Through a seminar series in July, Dr Trevor Sofield presented a political and historical analysis of the recent Fijian crisis. Dr Sofield is the former High Commissioner to the Solomon Islands (1982-85) and Deputy Secretary-General of the South Pacific Secretariat based in Fiji during the 1987 coup. He now chairs Murdoch’s tourism programme.

In order to understand the recent coup, we need to go back at least 2000 years to the colonisation of Fiji by Polynesian seafarers from south-east Asia.

This was followed by the Melanesian wave about 900 years ago, and the two major cultures have been rivals ever since.

The invasion of Fiji in 1849 by the Tongan (Polynesian) warrior prince, Ma’afu, led directly to the formation of several warring factions in Fiji (called confederacies).

After some 30 years of slaughter, the Great Council of Chiefs was formed and Fiji ceded to Britain to bring in “pax Britannica”. Most Fijians think the Great Council of Chiefs has existed “since time immemorial” – but it first met only 124 years ago, in 1876. The Council was dominated by Polynesian high chiefs with the some Melanesians with lesser ‘royal’ status than the kingly lines from Ma’afu and Tonga.

The Indians entered at the specific action of the British colonisers (without consultations with the Fijians, of course). They were brought into Fiji because the Colonial Sugar Refinery wanted indentured Indian labourers for its newly established cane fields.

The take-over of Fijian customary lands in western Fiji was particularly widespread. In 1920, the indentured Indian laborer system came to end and Indians were given the opportunity to return to India or invited to stay by the British Government. Most chose to stay. Therefore it is less than three generations since half of the present population had only guest worker status.

Through no decision of Fijians, they were reduced to a minority in their own country. The subsequent dominance of educated Indians in professions is now deeply resented by Fijians, who simply saw a loss of power and control to uninvited outsiders.

Hence the deep-seated, indeed profound, antipathy towards many Indians by many Fijians. Resentment has grown through Indians consistently pursuing a dream of a little India in Fiji since the 1920’s. Indians are still separate and distinct, never integrating into Fiji.

Indians have been used as a trigger in the recent coups, a very easy and emotive scapegoat, for extreme nationalist Fijians to engage in an unconstitutional act to seize ultimate power. However, once the coups had taken place, Indians were in effect marginalised.

Fiji politics were dominated by the re-emergence of the struggle between western Melanesian Fijian and eastern chiefly Polynesian Fijians by Ma’afu back in 1849. The ensuing power struggle in 1987 was between Fijian factions, not between Fijian and Indian.

Similarly the 2000 coup can be interpreted as a struggle between the old confederacies, this time the Kubuna confederacy (George Speight’s people from central and eastern Viti Levu, the main island) attempting to assert over-all authority and replace the Tongan/Polynesian hierachy with their own chiefly system.

Same old rivalries, new times, new circumstances, but still about indigenous power factions. The Indians were again marginalised politically while the Fijians take up the ancient struggle against other Fijians.