How an island got free

“A seminal moment in our relationship,” said UK PM Keir Starmer and Pravind Jugnauth, his Mauritian counterpart, in a joint statement.“A significant understanding,” said India. A “historic agreement,” said US President Joe Biden.That’s four very happy countries. But what took so long for UK to end six decades of illegal occupation of the Chagos archipelago and return it to its rightful owner, Mauritius?Lakshadweep, Maldives and Chagos — located 1,700km to the south of India — belong to the same volcanic chain of islands that straddle the waters bearing both India’s name and cultural genealogy. Native Chagossians are of African and Tamil origin.In the mid to late 1960s, even as various British colonies were gaining independence, London resorted to a half-measure when it came to Mauritius. It granted the colony freedom but hung onto Chagos’s seven atolls. Chagos was hastily rechristened British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) and Diego Garcia, the largest of its more than 68 islands, was leased out to US, in exchange for Pershing missiles. And since Washington wanted a wholly uninhabited island to build a military base, London was happy to get rid of the “few Tarzans and Man Fridays”: the UK foreign office’s reference to 2,000 poor but happy coconut farmers who had lived there since early 18th century, and were quite content to press copra for oil, even under the banner of the Union Jack. All of a sudden, their house pets were gassed, they were forced onto ships, and dumped on the shores of Mauritius and Seychelles to spend the rest of their lives in penury and neglect. Under the latest agreement, the US-UK military base will continue operating in Diego Garcia.Meanwhile, 12,000km to the west of Chagos in the remote South Atlantic, London’s announcement last week opened up a hornet’s nest that has been buzzing for long: Argentina will now press for its Malvinas islands — the British Falklands — to be returned to Buenos Aires. That call may well spread to other British colonies, went the domestic narrative.Still, UK’s change of heart over Chagos is, in some ways, a no-brainer. Analysts point to anxiety over the future of Britain’s post-Brexit trade with its all-important Commonwealth partners, the economic powerhouses of Asia, as one reason.In the effusive joint statement, London promised a “new era of economic, security and environmental partnership” with Mauritius, an “indexed annual payment”, grant funding for developing infra on Chagos — and “meaningful change to ordinary Mauritians.”There are subtle nuances in the statements of all four countries that responded to London’s announcement.India has always made it clear that its participation in any global alliances intending to “contain” China, will focus primarily on its own concerns — not in South China seas, not in Pacific Ocean, but along its own land border and in its ‘own’ seas, where crucial shipping lines criss-cross between the East and West. Even the UK-Mauritius joint statement carefully refers to the region as Indian Ocean.But in a pointed reference to China’s sprawling territorial and trade ambitions across both the Indian and Pacific waters, the two statements issued by US call London’s decision to grant independence to Chagos, a welcome development in the “Indo-Pacific”.Semantics aside, Mauritius and China do have a Free Trade Agreement (FTA), and the former is particularly interested in Chinese investment in renewables. According to a Mauritian official quoted in South China Morning Post, China sees Mauritius “as a gateway to the gigantic African market”. UK Tories have slammed Keir Starmer’s govt and say that China may now hog the lion’s share of infra development in the resource-rich, idyllic Chagos islands too.“I don’t understand this mindset of looking for China under every bed,” said a former high-ranking Indian diplomat vehemently. “India can only welcome continued military presence and therewith, heightened surveillance of Indian Ocean from Diego Garcia by its close ally, US,” he pointed out. And while allowing China to develop infra in Mauritius is the latter’s sovereign right, “there are limits that Mauritius simply will not cross, as far as India’s security interests are concerned,” he said.Meanwhile, in the modest, tin-roofed office of Chagos Refugees Group in Cassis, a middle-class neighbourhood in Mauritian capital Port Louis, there is guarded celebration. The nearly 400 Chagossians who still live here, well remember their cruel eviction from their home, its lush groves, its emerald reefs, their church and the cemetery where their loved ones lie. They are happy to be Mauritian citizens, even if slightly hurt and bewildered about not being included in the negotiations between UK and Mauritius at any stage. Their ancient Tamil genealogy is long forgotten and bears no resemblance to their Chagossian-Creole culture anymore. But they are most grateful to India for its mediation — and to one Indian in particular. “If anyone showed us how to fight armed only with legal files, it was Mahatma Gandhi,” said an emotional Chagos Refugees Group leader, Olivier Bancoult over phone from Cassis, the day the news broke. “In court after court and for so many decades, he was our inspiration.”The writer’s work on Diego Garcia for Der Spiegel, was reproduced in NYT and in ‘Foreign Correspondent: 50 years of reporting South Asia’.