Abdool Razack Mohamed

The Constitution of 1882 was still in force and made it almost impossible for any Indo-Mauritian to be elected by votes.

Sir Abdool Razack Mohamed (عبد الرزاق محمد; 1 August 1906 – 8 May 1978) was an Indian-born former senior minister in the pre and post-independence cabinet of Mauritius.

Abdool Razack Mohamed was born in a wealthy mercantile Memon family in Calcutta, British India in 1906.

His father Khan Bahadur Hadji Zackariah Mohamed was involved in the import and export trade of sugar.

Abdool Razack migrated to Mauritius where he arrived on 16 November 1928 at the age of 22.

He returned to Calcutta where he married Mariam before returning to Mauritius.

Mariam gave birth to 4 children (Amina, Zackariah who died at the age of 3, Zohra and Salma. In 1932 Abdool Razack married a Creole named Ghislaine Ducasse whom he had met at dance lessons. Ghislaine changed her name to Zainab and gave birth to 6 children (Yousuf, Fatma, Abdul Rahim, Aisha, Abdul Rashid and Ismaël). Before his entry into politics he became a well known businessman and trader in Quatre Bornes.

One of his daughters was Aamna Ebrahim who married in Calcutta, India.

Her sons Nasser Ebrahim and Yaqub Ebrahim now live in Calcutta.

During a business trip to Colombia Abdool Razack met Maulana Abdul Aleem Siddiqui whom he invited to Mauritius in 1938.

By 1939 Maulana Siddiqui had migrated to Mauritius and he advised Abdool Razack to get involved in local politics.

His initial entry in politics in 1940 was not successful.

In the early 1940s he championed the cause of all Indo-Mauritians both Muslims and Hindus as most of them were not allowed to vote until 1948.

At the 1945 consultative committee for the revision of the Constitution set up by governor Donald MacKenzie-Kennedy he proposed a new electoral system which would allocate at least 50% of the seats in the Council of Government to the Indo-Mauritians.

But in 1946 Abdool Razack Mohamed was elected as a municipal councillor of Port Louis as an independent.

Although he was a candidate at the 1948 elections he was not elected in the electoral district of Port Louis.

He was then elected as Lord Mayor of Port Louis in 1949, 1953 and 1956.

However, by the 1950s Abdool Razack switched his allegiance away from the Labour Party and joined the bandwagon of the new Ralliement Mauricien which was formed in 1953 by Jules Koenig.

In one of his public meetings he explained that minorities such as Muslims would be better protected from the growing threat of Hindu hegemony especially with the impending constitutional changes.

Given that Ralliement Mauricien was claiming to be a national Roadblock to prevent minorities from being swamped away, Mohamed devoted himself entirely to Jules Koenig's cause.

Using the Ralliement Mauricien's platform Abdool Razack attacked the Labour Party and especially its emerging leader Dr. Seewoosagur Ramgoolam.

Mohamed openly accused Ramgoolam of supporting Hindu nationalists.

He was nominated for the first time to the Legislative Council in 1953 as a member of the party "Ralliement Mauricien" of Jules Koenig in the electoral district of Port Louis as fourth member, and where 3 Labour Party candidates (Guy Rozemont, Renganaden Seeneevassen and Edgar Millien) had been elected with the highest number of votes.

However Abdool Razack quickly came to realise that he was not welcome even within Koenig's Union Mauricienne, epitomised by an incident whereby the party endorsed his rival and colleague Alex Bhujoharry's protest for a recount of votes after Mohamed was elected ahead of Bhujoharry by one vote in Port-Louis.

This was soon followed by the white lobby to oust him from the executive committee of Koenig's Union Mauricienne as well as the denial of a nomineeship in the Executive Council.

The white Franco-Mauritian elite chose Osman instead of Mohamed.

Finally Koenig's party rejected Abdool Razack's request for a separate electoral roll and reserved seats for Muslims.

In 1953 the Union Mauricienne rebranded itself as Ralliement Mauricien and a few months later it was changed to Parti Mauricien which Gaetan Duval later changed to PMSD.

Although Mohamed had already decided to quit politics a series of letters written by groups of Muslims appeared in the press to urge him to return to his past ally the Labour party.

But Mohamed refused to do so directly given that he believed that Labour Party members were dishonest and because he refused to work with his arch-rival Edgar Millien whom he had described as an opportunist.

At a 1955 public meeting he warned that Muslims would not be used as a stepping stone to further other politicians' objectives especially on the growing issue of independence from colonial England.

The local press reported that Mohamed believed that "Muslims do not want an independence whereby we will all be dominated by Ramgoolam".

Thus in 1959 Abdool Razack Mohamed founded his own party called Comité d'Action Musulman (CAM).

Soon afterwards the CAM contracted an alliance with the Labour Party.

Seewoosagur Ramgoolam even attended the first meeting of the new CAM which was held in February 1959 at Plaine Verte.

Within the Labour Party the alliance was well accepted as Edgar Millien had started to distance himself from the Labour Party.

Abdool Razack's son Yousuf Mohamed is a lawyer who was elected for one term (1976 to 1979) to the National Assembly where he served as minister.

Yousuf was also Ambassador in Egypt.

Abdool Razack Mohamed died in Rose Hill on 8 May 1978.

Abdool Razack's grandson Shakeel Mohamed is also a lawyer who has been MP who served as minister from 2010 to 2014.