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Mint Primer: Chagos: Why India supports a cause forgotten by the world
Summary
- Chagos is one of the world’s longest-running unresolved issues of decolonization, whose return to Mauritius has been championed by India for decades.
Chagos is one of the world’s longest-running unresolved issues of decolonization, whose return to Mauritius has been championed by India for decades. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Mauritius this week can help see the campaign to its logical conclusion.
Where is the Chagos Archipelago?
The Chagos islands or Chagos Archipelago is a group of 58 atolls in the Indian Ocean, lying around 2,200km north of Mauritius. Most of these atolls are tiny submerged reefs, but there’s one that stands out—Diego Garcia. The largest of the atolls, Diego Garcia is a major US airbase and of strategic importance to the US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
The UK kept control of Chagos even after Mauritius’s independence in 1968. Chagossians were expelled by the British between 1967 and 1973 to make way for the airbase. They were forcibly settled in Seychelles and Mauritius, and many slipped into alcoholism and poverty.
Why are the Chagos islands in the news?
Prime Minister Modi is in Mauritius this week as chief guest on its National Day—his third visit to the country and second as PM. With the two nations sharing close ties (70% of its population is of Indian origin), Modi is expected to reiterate India’s decades-old strong support for Mauritius’s sovereignty over Chagos to Prime Minister Navinchandra Ramgoolam. This follows the UK finally signalling its willingness to return Chagos to Mauritius in October 2024, after a years-long campaign by feisty Chagossians and the Indian Ocean country. US President Donald Trump told UK Prime Minister Ker Starmer he had no problems.
Colonies? Aren’t they a thing of the past?
They are not called colonies any longer but ‘non-self-governing territories.’ The US has them, as do the UK, France, Spain and New Zealand. The United Nations (UN) lists 17, the most famous being Western Sahara (Spain), Gibraltar (UK) and the Falklands (UK), over which the UK fought a war with Argentina. Chagos, by the way, was renamed British Indian Ocean Territory.
What is India’s stand on decolonization?
When the UN was established in 1945, a third of the world lived in colonies. So when India won independence two years later, it lent its powerful voice to the cause of decolonization and it became one of its main global campaigns. New Delhi was a co-sponsor of the 1960 Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, which proclaimed the need to unconditionally end colonialism in all its forms. Today, fewer than 2 million people live in non-self-governing territories, according to the UN.
Also read | Mauritius offers India a gateway for strategic cooperation with Africa
Why is Chagos’s sovereignty important to India?
The main reason is it is a matter of principle for India, which wants to see a world rid of foreign rule. It has welcomed the agreement between the UK and Mauritius, saying it is in line with its “principled stand on decolonization and support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of nations." Another big reason is maritime security against the backdrop of a potential Chinese threat in the Indian Ocean. This brings an important global dimension to the historic people-to-people bonds existing between India and Mauritius.
