Seewoosagur Ramgoolam
Seewoosagur Ramgoolam led Mauritius to an independence half the island did not want and governed the result for fourteen years. The island had no indigenous population at all. The Dutch, the French and then the British used it for sugar, worked first by enslaved people from Madagascar and Mozambique and, after abolition in 1835, by indentured labourers from India who arrived in such numbers that their descendants became the majority. He was born into that community, the son of a sirdar, and qualified as a doctor in London. Independence in 1968 was carried by a referendum-like election with about fifty-five per cent of the vote, against a party drawing on the Creole and Franco-Mauritian communities that wanted continued association with Britain and feared Hindu majority rule. Communal rioting preceded the handover and British troops restored order. The economy was a monoculture on a small island with a birth rate that the economist James Meade had predicted would produce catastrophe. It did not: a family-planning programme cut fertility faster than almost anywhere on record, an export processing zone brought textile manufacturing, and tourism and later financial services followed, so that Mauritius became the standard counter-example to the argument that small African economies cannot diversify. The country also kept its elections, its opposition and its courts throughout, and has had no coup and no suspension of the constitution since independence. One thing was given away. Britain detached the Chagos archipelago in 1965 as a condition of independence and removed its inhabitants to make room for an American base at Diego Garcia, and Mauritius has pursued the claim ever since. He lost the 1982 election and served as governor-general until his death.
- Lived: 1900 CE – 1985 CE
- Nationality: Mauritian
- Roles: head_of_state, politician
