Mauritius reminds Britain of its colonial present

Sandeep Dikshit

New Delhi, February 22

The British at the Raisina Dialogue got paid in the same coin when they went on hammering on the Ukraine issue and sought solidarity from the Global South in their support of Kyiv against Moscow.

It all started when a parliamentarian from the UK Peter Benjamin Mandelson said he wanted everyone, including so-called countries of the Global South, to “rediscover” the idea of anti-colonial solidarity and “show very firmly indeed their position against the imperial war in Ukraine and stand absolutely four-square behind people fighting for their freedom and democracy”.

After the applause had died down, ORF president Samir Saran said he wanted to respond but he wouldn’t. Nevertheless, he went on to quip, “You want to make a case for colonialism? It’s kind of ironic where it came from…that particular intervention. It would have suited (Mauritius) Minister Gobin to be saying that and not necessarily a Lord from the UK.” Mauritius Foreign Minister Maneesh Gobin shot back by observing, “Territorial integrity should apply equally to the Chagos Archipelago. Territorial integrity should not be allowed with one set of rules for a particular area of the world and not apply the same set of rules to other part of the world.”

Mauritius has held the position that a part of its territory — the Chagos archipelago — was surreptitiously handed over by the Britain to the US where the latter built a huge naval base on Diego Garcia, its largest island.