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THE
MALDIVE ISLANDERS, A Study of the Popular Culture of an Ancient
Ocean Kingdom.
Price:
Euro 50 plus postage and packaging (as at 23 July 2001)
Contact Xavier Romero-Frías to place your order: ethnoind@hotmail.com
| INTRODUCTION
| EPILOGUE
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VILLAGES
IN THE OCEAN
In the low,
lush tropical coral islands of the Maldivian Atolls, villages
were located in the middle of the island. Owing to their independent
spirit, Maldivians used to build their homes in a haphazard
way about the island. Thick coconut groves and other vegetation
encircled the human settlements, so that no house would be seen
from the sea. The only constructions with a 'beachview' would
be makeshift sheds for boatbuilding or boat- repair and lonely
'ziyarat' shrines.1
There
are a number of reasons for hiding human settlements. Traditionally
Maldivians didn't think that it was good for a person to look
too much at the sea, because one's 'heart would turn to stone'.
This sentence, in Divehi means that one would lose one's memory2 and become absent-minded, finding it difficult to concentrate
on, for example, reading, and not that one would become merciless.
Furthermore,
many trees didn't grow well if the salt-spray hit them directly.
Therefore, the first barrier of resilient3 bushes growing close to the waterline and the second barrier
of coconut trees, would effectively protect the more salt-sensitive
plants growing in the interior of the island, like bananas,
papayas and breadfruit trees. For the same reason, paths were
narrow and winding, and the point where a path met the beach
was considered an important geographical feature in the Maldivian
settlement pattern.
Such
points were called fannu in Divehi, the language of the
Maldive Islands, and they were like the 'gates' or 'mouths'
through which the village inside the island opened itself to
the sea. People went to the waterline with a purpose. Men would
go to the sea to fish, girls would go to the beach to scrub
pots, all people would go regularly to answer calls of nature,
and sometimes boys would go there to play. However, unless there
was a necessity to go there, people would stay as much as possible
in their villages inside the island.
The
interior of the islands back then was a green, pleasant and
cozy place, admirably described by H.C.P. Bell when he visited
the Maldives in 1922:
"'A
thousand trees towards heaven their summits rear' making of
the clean-kept peaceful roads "with leafy hair overgrown", cool
umbrageous "cloisters", almost continuous in their extension.
Houses there are in plenty, but so well embowered and hidden
by sheltering fences and skilful adaptation, as to give the
effect of a somewhat close-set rustic village; with little suggestion
of regular streets and habitations (...) to mar the picturesque
peaceful tout ensemble. In roads, gardens, houses --no matter
what or where-- "order in most admired disorder" rules.4
However,
during the nineteen-forties, the self-contained world of the
Maldive islanders experienced a terrible shock. Mohamed Ameen
Doshimeyna Kileygefaanu, who ruled first as regent (since 1944)
of an absentee Radun5 and
then as President of the first Republic he proclaimed (in 1953,
the last year of his rule), decided to build new avenues in
the islands. The drive was allegedly to 'give a modern façade'
to the country. However, given Mohamed Ameen's highly militaristic
inclinations, it was probably a counter-insurgency measure (of
preventive character, as there was no insurgency within the
country back then). Having studied in Europe, the new ruler
had knowledge of modern warfare and introduced many reforms
in the Maldivian military.
Mohamed
Ameen introduced leader cultism in the islands. He was the first
Maldivian leader that displayed himself wearing a soldier's
uniform: his portrait (see illustration) had to be displayed
in every office, public buiding and school throughout the Maldive
Islands. His desire was to have an avenue in every island to
stage parades where he himself would be leading his modernized
army. Soldiers were given khaki uniforms to replace the ancient
black-and-white feyli waistcloth they used to wear.
Under
the direct supervision of Mohamed Ameen, the entire Maldivian
population, in every island of the country, was ordered to work
in the construction of wide, straight streets. They were traced
criscrossing every island from beach to beach and many valuable
trees were sacrificed in the process. The punishments for any
islander shrinking from work were unduly harsh, as these avenues
had to be built in record time. Special government officers
were dispatched to every important island in order to check
that the work was advancing at a fast pace.
Thus,
menfolk were not allowed to go fishing and spent their days
working hard, felling and uprooting trees, digging and carrying
earth from one place to the other. Since no modern machinery
was used in the process, conscripted workers had to use their
bare hands or rudimentary small tools. Island people said those
were terrible times, that womenfolk and children went hungry
for lack of fish. I met the widow of a man who was killed, tortured
to death, in a punishing cell made especiafly for those who
disobeyed government orders and went fishing or to gather coconuts
to feed their families. The number of people who died in those
circumstances was never recorded.
Islanders
failed to understand the rationale behind such broad streets
going literally from nowhere to nowhere and allowing the deadly
salt-spray to enter right into the heart of the island. Traditionally,
the paths within islands were winding and shady and, according
to the islanders it was a pleasure to walk on them. Those paths
were also winding, not only to avoid the salt-spray, but also
to hamper the movements of certain evil spirits that moved in
straight lines, like the malevolent spirits of the dead ancestors
(kaddhovi).6
However,
mostly, people were sore for having to sacrifice so much badly
needed good soil and the cool shade and the fruits of different
kinds the trees could offer. All individual islands in the Maldives
are very small (the largest being barely 5 sq/km) and the total
land surface of the whole archipelago lies around a mere 300
sq/km. Considering that there is so little of it, it is hardly
surprising that land is so precious in the Maldives. Therefore,
practically all Maldivians, except for a few staunch supporters
of their charismatic leader, Mohamed Ameen, considered the broad
avenues to be a pointless waste.
The
traditional pattern of urbanization was brutally disrupted too.
Maldive villages which had been originally clusters of homesteads,
every house auspiciously aligned towards the proper orientation
determined by the nakatteryaa or astrologer, became long
alignments of houses stretched along the new avenues. All this
had, and is still having, unforeseen traumatic effects upon
the vitality of the Maldivian island society and many of those
adverse effects have not even been fathomed. The reason being
that the traditional position of the house and the orientation
of its door in relation of the cardinal points had a paramount
influence on social organization and attitudes.7
The
new streets had to be fringed on both sides by coral walls.
Thus, much sand, lime and coral stones were needed. The new
homesteads delimited by walls, increased peoples privacy and
did away with the custom of walking from one house to the other
through the spaces between house proper and kitchen. This area
was known as medugoti in most of the Maldives and as
medovatte in the southern end of the country. Shaded
by plantains, drumstick trees or fruit trees, the medovatte
was where Maldivians, who used to live outdoors sharing the
company of their neighbors, spent most of their life.
Most
men and women in the Atolls claim that the new urban disposition
led to the exacerbation of island rivalries and to the loss
of community life. Many also blame the general growth of pride,
demoralization and selfishness among islanders to the privacy
and isolation of walled-in compounds. Thus, much of the island
social fabric was destroyed by such an apparently harmless action
as building new streets.
After
the traditional urbanization pattern was callously disregarded
and swept away by Mohamed Ameen, no one has come up with an
alternative idea. This misguided plan is, even now, the only
blueprint existing for island urbanization in the Maldives.
Therefore, the local Island and Atoll Offices throughout the
country keep still opening new straight, broad avenues and enforce
the building of walIs8 lining them, exactly as in Ameen's time.
In
1985, one teacher in Meedhoo, Addu Atoll, an island crisscrossed
by a broad, desolate and surrealistic looking avenue, glaring
white in the harsh tropical midday sun, told me that most of
his island's people thought walls were useless and didn't see
the point in building them. As coral stones and lime were becoming
rare, they were making a sacrifice to build the walls, considering
that some of their own little houses were not even walled, but
thatched. He concluded by saying that the government "doesn't
realize how poor some people are."
All
these evils could have been avoided if the common people's opinion
had been valued or respected. Mohamed Ameen is now considered
to be a great leader in the official Maldive propaganda. He
is called 'The Great Modernizer.' However, his methods were
feudal: to build his avenues, all able men in each island were
recruited to do forced labor and were not allowed to attend
to their families. Every morning the island men had to go to
the empty space close to the government office and stand in
ranks. Then, at eight o'clock they marched towards the road-building
sites.
Anyone
who reported late, was beaten with a stick. One man said that
he had been given many lashes when he had been very late. If
someone refused to come he would be locked in a small, stinking
cell. Even though the actual republic was proclaimed only in
1953, the last year of Mohamed Ameen's rule, all those years
are known as 'Jumhuri Duvahi' (the days of the republic)
in the collective memory of Fua Mulaku people. According to
one islander9 who lived through
those times:
'When
we had to open the new avenues in our island, many of those
streets cut straight through marshy ground. Thus, we had to
bring sand and gravel from the beach in baskets to the working
sites. We also had to uproot the stumps of very large trees.
We used iron rods and ropes. Work was very hard and we came
back hot and exhausted. If we would have been fishing or climbing
coconut palms, we would have been exhausted too, but at least
we would bring fish or palm-sap home. Now we were arriving home
empty-handed. Many children would die because of this. We were
getting so little food that we were forced to eat papaya stems,
plantain roots and different kinds of leaves.
The
men who worked were given very little, and bad food. Not like
the food you get at home. My neighbor was jailed after he had
been unloading sugar sacks from a vedi (trading ship).
He was so hungry he pulled a little bit of sugar from one end
of the sack with his finger. He was seen licking his fingers
by a supervisor and was reported. Then he was brought to the
kosi (jail) straight away. His wife, an aunt of mine,
went to plead to the authorities for his release, but was rudely
sent back home under threats. Prisoners were given almost no
food, they couldn't get the customary daily bath and were given
no medical treatment. Thus, my neighbor died after a few months.
'When
we washed him for burial, we saw that his body was full of horribly
infected, stinking wounds. He was not the only one to suffer
that fate though, as many more people died in that jail. A lot
of women and children died of hunger during those days too,
sitting silently in their homes.Their husbands were not able
to bring any food home and they were too terrified to complain
to the authorities.
'We
didn't know why all this was happening to us. We were not informed
properly of anything. They said that there would be less mosquitoes
on the island, but we didn't understand what all that heavy
work had to do with insects, and anyway there were the same
amount of mosquitoes, if not more, afterwards. Our old people,
racking their brains for an explanation, said: "Mohamed Ameen
is the friend of the Englishmen. He wants to kill us all and
give our islands to them,10 so they will come here with their cars and lorries. That
is why he makes us build those avenues.'
Mohamed
Ameen is still a controversial figure in the Maldives and his
ten years of iron-fisted rule disgusted many islanders. However,
he had, and still has, a group of fervent supporters. According
to Koli Hasan Maniku, a local historian, his tenure was a 'one-man-show.'
On the one hand, he introduced necessary reforms, but on the
other hand, his contempt for the plight of the common man in
hard times earned him fierce enemies all over the islands. It
cannot be denied that he had a vision for the future of his
country, but he adamantly disregarded advice and lacked the
necessary imagination to adapt development policies to the needs
of the Maldive Islands. Thus, his modernization campaign was
perceived by the islanders to be a brutally carried out implementation
of his personal whims and fancies.11
Last,
but not least, Mohamed Ameen showed the same contempt towards
autochtonous customs that Arab 'holy men', exalted to undeserved
high positions, had displayed throughout Maldivian history.12 The period of his rule is remembered as a long and difficult
decade by most islanders who had to live through it.13 Southerners claim that his harsh and insensitive policies
disgusted them with the central government. Therefore, it is
not unlikely that this resulting discontentment led, less than
one decade later, to the self-proclamation of the Suvadive government
in the three southernmost atolls.
This
secession was a belated antagonistic reaction, unprecedented
in Maldivian history, towards Mohamed Ameen's excessively centralistic
policies. The ancient absolute power of the Maldivian Radun
(which Ameen made not the slightest effort to relinquish) coupled
with with modern methods of communication and control, translated
itself into a Malé-centered tyranny that stifled the traditional
economy and the independent and laid-hack island way of life.
The Suvadive government was born out of sheer bitterness, as
ethnically and culturally there was no justification for a division
of the Maldives.
Notes:
1Nowadays,
owing to a very high birth rate and a drastic reduction of the
mortality rate, some islands have become overpopulated. Naifaru,
Hinnavaru and Kandoludu in the North of the country are examples
of islands completely covered by homesteads.
2Source
Magieduruge Ibrahim Didi of Fua Mulaku Island (1982).
3Boashi
(Messerschmidtia argentea) witn velvety grey-green leaves
and magoo or gera (Scaevola taccada) with fresh-looking
shiny yellowish green leaves. These bushes, common in every
Maldive island just need sand and seawater to grow.
4H.C.P.
Bell's Monograph, 'The Maldive Islands.'
5Radun
or Rasgefaanu is the traditional way of referring
to the Maldivian King. Sultan Abdul Majid was a Maldivian gentleman
living in Egypt who had no interest in going back to his native
country. Thus, Mohamed Ameen became the de facto ruler of the
country.
6This
metaphysical dimension points at the relationship between the
layout of the village and the need of sanctifying space (Chap.1
'The First Mosques'). In the words of J.C. Levi-Strauss: "We have
then to recognise that the plan of the village had a still deeper
significance than the one we have ascribed to it from the sociological
point of view." 'Tristes Tropiques'
7J.C.
Levi-Strauss analyzed this phenomenon among an Amazonian tribe,
the Bororo. Colonists were aware of this fact and to stupefy and
neutralize the natives, they moved them to villages where houses
were arrayed in parallel lines.
8Since
the mid-nineteen-nineties some ecological laws have been implemented
to protect the reefs. The indiscrIminate quarrying of coral
stones has been restricted. Sand and gravel (coral products
too) keep being quarried for the construction of walls though.
9I
have chosen to protect this person's identity.
10The
Maldives was then a British protectorate. However, Ameen is
officially considered a nationalist hero.
11In
spite of his 'modern' image, Mohamed Ameen's private life was
rather like that of a feudal despot, as he mantained a large
number of concubines from different islands.
12'Chap.
4 'Foreign Masters'.
13This
is a good instance of the wide gap that separates popular sentiment
and officially approved 'historical' records that merely glorify
the ruler. Fortunately, some people were still alive to tell
their side of the story at the time of gathering this information.
The book is a good
investment. Grab it while it is in print!
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