Fijians

[Philip Ferguson <plf13@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Lou wrote:

>I have spent a fair amount of time over the past week or so trying to
>unearth Marxist or radical scholarship on Fiji. Among the handful of
>contributions that fall in this category, there are even fewer that I
>consider truly sympathetic to the Fijian point of view. Most accounts,
>especially the articles contained in Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars,
>tend to view all expressions of Fijian nationalism as if they were
>confronting Caliban.


If this is true - and I think it is actually a big exaggeration - it might
be because of the very thinking Lou shows in this paragraph.

Lou, when you say 'Fijian', you are really not talking about Fijians.  You
are talking about one ethnic group, Melanesian Fijians.  You are assuming
these are the only 'real' or 'legitimate' Fijians and that Indo-Fijians are
not really Fijian at all.  Is it any wonder that a lot of progressive
people in the Pacific, including Pacific Islands radical nationalist
forces, take exception to this kind of exclusivism/exclusionism?

The Indo-Fijians are every bit as much Fijian as the Melanesian-Fijians.
It is their country too.  And it is the attempt to exclude them from
equality in their own country which is the source of the 1987 military coup
led by Rabuka and the failed mini-coup led by Australian(or some kind of
part-white)-Fijian businessman George Speight who, ironically, some people
seem to regard as being more 'Fijian' than the Indo-Fijians.

You will actually search in vain to find any progressive politics among the
Melanesian-Fijian communalists (ie I'm not talking about the general
Melanesian-Fijian population, but about the communalist elements of it).
Despite not being a settler-colonial population, they're still more like
the loyalists in Northern Ireland in many ways, something that your blanket
theoretical position on indigenism - which you seem to regard as
progressive in any context at all - blinkers you to.

You will also find that people who identify with 'Melanesian socialism',
like the leaders of the independence movement in what is now Vanuatu, have
been among the staunchest critics of racial exclusivism and coups in Fiji
and, like other Pacific Island nationalist forces, oppose indigenism.

Having said that, I must add that I've still found your posts on the topic
very useful.  I think you've made some good points: that Marxist politics
in Fiji don't start and end with the urban working class, that we shouldn't
have rose-tinted glasses when it comes to the trade union movement and Fiji
Labour Party, and that a Marxist movement in Fiji needs a serious
orientation to the Melanesian-Fijian peasantry and that a Marxist analysis
outside Fiji needs this too.  I think you have pinpointed some really
important weaknesses in left responses to Fiji.

Cheers,
Phil