Dev Virahsawmy

Dev Virahsawmy (16 March 1942 – 7 November 2023) was a Mauritian politician, playwright, poet and advocate of the Mauritian Creole language.

Though he wrote easily in both French and English, Virahsawmy was most renowned for his efforts to popularise the use of Creole.

Virahsawmy was born in Quartier-Militaire, Mauritius on 16 March 1942.

He spent his early childhood in Goodlands but after the death of his mother he went to live with his grandparents at Beau-Bassin.

He started his secondary schooling at Collège St-Joseph in Curepipe and was relieved to be able to complete the final years of his schooling at Royal College Port Louis, after enduring intense racism and bullying at Collège St-Joseph at the hands of racist Franco-Mauritians and Coloureds.

Virahsawmy then travelled to Scotland to study languages, literature and linguistics at the Edinburgh University.

Dev Virahsawmy's father Simadree was a minister of the Labour Party who later defected to rival party MTD.

Former MMM minister Jayen Cuttaree was Dev Virahsawmy's brother-in-law.

These by-elections resulted from the untimely death in office of former Attorney General Lall Jugnauth who had been duly elected in Constituency No. 5 at the 1967 General Elections under the Independence Party/IFB banner.

A few months earlier Ramgoolam and Duval had bitterly fought against each other during the pre-independence 1967 electoral campaign.

However, Paul Bérenger disagreed with Virahsawmy's analysis and instead started to dream about the MMM's future electoral victories nationwide, especially by the aggressive application of identity politics.

Between 1968 and 1973, Virahsawmy was a politician and one of the three leaders of the Mauritian Militant Movement (MMM).

Instead he attributed the MMM's first electoral victory solely to voters' desperation to express their anger and disappointment towards Seewoosagur Ramgoolam and Gaetan Duval who formed an alliance in 1969 simply to allow Ramgoolam to stay in power after Bissoondoyal's IFB had deserted Ramgoolam's government, and UDM had splintered out of the PMSD.

On 22 September 1970, he became the first member of the MMM to be elected to the Legislative Assembly by winning the vacant seat at by-elections held in Constituency No. 5 (Pamplemousses-Triolet).

Virahsawmy conceded that his victory at the 1970 by-elections was not because rural voters liked the newly-formed MMM, a party founded by urban idealists.

Throughout the year 1971 the MMM worked closely with trade unions to ramp up its campaign of nationwide strikes, violent thugs of the PMSD attacked Virahsawmy's house with Molotov cocktails.

In early 1972 Virahsawmy was jailed at the National Intelligence Unit (NIU)'s political prison within the Police compounds of Line Barracks in Port Louis for refusing to pay a fine for "contempt of court" after making public comments regarding the Labour-PMSD-CAM regime's handling of strike actions.

The prison officers provided Virahsawmy with custom-made prisoner's uniforms with long sleeves in order to conceal his atrophied left arm, which resulted from a Poliovirus infection during his childhood.

During his stay in prison Virahsawmy still had to appear in court as a key witness of the Azor Adelaide murder case.

Although he resigned from the Legislative Assembly in 1972 to protest against his imprisonment, by-elections were not held in Constituency No. 5.

On 23 March 1973, Virahsawmy left the MMM and formed his new party Mouvement Militant Mauricien Socialiste Progressiste (MMMSP), which also became known as MMM sans Paul (MMM without Paul).

With the help of Peter Craig, Alan Ganoo, Alain Laridon and Showkutally Soodhun, Virahsawmy founded the trade union movement called Federation Des Travailleurs Unis (FTU) to assist textile workers to bargain for higher wages and better working conditions.

In 1978 most of the leaders of MMMSP, including Virahsawmy, returned to the MMM but by 1983 they had left the MMM again in order to support the coaliton of MSM-Labour-PMSD led by Anerood Jugnauth and Gaetan Duval, especially during the 1983 elections.

Virahsawmy designed the official symbol for the newly-formed party MSM in the form of a golden sun on a white background.

He became Cultural Advisor in the new MSM-PTr government, but as his passion to promote Kreol as a national language was not supported by the government, Virahsawmy left whilst Soodhun stayed within the MSM government.

After leaving politics he concentrated on playwriting.

He was associated with the early protest theatre in Mauritius.

Virahsawmy was married to Loga Virahsawmy, a feminist and chairperson of Gender and Media Southern Africa.

Virahsawmy died on 7 November 2023, at the age of 81.

Dev Virahsawmy had produced an estimated 4000 literary documents according to his wife Loga Virahsawmy at the time of his funeral.

Virahsawmy also bequeathed all copyright to his works to the Catholic Church's Institut Cardinal Jean Margéot (ICJM).

About 3000 of the 4000 documents are poems.

He wrote original works in Morisyen (Mauritian Creole) and also translated a large number of publications from English and French to Morisyen.

Source:

Some of the lyrics of Ziskakan are from early poems by Virahsawmy.