Fiji’s Book of 2009
9-Jan-2010

Deryck Scarr has produced Fiji's book of 2009. Called ‘Tuimacilai’, it
is a biography of Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, the imposing Lauan chief who
is arguably Fiji's most significant political figure of the 20th
century. Where his uncle, Ratu Sir Lala Sukuna, shaped key Fijian
institutions during the British colonial era, it was Ratu Mara who was
tasked with merging and managing them into post-colonial relevance. As
Scarr's book makes clear, this was a difficult commission and Ratu
Mara had the often thankless role of bringing his own Fijian people
into a new frame of mind that accepted the new accommodation to
multiracialism required for post-independence, and of hosing down the
often unrealistic expectations and democratic demands of Fiji's other
citizens toward the same ends. Scarr shows powerfully how Fijian
ethno-nationalism nagged Mara on one side and Indian demands for
political equivalence nagged on the other. Such tensions that inhere
Fiji's political realities would have torn a lesser man apart -
perhaps, it could be argued, in the end they did dismantle Mara.

One also sees clearly in Scarr that European expectations shaped his
training and outlook. The ambivalence on this score is obviously less
characteristic of Mara than Sukuna, but the 'man of two worlds'
paradigm is there as well. In the end Scarr's biography is less a view
of Mara, whereby we get inside the essentially Fijian man and his
motives, than a political history of Fiji from the time of his birth
to the end of the second millennium. But we do read of Mara's battles
with AD Patel, SM Koya, Jai Ram Reddy and Mahendra Chaudhry; of his
international leadership on behalf of the Pacific Forum; of his never
ending struggle to placate indigenous nationalists; and his implied
attempt to reconcile modernity's demand for transparency with the
'don't ask' ethic consistent with hierarchical tribalism. Along the
way, we discover why he converted to Catholicism, of his engagement in
unsolvable sugar and land politics, and see his abiding commitment to
the chiefly system.

But there is distance between the reader and the subject that Scarr
-who knew Mara well - either respectfully maintains, or fails to
bridge. One puts the book down with a deeper knowledge of some of the
details of what made Fiji during the colonial era, and of some
fascinating asides in Ratu Mara's time in power, but little of the man
himself - what he was like in himself, his intellectual influences and
the roots of his political theory. We see some of personal dealings
with others close to him, but know little of what he thought of art,
his favourite composers, philosophers, and favourite authors. Scarr’s
book is a public political history rather than an intimate biography.
Some who were close to Ratu Mara were not consulted; others who were
not close to Mara and were consulted seem to have been elevated by
Scarr to historical signficance beyond their biographical import.

Perhaps the problem lies in Scarr's reliance on documentary evidence.

Ratu Mara's role, if any, in the original coup of 1987 for example
remains as mysterious as ever.

But the central weakness of Scarr's effort is not just the potted
uneven quality of his research, but the style of his delivery. A
biography where the author’s voice shouts down the character being
described needs editing. No publisher should have let sentences as
long as these through: ‘Even so, and my much contrast, the Colonial
Office had been encouraged by the ambitious Colonial secretary P.D.

MacDonald with his ‘winds of change’ assumptions to expect a reasoned
approach from ‘A.D.’ in London, since MacDonald admired him for
eloquence and a sound position in favour of the ideal common electoral
roll and independence for Fiji with far fewer reservations than
MacDonald was ever inclined to entertain for Ratu Mara’s
disinclination to be shepherded away from the more pragmatic communal
rolls and the British presence that his people did not wish to let
go’. Or this (a sentence or two later): ‘Certainly that old Tory
political bouvardier Prime Minister Harold Macmillan himself, friend
of Selkirk though he was, had not visibly considered ethnic or
economic realities that Western intervention had created, advanced, or
imperfectly concealed in Africa, let alone in the South Pacific, when
he committed Britain to rapid retreat from empire on fiscal grounds by
his epochal ‘Winds of Change’ speech in 1960 during a visit to Ghana
which was shortly under Nkrumah’s dictatorship prior to a series of
coups’. And this: ‘For with some little experience of its own, the
Colonial Office had been particularly impressed by Cakobau’s
Government under J.B. Thurston, who took New Zealand with its heavy
white settlement, land spoliation and race-war as the example to be
avoided; and during debates on annexation in the House of Commons,
Prime Minister W.E. Gladstone himself was actually being charitable in
describing as ‘sadly deluded’ the contrasting philanthropy of Member
of Parliament and South Seas merchant William MacArthur, with his
ongoing motions for annexation, his admiringly supportive Methodist
connections in Fiji, his false humanitarian propaganda, his company’s
undeclared investments there and, shortly, this company’s secret
labour recruiting for its illegally-obtained plantations in Samoa’.

All of these sentences are perfectly sensible (as they should be), but
are they necessary? The density of Scarr’s script will entertain
afficianados of the English language, but what will their effect be on
the average Fiji reader? Reading ‘Tuimacilai’ is thereby unnecessarily
reduced to an experience like unto chopping one’s way through a
linguistic tropical jungle - it is an interesting experience, but it
is slow, tedious work and too many who would benefit may abandon the
prospect before they get started. This would be an unfortunate outcome
for a book worth that is otherwise its weight in words.