By Dr Pavi Ramhota (Anthropologist)
As in most indentured colonies across the world, Mauritius too has gradually over the centuries experienced a cultural rupture with its roots. The native Indians who were relocated in Mauritius brought with them traditional knowledge systems such as sustainable agricultural practices, nature-based medicine (Ayurveda, Homeopathy, Naturopathy, Unanai etc), a collective wisdom on human, animal and nature interactions.
This traditional form of knowledge is generally transmitted from generation to generation but in the case of Mauritius, this knowledge form underwent several reinventions until the original ways and practices underwent complete change. Also, with the country’s economy depending on European imports, much of this sustainable knowledge form has almost vanished from the memories and everyday practices of the Mauritian citizen.
The migrants who came to Mauritius from India were skilled agricultural peasants who were experienced in sugarcane plantation, were adept at horticulture and also animal husbandry. Their wisdom and knowledge of the seasons, climate, monsoon and also their everyday practices on the agricultural fields were a result of thousands of years of transmission of this craft. The Indo- Gangetic plains have sustained numerous kingdoms in the past and these regions thrived because of the specialized agricultural knowledge that they developed over centuries. Trading not only occurred between neighbouring kingdoms but spread as wide and far as Mesopotamia and Egypt in the West and China to the North.
India has been able to preserve and transmit this knowledge form in and through various channels such as religious practices and ceremonies, art and music, folk culture and folklore among many others. The first few generations of Indian migrants to Mauritius carried this traditional form of knowledge to Mauritius but overtime its transmission and replication did not take place leading to a complete break with the past.
It is therefore very important for any nation to reconnect to those knowledge forms and cultural vestiges that have in many ways shaped the sustainable relationship between nature and humans. These resources as the famous French Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu argues are the ways in which transmission of wealth and knowledge takes place and calls them capitals. Bourdieu conceptualizes valued resources as capital when they function as social relations of power by becoming objects of struggle. Capitals can be created, accumulated, exchanged, and consumed. Bourdieu places the source of capital, not just in social structure but in social relations and connections. For him social capital entails
“ the aggregate of the actual or potential resources which are linked to possession of a
durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance
and recognition.” (Bourdieu, 1984: 249)
Thus, Bourdieu’s (1985) conceptualisation of the social capital is instrumental, in that, it centres on the benefits accruing to individuals which are convertible into economic and cultural capital (includes the embodied cultural capital that confers power and status) by virtue of participation in groups and on the deliberate, construction of social networking (sociability) for the purpose of creating this resource. His conceptualisation attempts to show case the ‘constructedness’ of social capital and that it is used for specific instrumental ends such as domination Cultural capital can also be described as cultural competence. Like economic capital, it conveys legitimacy, and a legitimacy regulated by institutions within the society. In the case of cultural capital, that legitimacy is regulated not by the government but by educational and artistic institutions. Cultural capital can be converted into economic capital, just as economic capital can be converted into cultural capital. However, these conversions happen at different rates of exchange.
Bourdieu’s observations that the construction of the state is accompanied by the construction of a kind of common historical transcendental- i.e. common cognitive frameworks, social schemes of perception, symbolic frames of thought, understanding, and a certain kind of reason- which after a long process of incorporation, becomes immanent to all its ‘subjects’. It is the habitus that lends order to customary social behaviour by functioning as “the generative basis of structured, objectively unified practices” (Bourdieu 1979:7).
In short, habitus, the product of history, produces individual and collective practices, and hence history, in accordance with the schemes engendered by history. The system of dispositions- a past which survives in the present and tends to perpetuate itself into the future by making itself present in practices and in the bodies of individuals. Habitus generates a “practical sense” for organizing perceptions of and actions in the social world.
Taken as an entire system of schemes of perception, appreciation, and action, these dispositions constitute what Bourdieu terms the habitus. However, the habitus must be seen not simply as a historically produced structure that functions to reproduce the social system that generated it, but as a set of schemes both imposed and imposing. Habitus does not only, or even primarily, function at the level of explicit, discursive consciousness. The internal structures become embodied and work in a deeper, practical and often pre- reflexive way.
Reconnecting with the past
Much of this knowledge is embedded in Hindu religious beliefs and practices. However, in recent decades there have been debates regarding the unsustainability of the current modern technological interventions in domains such as agriculture, horticulture, animal husbandry, traditional medicine, and sustainable ways of everyday life. The world is facing an environmental crisis due to scarcity of drinking water, unsustainable soil for agriculture, depleted Ozone layer, poisoned seas, untenable garbage dumps etc. All this is affecting human societies across the world. Ulrich Beck for instance calls this phenomenon as ‘risk society’ and warns of unforeseen devastations and human fatality.
Is it possible to reconnect to the past and restore this loss of traditional knowledge? One possible way is to reconnect to the roots and imbibe and inculcate this knowledge form in young minds. This can be done by inviting specialists in various fields such as agriculture, animal husbandry, traditional medicine, classical art and culture etc. It also means that the Mauritian society must have on hands experience with these ancient practices and not just something that is included in school and higher education syllabi.
The art of farming, the usage of cow dung as manure, the forecasting of weather through traditional methods etc. all need to be practices on site, only then would this exchange of knowledge make sense.
School children must be made part of this training such that their ‘habitus’ becomes tuned to the past rich cultural heritage. Of course, they can be simultaneously be trained in modern sciences, but the dying ancient knowledge should become part of their everyday curricular activity.
