the island’s main ethnic groups. I was already cognizant of the fact that Hindus in Mauritius—or “Northern” or “Hindi-speaking Hindus” as they are also referred to—paint their temples and shrines red, so I became curious as to whether using religious colors to symbolize one’s ethnic identity was not a more common cultural custom in Mauritian life and not just restricted to cemeteries.
Further fieldwork proved that the custom was not restricted to cemeteries but is in fact quite common in Mauritian villages and towns. For instance, as I have already indicated, it is not uncommon to see Northern Hindu temples and shrines painted red (and orange as well from time to time), or Muslim mosques and shrines painted green, Buddhist pagodas and ancestor shrines red, Catholic shrines (though very rarely churchesFootnote 3) light blue, and Tamil kovils and shrines yellow (see figs. 2 –6).
Northern Hindu temple
Northern Hindu shrine
Muslim mosque
Catholic shrine
Tamil shrine
Religious festivals such as the Chinese Spring Festival, the Tamil ritual of fire walking (Timidi), and the Catholic celebration of the Assumption of Mary are also occasions during which the island’s ethnic groups employ distinct colors to symbolize their identity (see figs. 7–9). In the former, red is ever present and is reflected not only in the red coloring of the pagodas but also in the joss sticks and presents offered to one’s ancestors at this time of the year; while perhaps not as ubiquitously employed as the color red in the Chinese Spring Festival, Tamils participating in fire-walking ceremonies dedicated to the goddess Mariamman are almost always dressed in yellow, as are their kovils and shrines; and on the day of the Assumption of Mary, small Catholic girls wear blue skirts matching the color of icing on the cakes eaten to celebrate the occasion (more commonly named “Gateau Marie” by Mauritians).
Chinese Spring Festival
Tamil fire-walking ritual
Assumption of Mary cake
I was also able to document the application of these colors to nonreligious or secular spaces such as houses and motor vehicles, it being quite common, for example, to find Muslim homes painted green, Tamils yellow and Chinese-Mauritian household fences red (see fig. 10). I even documented a bus that was painted green with a number of Islamic and Arabic icons on it, including a crescent moon and palm tree on the back and the name “Makka” (i.e., Mecca) at the front (see fig. 11).
Chinese-Mauritian house
Muslim bus
Clearly, then, one can discern recurrent color schemes in the decorative habits and religious activities of some of the island’s major ethnic groups. The dominant colors one associates with ethnic groups in Mauritius are schematically represented in figure 12. The only ethnic groups missing from this list are the Franco-Mauritians, and Telugus and Marathis, two of the three so-called non-Hindi speaking Hindu groups in Mauritius (the other being Tamils, of course). Why these groups do not have their own distinctive colors can, I will argue, be plausibly explained.
Religious colors table
First, though, I want to ponder why this custom has not received any attention in the anthropological literature on ethnicity in Mauritius, particularly in view of how cognizant Mauritians themselves seem to be of the custom. On the one hand, it is possible to understand why anthropologists may have failed to notice it, because although there are these discernable color patterns at play beneath the surface of everyday life in Mauritian villages and towns, one cannot claim that the custom is unequivocal or immediately visible to the naked eye. As common as the custom may be, it does not mean that every religious edifice in Mauritius conforms to this color scheme or that all houses painted in these colors are for the purposes of ethnoreligious objectification.Footnote 4 Thus in order to decode the phenomenon, one must pay close attention to the manner in which Mauritians utilize the built environment and nature landscape to symbolize their ethnic identities. And this, ipso facto, also means triangulating or determining the relation between the various cultural contexts used to objectify these differences, such as cemeteries, official places of worship, public and private shrines, religious festivities, and the like.
On the other hand, in the case of the work of Thomas H. Eriksen (Reference Eriksen1988, Reference Eriksen1998), who is probably the foremost authority on ethnicity in Mauritius, it could be that the custom gained greater popularity since he carried out the majority of his fieldwork in the 1980s and 1990s. But if that is the case, what this also suggests is that we need to be mindful of there being a historical dimension to the custom, and the possibility it has grown in importance in more recent years or was present in muted form even before Eriksen began doing fieldwork in Mauritius. The evidence I have been able to gather is by no means incontrovertible, however, I am quite certain that the custom is an outgrowth of a decision made by the nascent postcolonial state in the 1950s to extend religious subsidies to non-Catholic ecclesiastical organizations as well.Footnote 5 The original reason for the decision may have been to level the religious playing field so as to better reflect the society’s religious and ethnic pluralism, the most direct consequence of which was the creation of a number of new “sociocultural” or religious associations; but it seems that one of its other consequences was the fueling of the perceived need to objectify one’s religious identity in order to gain access to state funding (cf. Hollup Reference Hollup1994, Reference Hollup1996; Eisenlohr Reference Eisenlohr2006a). The use of colors to decorate religious edifices would have presented Mauritians with a simple means of achieving these ends, and the fact that industrially produced or oil-based paints did not become widely available in Mauritius until after the mid-1960s is significant, as it suggests that the custom is unlikely to have been widespread prior to this period.Footnote 6
Also, we should not forget that Mauritius’s population emigrated from parts of the world that have traditions of making similar associations with colors. As such, Mauritians would have had a ready stock of imagery to draw upon in order to shape the new identities they were seeking to fashion, and this quite naturally would have involved looking back to ancestral homelands for cultural inspiration. Testimony to the beginnings of this fledgling process can be found in the work of the anthropologist Burton Benedict, who conducted fieldwork in Mauritius in the 1950s and who describes both the “Indian Revival” already in full swing at the time and the social effects that Indian partition had on Hindu and Muslim consciousness. In his ethnographic monograph, Benedict (Reference Benedict1961) draws attention to the effect Indian partition had on the process he describes as “Sunnification,” whereby Mauritian Muslims increasingly began to look to Pakistan and to the Islamic world rather than to India as a cultural point of reference, as well as to evidence of concerted efforts by the non-Hindi speaking Hindu groups such as the Tamils and Telugus to distinguish themselves from Northern Hindus by underlining both their linguistic and religious differences. Nonetheless, Benedict does not say anything about the use of religious colors to symbolize ethnic identity in his ethnography of Mauritius during the mid-twentieth century. And in view of how thorough an ethnographer Benedict was, one can only assume that the process by which Mauritians increasingly came to resort to the use of religious colors to symbolize their ethnic identity had not yet gained sufficient momentum to attract his attention.
Even so, it is worth noting that a middle-aged man I interviewed in the village of Camp de Masque Pavé in January 2015 told me that his family first began applying the color red to the Kalimai next to his house as far back as the 1950s.Footnote 7 He showed me photos that had been taken documenting the improvements made to his family’s Kalimai over the decades, including what it looked like when concrete and red polish were first added to the shrine. Originally his family used to use a floor polish that Mauritians call lok (or ochre), which acquires a reddish hue after being mixed with concrete and applied to household floors, but sometime in the early 1970s he said he began to use oil paints, because by that stage (in his early twenties) he had started working full-time and could afford them. He said he could also have painted the Kalimai orange, given that Northern Hindus in Mauritius also use the latter color to symbolize their ethnoreligious identity, but had opted for red instead.
This testimony is significant as it demonstrates that the custom of using religious colors to symbolize ethnic identity was most probably already under way by the time Benedict had begun doing fieldwork in the 1950s.Footnote 8 I also had the chance to look through the archives of the Museum of Photography in Port Louis to try to determine when the custom might have first begun, but I did not come up with anything conclusive. However, the curator of the museum, Tristan Breville, showed me photographs of a Tamil fire-walking ceremony that took place in Quatre Bornes in 1990 in which one can clearly discern that the participants are dressed in yellow. And I also found several images in the book Mauritius: Ten Years after Independence (Nouralt and Nouralt Reference Nouralt and Nouralt1977) showing Tamil participants wearing yellow in fire-walking ceremonies that were photographed in the 1970s. I was able to compare these to a photograph of a fire-walking ceremony that took place in Eben village in 1932, which I also got from the Museum of Photography, and even though the photo is in black and white and one cannot discern the color of the garments the participants are wearing, it is unlikely that mass-produced dyed yellow garments would have been widely available in Mauritius in those days.
Consequently, I think there are strong grounds for claiming that there is a long, though not necessarily an unequivocal or standardized tradition, of using religious colors to symbolize ethnic identity in Mauritius. Nevertheless, what I have said above should not be taken to mean that Mauritians have uncritically adhered to the original meanings implied by the religious colors borrowed from their ancestral homelands or that they have come to serve the same cultural purposes. Apart from seeking to document the various ways Mauritians use religious colors to symbolize their ethnic identity, I have also sought as part of my ethnographic research to get a sense of the cultural meaning that Mauritians have imparted to these religious colors. I was able to do this, in part, by talking to men of religious learning and people who are actively involved in the public promotion of their ethnic groups in Mauritian society and also by conducting a small survey of some of my students at the University of Mauritius to determine how familiar they were with how religious colors are used in everyday life and how the students understood the meaning of these colors. Here as well, the findings of my research did not yield unequivocal results, but the findings of the survey are, I think, sufficiently representative to support some of the claims I have already made in this article. And of course, where possible, I sought to complement these findings with my own ethnographic observations.
The Increasing Prominence of Religion in Mauritian Ethnic Constructions
Two claims raised in the previous section require further consideration before proceeding to discuss in more detail how Mauritians themselves view the religious colors phenomenon. The first claim concerns the proposition that a number of the society’s ethnic groups use religious colors to symbolize their identities, while the second, but related, claim proposes that the religious colors phenomenon in Mauritius is likely to be a consequence of the instrumentalization of ethnicity shortly prior to, and especially since, independence. However, before I say more about the first claim, I will discuss the issue of the instrumentalization of ethnicity in Mauritius, as this will allow us to develop a better understanding of how some of the society’s ethnic groups have acquired the hardened edges or boundaries that seem to characterize them. Following from this, I will propose that religion, not language as suggested by Eriksen (Reference Eriksen1992), has in many respects become the most important criterion of ethnic differentiation in Mauritian society (although it can be difficult at times to distinguish the importance of either from under the broader umbrella of the concept of ancestral cultures).
Distinguishing Mauritius’s ethnic groups can be complicated. This reflects not only the island’s culturally heterogeneous population and diverse backgrounds but also the various terms and criteria Mauritians use to categorize themselves and one another. Yet in spite of this, most Mauritians (as well as anthropologists) appear to agree on who the society’s main ethnic groups are; although as Benedict (Reference Benedict1961, 45, 51) was prescient enough to underline some time ago, the field of ethnic relations in Mauritius has never been static but is always undergoing change; nor can one claim that the society can be divided into rigid ethnic groups using a uniform set of criteria:
Sixty-seven percent of the population is of Indian origin; 28% is Creole, i.e. of African or mixed African and/or Indian and European descent; three percent is Chinese; and two per cent is European or of European descent. Each of these ethnic categories can be further subdivided, the Indians into Hindus and Muslims and into five linguistic groups [i.e., Hindi, Urdu, Tamil, Telugu, and Marathi], the Creoles according to colour and economic and social class, the Chinese into Christian and non-Christian, and the Europeans into English and French. Mauritius is a plural or multi-racial society, but the principles in general used to mark off the sections within it are varied. (Reference Benedict1961, 32)
Benedict was conducting his anthropological research at an important juncture in Mauritius’s history, as the former British colony set about transforming itself into an independent republic. However, a comparison with Eriksen’s anthropological research conducted some 30–40 years after Benedict had completed his fieldwork shows that the society’s main ethnic groups had not substantially altered in that time:
Officially, four “ethnic groups” existed until they were removed from the censuses in 1983, but they still exist in folk representations: the Hindus (52%), the Muslims (17%), the Chinese (3%), and the “General Population” (28%). However, most Mauritians would agree that Tamils (7%), Telugus (2.5%), and possibly Marathis (2%) should not be lumped together with the majority Hindus from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh in northern India, and that the residual category of “General Population” really encompasses at least three distinctive categories; the Creoles of African and Malagasy descent (23–24%), the Franco-Mauritians of French descent (2%), and the gens de couleur of mixed descent and French language (2–3%). (Eriksen Reference Eriksen, Vermeulen and Govers1997, 2–3)
The only difference between Benedict and Eriksen’s ethnic categories is that most of the British had left Mauritius by the time Eriksen had begun his fieldwork, while those who remained after independence had integrated with the Franco-Mauritian elite.
So how did these ethnic groups come to be the most recognizable ones in Mauritian society? This question has not always received the attention it deserves by anthropologists, some of whom seem to have been content for the most part with describing the society’s ethnic categories and groupings rather than exploring their genesis. Even Eriksen (Reference Eriksen2010), who in his book Ethnicity and Nationalism (now in its third edition) claims anthropologists have paid insufficient attention to history in the study of ethnicity, offers relatively little in the way of any historical insights into the construction of ethnicity in Mauritian society. The exceptions to this statement are what Eriksen says, on the one hand, about the notable shifts in Muslim identity in Mauritius since decolonization—reflecting a concerted attempt by many Muslim Mauritians to disavow their Indian ancestry and identify instead with first Pakistan and then Arabic or Islamic culture—and, on the other hand, how the division of labor during the colonial period reinforced ethnic differentiation. However, others had already drawn our attention to the former issue (Benedict Reference Benedict1961; cf. Hollup Reference Hollup1996), and it is only in his later work, particularly after the 1999 riots in Mauritius, that Eriksen (Reference Eriksen, May, Modood and Squires2004; cf. Reference Eriksen and Carrier2005, 362–64) explicitly acknowledged the relevance of theories of instrumentality to understanding ethnicity in Mauritius. Admittedly, Eriksen has consistently made a point of stressing that ethnicity is an “irreducibly dual phenomenon” (Reference Eriksen and Carrier2005, 353) or always dualistic; that is, it is both political and symbolic, and “identity precedes organization” (Reference Eriksen1988, Reference Eriksen1998). But Eriksen’s version of instrumentalism is at best a weak one, focusing only on how kinship networks have been mobilized for economic and political advantages after recognizing that the 1999 riots expressed a growing tide of ti-kreole frustration with dominance of the state by Indo-Mauritian ethnic groups.Footnote 9 And, ironically, Eriksen ends up effectively blaming ti-kreoles for lacking the organizational sophistication of other ethnic groups, particularly the Indo-Mauritian groups, when one could also argue that it is because they lack a clearly definable ancestral culture and have not been prepared to “essentialize” their African ancestry (Miles Reference Miles1999; cf. Benoit Reference Benoit1985) that they have failed to benefit from certain forms of state largesse.
One can discern stronger versions of instrumentalism in the work of Oddvar Hollup (Reference Hollup1994, Reference Hollup1996) and Patrick Eisenlohr (Reference Eisenlohr2006a, Reference Eisenlohr2006b).Footnote 10 In contrast to Eriksen, both of these anthropologists have stressed how the extension of religious subsidies to non-Christian ecclesiastical organizations and the funding of sociocultural associations by the state since the 1950s has helped to accentuate ethnic differences in Mauritius. For example, Hollup (Reference Hollup1996) has focused on the emergence of a homogenized Muslim identity at the onset of decolonization, claiming that it was out of concern of Northern Hindu domination of the state and public sector resulting from the shift toward independence, which mobilized Muslims and the non-Hindi speaking Hindu minorities as well, of course, as the opportunity to benefit from access to religious subsidies.Footnote 11 Hollup (Reference Hollup1994) has proposed a similar argument for the Northern Hindu majority, though in their case it was not an impetus born of fear of the “ethnic other” that led to a tacit political alliance between the two dominant Hindu sociocultural associations consisting of the Arya Samaj and the Sanatan Dharma Temple Federation but rather the desire to be able to lobby national governments for state patronage of their sociocultural associations and other caste-based groupings. In his work, Eisenlohr (Reference Eisenlohr2006a) has paid greater attention to the promotion of ancestral cultures and the funding the state has been willing to provide for the teaching of so-called oriental languages in the Mauritius education system since decolonization, showing how this policy has largely benefited teachers from Indo-Mauritian ethnic groups at the expense of Creoles.Footnote 12 A particular strength of Eisenlohr’s work is his ability to understand the ethnic logic of multiculturalism in Mauritius, which as he points out has been disadvantageous to Creoles as an ethnic group because they cannot play the political game of “performing” one’s ancestral culture (cf. Eisenlohr Reference Eisenlohr2006b, 242 n. 5). This no doubt also helps to explain why other scholars such as Miles (Reference Miles1999), and Benoit (Reference Benoit1985) before him, have called on Creoles to essentialize their African ancestry in order to benefit from state patronage allocated to sociocultural associations. Eriksen may well be right in pointing to the weak organizational abilities of Creoles and their inability to economize (cf. Eriksen Reference Eriksen1986), but this view overlooks the extent to which they have been sidelined from access to financial assistance and political patronage by the Mauritian state’s policy of multiculturalism.
The inability of Creoles to instrumentalize their identity provides a useful vantage point from which to think about not only the extent to which anthropologists have failed to explore the history of this category but also the relevance of race to discussions of ethnicity in Mauritius.Footnote 13 Anthropologists have long pointed to the weakness of Creole identity in Mauritius, noting the class divisions that beset this ethnic category and prevent the gens de couleur and ti-kreoles from uniting as a political force to combat control of the state by Indo-Mauritian ethnic groups; but in so doing, they have failed to emphasize the extent to which the gens de couleur have also actively sought to distance themselves from ti-kreoles because of a cultural preference for lighter skin color and the stigma of African ancestry,Footnote 14 and they have not considered whether the ethnic category of a Creole in Mauritian society is in fact a racial categorical imposition dating back to the days of European colonialism, when racial classifications were the order of the day (see Christopher Reference Christopher1992). As Eriksen (Reference Eriksen1998, 176) and other anthropologists such as Benedict (Reference Benedict1961, Reference Benedict1965) have pointed out, the ethnic category “Creole” can function as a residual category incorporating Mauritians of mixed parentage or descent who do not fit into the society’s more clearly defined ethnic groups. Nevertheless, the category is most frequently associated with Mauritians who are perceived to be of slave or African descent due to phenotypical characteristics such as black skin color and curly hair and to the fact that most slaves came from Mozambique and Madagascar while very few came from India. Could it not be the case, then, that the increasing tendency in the second half of the nineteenth century to refer to such peoples as Creoles—as opposed to the former tendency of referring to the descendents of Europeans born in tropical colonies this way—was not the result of a racial categorical imposition that sought to identify the remnants of the ex-apprentice population? And might this, in turn, explain the trend among Mauritians labeled as Creoles due to their phenotypical characteristics to prefer to be described as Catholics, as this allows them to establish a degree of parity with Mauritius’s other ethnic groups, who are normally distinguished by their religion and not their race?
Unfortunately there is not the space to pursue the former issue. But the latter issue is a subject that has been picked up in a report written by the anthropologist Rosabell Boswell (Reference Boswell2011) for the Truth Justice Commission that was convened to investigate the legacy of slavery and indenture in contemporary Mauritian society. Noting the general neglect of race by anthropologists writing on Mauritius, who she claims have focused exclusively on ethnicity, Boswell and her team of researchers discovered that descendants of African slaves suffer from racism more than any other ethnic group and that much of this racism comes down to singling out biological or phenotypical features assumed to derive from African ancestry (cf. Laville Reference Laville2000, 278–82). Equally significant however was Boswell’s finding that this racialized identity has been “imposed on Creoles regardless of their mixed heritage” (Reference Boswell2011, 529) and that some had sought refuge in a religious or Catholic identity that is more publicly valued in order to escape the racial stigma associated with Creole identity:Footnote 15 “In the absence of a publicly valued and validated identity, Creoles seem to have gravitated to, sought solace in and a sense of self from, the Catholic religion. … It was found that Catholicism was a major part of defining Creole identity, and indeed use of the term Catholic is seen to be synonymous with Creole. One informant informed me that “Catholic refers to Creole which is also used to mean Christian. I was a member of the Mouvement International des Etudiants Catholiques, the organization was meant only for Creole students” (Boswell Reference Boswell2011, 570–71). Boswell’s finding is similar to that of a colleague, Joel Cabalion, who conducted a survey at the University of Mauritius in 2014 and elicited the following response from a student who was asked to indicate which ethnic group she belonged to. The student circled the category Creole and wrote: “Be careful with the terms you use. Use Catholic instead. It is like saying ‘malbar’ for a Hindu [or] ‘lascar’ for a Muslim. No one would be willing to tick in the box if you use this term and you ask us to identify us like this? It reflects racial discrimination.”Footnote 16
This recent shift, from an identity felt to be an unwanted categorical imposition and based on racial stigmatization, to one based on religion and perceived to be publicly valued and freely chosen, suggests to me that Creoles wish to be regarded on equal terms with Mauritius’s other ethnic groups (cf. Handelman Reference Handelman1977; Jenkins Reference Jenkins1997)Footnote 17 and at the same time highlights how important religion has become as a means of achieving these ends. That religion has come to serve this role and perhaps become the most important criterion of ethnic differentiation in Mauritian society should not surprise us in view of the extent to which religion has been instrumentalized since decolonization, particularly for the Indo-Mauritian ethnic groups. But there is another reason—indirectly alluded to by Eriksen (Reference Eriksen1992) in an essay in which he claims that language had become the most important marker of ethnicity in Mauritius—namely, in contrast to ancestral languages, religion is easier to objectify in everyday life. Certain ethnic groups may stress the importance of preserving their ancestral languages, but as has often been noted by observers, relatively few Mauritians make use of ancestral languages in daily informal social interactions (with the exception of Bhojpuri), thus making it inherently more difficult to objectify as a marker of ethnicity. This is something that Benedict (Reference Benedict1961, 40) himself appears to have appreciated, remarking on the discernable differences already evident during the 1950s in the temple styles, rituals, and “favorite” deities of Mauritius’s various Hindu groups and on the extent to which the ordinary mass of the population were familiar with each other’s religious beliefs and customs. No doubt one can add religious colors to this symbolic repertoire given how effective colors generally seem to be as a medium of public communication (a subject I will return to later); this presumably also explains why Creoles have increasingly become predisposed toward using the color light blue to decorate Catholic shrines and objectify their ethnic identity.
I realize that what I have said above may seem to contradict my earlier argument that Creoles have failed to instrumentalize their identity. However, we should not automatically assume that the desire to objectify one’s ethnic identity by recourse to religious colors necessarily implies that those doing it perceive there is an immediate financial benefit to be gained from doing so. True, there have been recent signs of attempts to instrumentalize or “essentialize” Creole identity as reflected, for example, in the formation of a Creole Speaking Union and the inauguration of the Nelson Mandela Centre for African Culture (cf. also Boswell Reference Boswell2005; Jeffrey Reference Jeffrey2010). Yet, one could just as easily argue that the former predisposition is a folk response at the village and town level to comparable practices by those ethnic groups who have more successfully instrumentalized their identities and objectified their ethnicity through language and religion. The fact that even Chinese-Mauritians paint their homes and fences red and do not appear to have made any concerted effort to instrumentalize their ethnic identity (at least not until recently) lends some weight to this suggestion;Footnote 18 and it should also be borne in mind that they often live in closer proximity to the rest of the mass of the Mauritian population. On the other hand, we see no comparable efforts by Franco-Mauritians to symbolize their ethnicity through recourse to religious colors because, like Chinese-Mauritians, they are not economically reliant on the state for access to financial benefits and religious funding to maintain livelihoods. However, in contrast to most Chinese-Mauritians, Franco-Mauritians tend to live further apart from the majority of the Mauritian population and often appear to have no knowledge or care for such folk ethnic practices.Footnote 19 The fact that Telugus and Marathis do not appear to use any obvious or discernable religious colors to symbolize their ethnic identity seems to point to their smaller numbers compared with some of the society’s other ethnic groups.
The Link between Religious Colors and Ethnicity in Mauritius
The point of the preceding discussion was not only to highlight that there are alternative ways we might go about researching the history of ethnicity and ethnic relations in Mauritius but also to underline what can be learned about the religious colors phenomenon by focusing on recent shifts in Creole identity. These recent shifts in Creole identity are significant because they demonstrate that we cannot develop a sophisticated understanding of ethnic relations in Mauritian society if we do not pay attention to race, which has largely been ignored by anthropologists writing on Mauritius. Indeed, as I have been at pains to point out, the desire to escape a racially stigmatized identity and seek refuge in their identity as Catholics suggests that Creoles wish to be treated on equal terms with other ethnic groups and that the most practical way to achieve this objective has been to try to shift from a system of ethnic classification based on racial stratification to one based on religious equality instead. However, one cannot begin to truly understand this shift if one is not also cognizant of other changes that have been afoot since decolonization and that reflect the extent to which certain ethnic groups, particularly the Indo-Mauritian groups, have sought to exaggerate their religious and linguistic differences in order to benefit from state subsidies. That being said, I do not mean to suggest that the desire of some Creoles to seek refuge in their identity as Catholics also reflects a desire to instrumentalize their identity in order to benefit from the allocation of religious subsidies by the state.Footnote 20 Rather, I take it to be an indication of the extent to which religion has come to serve as an increasingly important criterion of ethnic differentiation in Mauritian society (cf. Selvam Reference Selvam2003),Footnote 21 and that most probably would not enjoy the prominence it now does were it not for the efforts of the Indo-Mauritian ethnic groups to instrumentalize their religious and linguistic differences. However, as I also sought to underline, the prominence of religion in everyday life and the familiarity of Mauritians with each other’s religious beliefs and customs make religion highly amenable for the purpose of ethnic objectification and must also be taken into account if we are to make sense of the Creole proclivity to paint Catholic shrines light blue.
It is more than likely then that the painting of Catholic shrines light blue by Creoles is a response to comparable practices by the Indo-Mauritian ethnic groups. As to which ethnic groups were the first to use religious colors to objectify their ethnicity, this is a difficult question to answer, because as my musings at the beginning of the article underline, it can be difficult trying to historicize such a phenomenon given its populist characteristics and the lack of attention it has received in academic scholarship. However, I am reasonably certain that Creoles would not have begun using the color light blue to decorate their shrines until after the Indo-Mauritian ethnic groups began using their own respective color schema, because in contrast to the latter, the former have historically lacked a ready-to-hand ancestral tradition that they can draw on for such purposes. For instance, the use of the color red to symbolize the identity of Northern Hindus has a number of ancestral antecedents in India and is reflected not only in the use of red to decorate temples but also in the red saris worn by married Hindu women; the red head markings applied by Hindus, such as bindu and sindoor; and the red clothing used to dress Hindu deities in temples and shrines. Similarly, the use of the color green to symbolize Muslim identity and yellow for Tamil identity also has ancestral antecedents; as I mentioned before, Muslims in Mauritius have tended to look to Pakistan and the Islamic world for cultural inspiration, and the same applies when it comes to painting their mosques green or flying green flags over houses and mosques; in the case of Tamils, the ancestral source for the symbolism of yellow is less obvious but mimics the colors used during religious rituals celebrating the goddess Mariamman in Southern India and that in Mauritius is associated with fire-walking events organized by Tamils. The only other ethnic group in Mauritius to use a distinct color to symbolize their ethnic identity, the Chinese-Mauritians, who identify with red as well, are also able to draw on ancestral sources from China as is reflected, for example, in the profusion of red seen during Chinese New Year celebrations.
One might counter that Creoles have had Europe to refer to for ancestral traditions, given that shrines to the Virgin Mary are also in evidence there, but it is difficult to explain how the identification with the color light blue itself came about in the absence of any significant evidence of communication between these respective populations. Even though there may be lower-class groups in Europe (especially Southern Europe) that pray at shrines to the Virgin Mary and depict her shroud in light blue, as far as I am aware, these groups do not decorate their entire shrines light blue, nor were the Creoles I spoke to able to provide me with an explanation as to the meaning of this custom. All they would tell me when I asked them about the symbolism of the use of the color light blue to decorate Catholic shrines was that it was the same color as the Virgin Mary’s clothing, as the following ethnographic example illustrates. Referring to the shrine I had gotten out of my car to investigate, I asked an elderly gentleman who was tidying the grounds surrounding the shrine, and a resident in the nearby village of Cottage, “Que faire ou mette couleur blu?” (Why do you use the color blue?). To which he replied, “Pa rouze, pa zonne, pa verre. Non! Blu couleur vettement Lavierz” (Not red, not yellow, not green. No! Blue is the color of the Virgin Mary’s clothing). By way of contrast, the Indo-Mauritians ethnic groups and Chinese-Mauritians seem to have a clearer sense of the meaning of the colors they use to objectify their ethnic identities. For example, Northern Hindus say that the color red symbolizes the “power of Hindu” and the “victory of good over evil” or that it is “auspicious.” Muslims, on the other hand, say that the color green “symbolizes peace,” in the same way that Islam as a religion is said to mean peace, or that it is the color of the environment in Paradise. And much like the Northern Hindus, Chinese-Mauritians say that the color red is auspicious, while some Tamils say that the color yellow represents the victory of good over evil, just like the Northern Hindus.Footnote 22
In any event, determining precisely when or who started the custom is perhaps less important than understanding how it functions as a system of intercultural communication and which sections of the Mauritian population are most likely to be familiar with it and for what reasons. One of the reasons I drew attention in the previous section to the Creole custom of decorating Catholic shrines light blue was because this helps underline that these practices are more characteristic of what I have described as the society’s “nonelite” ethnic groups—those who live in the island’s most densely populated rural and urban housing areas and who often seem to prioritize religious over racial criteria of ethnic differentiation in public life. It is in these housing areas that one is more likely to find evidence not only of the religious colors phenomenon but also the section of the Mauritian population most familiar with the custom, knowledge of which is normally based on having had a certain degree of exposure to the religious beliefs and customs of one’s relatives and neighbors and that comes from living in residential proximity to one another and sharing common public spaces.Footnote 23 It is also among this section of the population—or what I have previously referred to as the “ordinary mass of the Mauritian population”—that we can talk of there being a highly specialized system of intercultural communication that, while not necessarily understood or grasped by everyone living in these areas, still appears to resonate with a sizable proportion of the population, as is brought out in the following e-mail exchange between a former student of mine at the University of Mauritius, Malina Cheenebash (MC), and me (LC):
LC: Hi Malina,
Thanks for getting back to me. In your response to my survey, which was very informative by the way, you mention that there are certain jokes Mauritians make about Tamils and the colour yellow. But you didn’t say more about this. Do you mind elaborating upon this for me please?
Thanks Leo
MC: Yes, for instance, if someone sees a very bright yellow car, or someone wearing a little too much of yellow, he will joke saying this (car) must belong to a Tamil, or this person wearing all yellow is looking like a Tamil, or is Tamil, or anything relating to Tamils. It doesn’t sound very funny, told like that. But he will usually say ‘madras’ (a more familiar and pejorative(?) word which refers to Tamils) or mamé (mamé means uncle in Tamil, and it is used as a common nickname for many male Tamilians). I hope this helps.
LC: Yes it does Malina! But can you say why Tamils in particular are singled out. I mean, couldn’t one say the same thing about the Muslim penchant/liking for things green?
MC: Yes, it’s the same for Muslims. But in the case of Muslims, it’s not a popular joke-matter. When other people refer to their penchant for green, it sounds more like ‘yeah these fanatics’ in a bitter way. (Maybe because it’s too obvious or excessive or a matter of fact that Muslims associate with green so it’s not really amusing.) While for Tamils, their extremes with yellow comes out as more funny, like overly enthusiastic fanatics, than ‘annoying’. My observations are based on the reactions I have witnessed among my family members, relatives, friends and acquaintances from various circles, different social classes and ethnic groups. But this is just how they react. Why they react as such, is my interpretation.
LC: Well your interpretations are just as valid as anyone else’s, and no less pertinent for that matter. But if that is the reaction to Muslims and their association with the colour green, what about (northern) Hindus and Catholics? Do people make fun of or openly discuss their penchants for certain colours?
LC: Or Marathis and Telugus for that matter?!
MC: Hindus and Catholics do not seem to express their religious/ethnic identification through colours that much, so they are not usually subject to derision. Certain Hindus associate, to a certain extent, to the colour red, but it’s still quite subtle, and not a popular generalization that people notice or comment on. As for Catholics, concerning conscious association to colours, or their penchant, it’s even less noticeable. I don’t think they associate with any colour in general. Unless there is a need to. Like the traditionally ‘Creole’/catholic political party PMSD (with Xavier Duval) using the colour blue, maybe? But this could be just a coincidence too.
MC: As for Marathis and Telegus, somewhat like Catholics, I don’t think there are any specific colour associations.
LC: That’s very interesting. Because out of those we discussed, the association between yellow and Tamils is the one I was least aware of from my preliminary research. Interesting, then, that it’s the one colour association Mauritians joke most about! However, I myself have not discovered any colour association with Marathis and Telugus, but was wondering if I might have overlooked it. Anyway, thanks for all your help. I think you’ll make a great anthropologist!
MC: Oh that’s nice:) You’re most welcome. If, later on in your research, you’re uncertain about certain issues and require a detailed Mauritian perspective, I’ll be glad to help you with that again.
One of the most striking revelations to have come out of this e-mail exchange is just how familiar Mauritians are with the religious colors phenomenon, indeed to the extent that the Tamil fondness for things yellow has come to serve as the butt of jokes in topical conversation, while the Muslim obsession with green has attracted scorn.
To get a better sense of how familiar the Mauritian population were with the religious colors phenomenon, I conducted a small survey of some of my students at the University of Mauritius. The survey was by no means meant to be statistically representative; however, the students I surveyed represent a cross-section of the island’s main residential districts, and this allowed me to get a good sense of the geographical breadth of the custom. As it turns out, not only were most of the students familiar with the custom, but as a number of them indicated in their responses to my survey,Footnote 24 their knowledge of the religious colors phenomenon had been acquired through deliberate instruction from an early age. For instance, a student who associated the color red with Hinduism wrote: “This is what I have been taught and shown since my childhood. For me, I think … the use of red color is normally to eliminate evil eyes [i.e., envy and jealousy]. For example, when a Hindu buys a car or builds a house, they … attach a red ribbon to it.” Another student, who associated the color green with Islam, wrote the following in reference to Muslims in Mauritius: “Because since childhood I see [them] associating … with green, be it their houses, cars, flags, mosques and so on.” The same student goes on to say that she doesn’t associate any particular color with Catholicism because “I’ve never been taught this and I have no idea,” suggesting that relatives and friends had played a role in developing the color associations she learned to make. Of equal interest, however, was the choice of words that some of my students used to describe the color associations they made, noting in a language reminiscent of the way that Hindus in Mauritius describe the ritual preferences of their deities that “red is the favourite colour of Hindu people” or that “most Muslims love to wear something green, as it reminds them of their religion.” Note the use of the words “favourite” and “love” in these expressions; it appears that these students are not only quite familiar with the religious colors phenomenon but also make stronger associations with particular ethnic groups (e.g., Tamils, Muslims, Northern Hindus) while appearing to be less familiar with others (e.g., Creoles, Chinese-Mauritians).
The fact that certain color associations are more pronounced in the minds of my students is significant because it suggests some ethnic groups have achieved greater public visibility than others or made more concerted efforts to objectify their ethnicity through the use of religious colors. This is of course in line with my broader argument in this article, which is that it is the Indo-Mauritian ethnic groups that have been the most successful at instrumentalizing their religious and linguistic differences in order to benefit from state subsidies since decolonization. However, we also need to bear in mind that there is a substantive difference between seeking to instrumentalize one’s identity through the auspices of sociocultural associations and claiming that one can use religious colors for the same ends. While the former proceeds largely at the formal level and requires the intercession of government, the latter is something that primarily takes place at the informal or more parochial level of villages and towns, and relies on a highly specialized form of intercultural communication. Nevertheless, we should not overlook the political advantages that can accrue to ethnic groups by acquiring increased visibility during elections, particularly in developing countries such as Mauritius where control of the state and its redistributive functions are fervently contested by political parties. As Kanchan Chandra (Reference Chandra, Kitschelt and Wilkinson2007) underlines in his work on patronage democracies in developing countries, in a situation of imperfect knowledge in which both political candidates and voters cannot predict how ethnicity will influence the outcome of elections but assume that voting will largely fall along ethnic lines, “visibility” becomes an important dimension of the electoral process as it enables voters to better signal their identity to political candidates so that the latter can potentially attract the support of ethnic voting banks. In the context of Mauritius, then, if a voter or group of voters is trying to signal their ethnic identity to a political candidate to gain some kind of political advantage, amplifying or drawing attention to religious differences such as where one prays, how one dresses, and what one’s specific rituals and deities are can all help to facilitate these objectives, so long as there are sufficient numbers of the same ethnic group to capture the attention of the political candidate.Footnote 25 Of course this not the only or most important means at the disposal of voters and politicians in patronage democracies, but one imagines that using religious colors to objectify one’s ethnicity would certainly help voters to gain the required visibility that Chandra speaks of as it helps to create a coded language that consolidates and simplifies preexisting signs of ethnic differentiation (particularly those based on religion).
The use of yellow by Tamils and green by Muslims are the most pertinent examples that come to mind in this regard given how familiar many Mauritians seem to be with the objectification practices of these ethnic groups. This impression was conveyed by Malina in our e-mail exchange and was further reinforced by her response to my survey. For instance, when it came to noting the color associations she made with Hinduism, Malina wrote that Tamils
distinctly and intentionally associated with the yellow color. Jokes in relation to Tamils are common when something like a garment, or house, or car is of bright yellow color. For their religious festivals, a lot of yellow is seen and many kovils (tamil temples) are painted yellow.
For Islam, however, she wrote,
green. … For obvious reasons. Mosques are usually (always?) green. Muslim areas (which have a concentration of muslim population) have many buildings, houses painted in green. The political party associated to the muslims, FSM, led by Cehl Meeah, has a green emblem. They have green flags around the mosques and muslim areas.
However, while the Northern Hindu association with the color red may seem less obvious in the minds of some Mauritians, or more “subtle” in Malina’s words, one should not underestimate the prominence of this color in the social landscape and how it may in turn have stimulated the objectification practices of other ethnic groups. This was also evident from the student responses to my survey, who noted a vast array of media they associated with Northern Hindus and the color red, indeed more so than any other ethnic group and their respective color associations; this is nicely captured by referring to Malina’s survey response: “Temples are usually adorned with red colour, red flags, and the color red … at the center of many rituals: the female idols are dressed up in red, idols and women wear red ‘bindu,’ and there is the extensive use of vermillion powder in religious rituals. Hindu marriages also include a lot of red.” Here one might also mention the use of the color red to decorate Hindu household shrines, which, along with the red flags on poles that often accompany these shrines, are the most ubiquitous religious feature in the social landscape of Mauritian villages and towns (see fig. 13). Thus in much the same way that Hollup (Reference Hollup1996) has claimed that one of the reasons that minority groups such as Muslims and the non-Hindi speaking Hindu groups emerged as political forces after decolonization was out of fear of the Northern Hindu domination of the state and public sector, one could argue that the extent to which other ethnic groups have sought to objectify their ethnicity through religious colors has been in response to the perceived dominance of the color red in the built environment and the associated objectification practices of Northern Hindus. This would certainly help to make sense of the Tamil and Muslim fetishization of yellow and green; although so far as the color objectification practices of Creoles and Chinese-Mauritians are concerned, we need to consider the possibility that their practices have less to do with trying to counter Northern Hindu political dominance and probably more to do with primarily adhering to the expressive or existentially meaningful dimensions of the religious colors phenomenon.
Northern Hindu shrine
The Link between the Colors of Mauritius’s Main Political Parties and Ethnicity
In the minds of some Mauritians, then, there would appear to be a clear association between certain ethnic groups and religious colors. As I indicated, there are a number of reasons why Mauritians tend to make these associations. First and foremost, it helps if one lives in or has grown up in the type of neighborhoods where one typically finds expressions of the religious color phenomenon and which is usually found in the island’s most densely populated housing areas. Thus through prolonged exposure to the habits and customs of one’s family and neighbors, it is to be expected that one will come to learn what I have described as a highly specialized system of intercultural communication, and which was sharply underlined in the comments of some of my students who mentioned learning these associations since their childhood. The other reason for these associations is that it appears that certain ethnic groups, particularly the Indo-Mauritian groups, place great store in the custom and have seemingly made more concerted efforts to objectify their ethnicity through religious colors. Indeed there are strong grounds for arguing that in doing so, the Indo-Mauritian ethnic groups have recognized that there is a political advantage to be gained from enhancing their public visibility so as to attract the attention of political candidates during elections, many of whom rely on ethnic voting banks to secure electoral victories (cf. Srebrnik Reference Srebrnik2002; Reddi Reference Reddi2013). On the other hand, it is likely that the more muted color associations Mauritians make with Creoles and Chinese-Mauritians stems from the fact that these ethnic groups invest less effort in trying to objectify their ethnicity for political gain. However, we should also bear in mind that Chinese-Mauritians tend to live further apart from the ordinary mass of the Mauritian population in higher-income housing areas—though not to same degree as the Franco-Mauritians, who are the most exclusive of the society’s elite ethnic groups. While in the case of Creoles, the fact that their habit of using the color light blue to objectify their ethnicity seems to be a more recent custom probably explains why so few of my students were able to make this association in their minds.
There was another type of color association that my students made in the survey which I have yet to comment on. It concerns the resemblances that they noted between the colors they associated with certain ethnic groups and the country’s main political parties. Admittedly, not as many made this association, but the fact that several did is significant enough to warrant closer examination, as it suggests there is a link between these phenomena and the possibility that political parties in Mauritius are prepared to manipulate color associations to mobilize their supporters. However, in order to develop a better understanding of the relationship between these phenomena, I should begin by saying more about which political parties in Mauritius are associated with what color schema and how they use these colors to instill a sense of loyalty among their supporters and mobilize them during elections. Perhaps the first thing I should point out is that each of the country’s main political parties has a distinct color and symbol that they use to identify themselves for the benefit of the electorate, and that each of these parties, the Labour Party (LP), Militant Socialist Movement (MSM), Parti Mauricien Social Democrat (PMSD), and Front Solidarite Mauricien (FSM), draw on relatively well-defined ethnic constituencies. For instance, the LP, whose color is red and symbol the key and originally began as a worker’s party, is now widely associated with the Northern Hindu majority who are typically represented in rural villages and make up the largest ethnic group in Mauritius. On the other hand, the MSM, a faction which broke away from the Movement Militant Mauricien (MMM), is a smaller political party but has often been in power since independence and also draws much of its support from rural villages dominated by Northern Hindus, although its color is orange and symbol the sun. Then there is the PMSD, a party that also plays an important power broking role in Mauritian politics and is perhaps most famously associated with the late Creole leader Gaetan Duval, and whose color is light blue and symbol the fighting cock and draws much of its support from Creoles and Franco-Mauritians many of whom identify as Catholics. And of course I should not forget to mention the FSM, led by Cehl Meeah, whose color is green and symbol the palm tree, and is seen to represent Muslims and is the political party most explicitly associated with representing one ethnic group in Mauritius. One might also mention the MMM, whose color is purple and symbol the heart, but it is not associated with any one ethnic group and tends to appeal to a more mixed ethnic constituency based in the island’s urban center and which also seems to be in line with its militant socialist roots and initial opposition to communalism.
From the foregoing it should be evident that there is a remarkable correspondence between the colors of Mauritius’s main political parties, their ethnic constituencies, and the religious colors typically identified with these ethnic groups. This presents us with an obvious question: Are these resemblances merely a coincidence or were they planned that way? It is difficult to answer this question because I could not find anything written on the history of how these political parties came to acquire their colors or chose their symbols. And even those I spoke to who are well-versed with Mauritius’s political history, such as Sada Reddi, a historian formerly based at the University of Mauritius, admitted he was not sure himself. However, when it comes to the LP, as Sada and I seemed to agree, the choice of the color red would seem to be an obvious one given the role the party played in the history of class struggle in early twentieth-century Mauritius and the internationally recognized colors of socialist parties around the world. Nonetheless, that by no means rules out the possibility that its color has come to acquire a very different meaning for the present generation of its supporters in Mauritian society today, particularly Hindu or Indo-Mauritians, as the following comments from a student response to my religious colors survey illustrates. “Red is a very significant color for Hindus” the student notes, and after discussing its religious symbolism, goes on to offer an ethnicized political interpretation of the symbolism of the color red: “Also, red represents hard work in the sense that poor Indians would give their blood and worked hard to earn money for their living.” In the case of the MSM, the choice of orange is most probably linked to the color of the Bharatiya Janata Party in India, a Hindu nationalist party which advocates Hindu supremacy and that shares certain affinities with the MSM’s ethnic constituency in Mauritius. And of course, we should not forget that saffron, which is orange in color, is sacred to Hindus who associate it with the color of fire and the robes of religious renouncers. I am less certain when it comes to the PMSD, although here it is worth mentioning that originally it was a party begun by and identified with Franco-Mauritians prior to independence, so the choice of light blue and the symbol of the cock may have been determined before Gaetan Duval took over the reins of the party. On the other hand, the FSM’s choice of green seems fairly straightforward, given Islam’s association with the color green around the world and which is perhaps most starkly reflected in the green color that adorns the national flags of countries that are Islamic.
Yet even if we cannot say with any certainty how these political parties chose their colors and if it was ethnically motivated. What does seem to be clear is that in the minds of some Mauritians at least, there is a strong link between choice of political party colors and the colors that they associate with the society’s main ethnic groups. The association that my students mentioned the most in their response to the survey was the green color of the FSM and the religious color of Muslims as an ethnic group. As one of my students put it: “All the mosques in Mauritius are painted in white and green color. On television too political parties which consist of Muslims, they make everything green even their logo.” And as we have already seen, my former student Malina also made this association, but for her the link between the green color of Muslims as an ethnic group and the FSM was even more explicit. A number of students also noted the link they perceived between the red color of the LP and Northern Hindus as an ethnic group, one mentioning, for example, that it was the color they associated with the political party of the former prime minister, Navin Ramgoolam, “a Hindu.” While another student mentioned both red and orange and wrote that “Hindu politicians … associate their parties with these colours.” In addition to what Malina wrote for the associations she made between the color red and Hinduism cited above, for orange she wrote
Orange is seen as a variant of the red used. But also representative of the Hindu community, as we can see it has been adopted by sociocultural groups like the Voice of Hindu and used for propaganda when the Hindus are targeted. Maybe this is an extrapolation, but the 2 political parties which have a primarily Hindu following and rely heavily on their association with Hindus, are the Labour party and MSM. Labour is red. And MSM orange.
Malina was also the only student to make a link between the blue color of the PMSD and it being the color most frequently associated with Catholicism and Creoles as an ethnic group. As she replied to my e-mail, “As for Catholics, concerning conscious association to colors, or their penchant, it’s even less noticeable. I don’t think they associate with any colour in general. Unless there is a need to. Like the traditionally ‘Creole’/catholic political party PMSD (with Xavier Duval) using the colour blue, maybe? But this could be just a coincidence too.”
So what are we to make of these associations on the part of my students? Are they merely a “coincidence” or exercises in mental “extrapolation” as Malina’s responses suggest? Or is there something more sinister at hand? Of course, one should be wary of exaggerating the predictability of these associations. Yet by the same token, they do raise some serious concerns regarding the noticeable correspondences between the two phenomena and the effect they might have on the psyche of the Mauritian population. Here, I am thinking in particular of how such correspondences might fuel the perception among the population that when in government, political parties associated with certain colors will only represent the interests of the ethnic groups and constituencies associated with those colors. Or, in turn, may discourage Mauritians from voting for certain political parties because they are seen to represent specific ethnic constituencies over others, and thus will fail to be truly representative as is required in a healthy functioning democracy. One of the reasons I am raising these issues is because the use of color symbolism is a powerful medium for the transmission of messages in the public domain, and this is of particular concern in a country such as Mauritius which until quite recently had high rates of illiteracy. Mauritius still has pockets of illiteracy among the elderly and low-income groups, and one shouldn’t forget that the reason that Mauritius’s political parties opted to use colors and symbols was to make it easier to identify themselves to the electorate for what was a largely uneducated population prior to independence. Also, Mauritius has quite a distinctive political culture, such that when national elections come around, the traditional supporters of the island’s main political parties can become violent at times as they battle for political favors, thus the use of colored flags and other insignia to demarcate political parties from one another can act as sources of tension during political rallies.Footnote 26 In any case, irrespective of the level of education of the electorate in Mauritius, any system of intercultural communication based on colors will always prove to be highly effective given that it is such a powerful medium for consolidating and simplifying pre-existing signs of ethnic and political differenceFootnote 27 as the following ethnographic example illustrates.
The ethnographic example I am thinking of concerns the repainting of several Hindu shrines which were originally red but had been repainted orange in a remote village by the seaside in the southeast of Mauritius named Le Bouchon. It was after going on a walk to Le Bouchon with some family friends that I noticed the shrines seemed to have been repainted, and which I was able to confirm by consulting older pictures of the shrines on the internet and comparing them to my more recent photographs. The timing struck me as significant, because if my hunch was correct, the shrines most probably had been repainted after the MSM won the general election at the end of 2014, replacing the former government led by the LP’s Navin Ramgoolam. I subsequently had the opportunity to go back to Le Bouchon on another day and spoke to a toilet attendant there, named Rajiv, who said he had been working there for eight years. I mentioned that I had noticed the shrines had been repainted and asked him if he could recall when it had occurred. “Entre Janvier ek Decembre,” he replied in Kreol. When I prodded him further and asked if the shrines had been repainted after the general election on December 10, 2014, a grin played across Rajiv’s face and he not only confirmed that this was the case but also said a number of other visitors had asked him the very same question. Thus, it would seem that the individuals who repainted the shrines were not doing it merely for the purposes of beautification but were also making a statement about where their political allegiances lay following the victory of the Alliance Lepep coalition led by the MSM under Sir Anerood Jugnauth. This example also brings to mind what I said previously about the Kalimai in Camp de Masque Pavé and its caretaker saying he could have chosen either red or orange to decorate the shrine as both colors are symbolically representative to Hindus; except that in the case of the Le Bouchon shrines, the decision to repaint the shrines orange after the victory of the MSM appears to point to the replacement of one Hindu-dominated government with another using the coded languages of the religious and political colors phenomena to make this statement. And as it turns out, Le Bouchon was in an electoral zone that had voted for Alliance Lepep.
There is another reason why this ethnographic example is of interest. It points to a concern I’ve heard Mauritians raise before, which is that the construction of religious shrines in public spaces such as beaches (particularly Hindu shrines) can be read as a gesture signifying communal ownership that conspires to deprive others of access to those spaces. While I am not entirely convinced by this argument (cf. Claveyrolas Reference Claveyrolas2010) and can think of other reasons that have yet to be explored—such as how Mauritians conceive of the spatial relationship between the natural environment and evil or dangerous forces like oceans and the need to tame those forces through acts of devotion and religious propitiation—of more interest to me in this essay is what these respective phenomena can tell us about the role that the built environment plays in the construction of ethnicity in Mauritius. The built environment in Mauritius—particularly in its more densely populated housing areas—offers a veritable smorgasbord for students of ethnicity, yet it is a subject that anthropologists have barely scratched the surface of. What I have tried to show in this essay is that the built environment is often used by Mauritians to make statements about ethnicity, and that we must read it carefully to make sense of these statements. These statements are not always immediately apprehensible to the naked eye, but they are most certainly there and can be decoded if one does the necessary research and looks in the right places. One of the methods I recommended for making sense of the religious colors phenomenon was that of “triangulation,” or what effectively amounts to determining the relation between the various cultural contexts used to objectify ethnic differences such as cemeteries, official places of worship, public and private shrines, religious festivities and the like. But we’ve also seen that this method is not sufficient in itself to develop a sophisticated understanding of ethnic relations in Mauritius, and that to do so it is equally advisable to draw on anthropological theories of instrumentalization and a relational view of ethnicity. When combined with an appreciation of how important religion has become as a criterion of ethnic differentiation, these methods and theories allow us to get a better purchase on constructions of ethnicity in contemporary Mauritian society.
