Chagos island dispute

In its decolonisation in the Indian Ocean, the U.K. must ensure that all island nations agree to maintain the fully protected environmental status of the Chagos archipelago

हिंद महासागर में उपनिवेशवाद को समाप्त करने के लिए ब्रिटेन को यह सुनिश्चित करना होगा कि सभी द्वीप राष्ट्र चागोस द्वीपसमूह की पूर्ण संरक्षित पर्यावरणीय स्थिति को बनाए रखने पर सहमत हों।

 The Chagos islands in the Indian Ocean 

Chagos islands के बारे में जानकारी

1 This comprise seven atolls / island or reef , with the northernmost atoll called Peros Banhos. 

2 Maldivians know the Chagos islands as Foalhavahi which are just 300 miles from Addu Atoll, the southern tip of the Maldives and where the United Kingdom had a Royal Air Force base on Gan Island (Maldives) until 1976. 

3 North of Peros Banhos

there are two reefs and a sandbank; another sandbank lies further north. 

4 These reefs and sandbanks are again closer to the Maldives. Historically, these islands and shallows were a part of the Maldives.

Tracing history

मालदीव के सुल्तान का  लिखित सबूत 

A letter from a Maldives Sultan, written in 1560. survives in a Portuguese archive in Lisbon. Here, the King of Maldives clearly refers to the Peros Banhos Atoll as belonging to the Sultan.

The Atoll of FoaMulak 

it is next to the Addu Atoll. It is not by accident that Maldivians call Peros Banhos as ‘FoaLhavahi’. 

British Victorian historians Albert Gray and H.C.P. Bell, in 19th century work that deconstructed island names, suggested that the first part of the word of the island of Fólávaki is perhaps, the Malay ‘pulo’, which is island.

The winds and navigation

The Arab navigator Ahmad Ibn Majid would detail how after going around the Cape of Good Hope (South Africa), when travelling to the east, navigators would take the route that went from FoaLhavahi to FoaMulak, and then straight to the Malay Peninsula. 

Many people from the Maldives Atoll of FoaMulak have Malay features and Malay heritage

French traveller Vincent le Blanc

while in Pegu in 1640, picked up an amazing story. According to him, there was an island called Polouois towards the south of the Maldives, 

which can only be what the Maldivians call the island of FoaLhavahi in the Chagos islands.

This island was ruled by the King of Achen in Sumatra

The King, who had many descendants from several wives, had given the island to one of his children, by name Argiac.

 Another island went to his eldest son Abdanic. This island can only be the Maldives Atoll of FoaMulak. When the king died, the two sons fought with each other; the elder boy sought the assistance of the King of Bengal, and defeated Argiac. 

Inhabited and slavery 

FoaLhavahi came back to FoaMulak. Since then, FoaLhavahi remained uninhabited until slaves who were brought from Zanzibar, populated the Chagos in the late 1700s.

Slaves trade 

The Africa connection

Sultan brought slaves

During the same period, Maldives sultans brought slaves from Africa, and by the mid-1800s,.

 It was the same slave traders 

who brought slaves to the Maldives and Chagos. It is very likely that slaves in the Maldives and Chagos were from the same African clans.

British-French wars

 By 1965, the Chagos islands remained under United Kingdom sovereignty. 

When Great Britain began to decolonise its Indian Ocean territories, there was no logic or reason why the islands should be handed to Mauritius. 

Marking by Sultan 

In the late 1930s, the Sultan of the Maldives sent expeditions to the Atoll to count and mark with his seal the coconut palms on the Chagos islands. 

The last expedition was led by the father of the former Foreign Minister of the Maldives, Ahmed Naseem, who is of African descent. 

For centuries, the Maldives have used the islands of Peros Banhos Atoll as a base for fishing expeditions.

The importance of marine conservation

मछली के संसाधनों की कमी होना 

because countries are 

• handing over fishing rights to greedy factory trawlers 
• and purse seiners that operate from countries outside the Indian Ocean. 

Maldives and the Chagos territory area is free ?

The only zones in the Indian Ocean that are fully protected from industrial fishing are those of the Maldives and the Chagos territory.

 In the case of the Maldives, fishermen use pole and line, one by one — fishing techniques that have no bycatch (other fish or other marine species caught unintentionally) and are maintained at a sustainable level.

Chagos as a protected area 

Great Britain must be congratulated for bringing the whole of Chagos under protected status. 

. Britain must learn its ‘leaving lessons’. Leaving India in 1947 was good, but the human cost from Partition was horrific. 

It is vital that as the process of decolonising proceeds, all island countries of the Indian Ocean, including the Maldives, Mauritius, Seychelles and Sri Lanka, jointly agree to maintain the Chagos archipelago’s fully protected status, in the interests of marine conservation.

Source the hindu