Mint Primer: Chagos: Why India supports a cause forgotten by the world
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Chagos is one of the world’s longest-running unresolved issues of decolonization, whose return to Mauritius has been championed by India for decades. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Mauritius this week can help see the campaign to its logical conclusion.
The Chagos islands or Chagos Archipelago is a group of 58 atolls in the Indian Ocean, lying around 2,200km north of Mauritius. Most of these atolls are tiny submerged reefs, but there’s one that stands out—Diego Garcia. The largest of the atolls, Diego Garcia is a major US airbase and of strategic importance to the US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
Also read | PM Modi awarded Mauritius’ highest honour, Grand Commander of the Order of the Star and Key of the Indian Ocean The UK kept control of Chagos even after Mauritius’s independence in 1968. Chagossians were expelled by the British between 1967 and 1973 to make way for the airbase. They were forcibly settled in Seychelles and Mauritius, and many slipped into alcoholism and poverty.
Prime Minister Modi is in Mauritius this week as chief guest on its National Day—his third visit to the country and second as PM. With the two nations sharing close ties (70% of its population is of Indian origin), Modi is expected to reiterate India’s decades-old strong support for Mauritius’s sovereignty over Chagos to Prime Minister Navinchandra Ramgoolam. This follows the UK finally signalling its willingness to return Chagos to Mauritius in October 2024, after a years-long campaign by feisty Chagossians and the Indian Ocean country.
Read on livemint.com