Indo-Maritius Muslims: genesis of their Religious Identity

Abstract

The paper focuses on the Indo-Mauritian Muslim Community, which plays an important role in the social and political life of the island state. The paper deals with the revival of the Urdu language spoken by the Indo-Mauritian Muslims who had almost lost the “ancestral tongue” in the process of adaptation to the Mauritius` multi-ethnic and multi- religious society through the eighteenth – nineteenth century. The study reconstructs a brief history of the Urdu-speaking Indian Muslims` migration to Mauritius and their partial assimilation with the local society. The Muslim migrants accepted the local Creole language and some elements of their culture but remained loyal to their religion and traditional Muslim values. The author makes a special emphasis upon the means of revival and development of Urdu language and the formation of the Mauritian Urdu Literature. The Urdu language today is a tool of self-identification of Indo-Mauritian Muslims and primary marker of their religious identity as well.