Talk:Mauritius

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Mauritius article.
Article policies
This article is supported by the WikiProject on Countries, which collaborates on nations and related subjects on Wikipedia. Please participate by editing the article Mauritius, or visit the project page for more details.
{{{{{1}}}-Class}} This article has been rated as {{{1}}}-Class on its quality.
Africa
Africa Portal
This article is within the scope of the WikiProject Africa, which collaborates on articles related to Africa in Wikipedia. To participate, you can edit this article or visit the project page for more details.
B This article has been rated as B-class on the quality scale.
Top This article has been rated as Top-importance on the importance scale.
This article is supported by WikiProject Mauritius.
Assessment comments
Userbox
Other languages WikiProject Echo has identified Mauritius as a foreign language featured article. You may be able to improve this article with information from the Serbian language Wikipedia.
Mauritius is included in the 2007 Wikipedia for Schools, or is a candidate for inclusion in future versions. Please maintain high quality standards, and make an extra effort to include free images, because non-free images cannot be used on the CDs.
This article is supported by the WikiProject on Countries, which collaborates on nations and related subjects on Wikipedia. Please participate by editing the article Mauritius, or visit the project page for more details.
B This article has been rated as B-Class on its quality.
Peer review This Geography article has been selected for Version 0.5 and subsequent release versions of Wikipedia. It has been rated B-Class on the assessment scale (comments).
Archive
Archives
  1. Old or no more relevant


Contents

[edit] Proposed WikiProject

In my ongoing efforts to try to include every country on the planet included in the scope of a WikiProject, I have proposed a new project on Eastern Africa at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals#Eastern Africa whose scope would include Mauritius. Any interested parties are more than welcome to add their names there, so we can see if there is enough interest to start such a project. Thank you for your attention.

Badbilltucker 16:26, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] History

QUOTE: "In 1965, the United Kingdom split out the Chagos Archipelago from Mauritius to create the British Indian Ocean Territory, in order to utilise the strategic islands for defence purposes in cooperation with the United States. Although the Government of Mauritius agreed to the move at the time, ..."

Is "Government of Mauritius" appropriate in this context? Mauritius gained its independence in 1968, hence there's no way that there was a government "of" Mauritius in 1965.


Phoenicians visiting Mauritius in 2000 BC? Sounds highly dubious. I doubt the Canaanites of that period were capable of the feat - later accounts exist of Carthaginians reaching West Africa, but not Mauritius.80.47.208.100 19:36, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The quotes

Who the hell is Ashvin Jugnarain?-he sounds cool And why is a quote by an unknown figuring in the wikipedia page on Mauritius. This should be removed.

Besides the Kipling quote doesn't exist. Mark Twain said a similar thing but within its original context it was not that positive.

Have kept the quotes, but noted that they are 'variously attributed', listing Mark Twain and Rudyard Kipling as possible sources. --Spudtater 17:17, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
I have removed the Kipling quote, corrected the Twain quote and stated its origin. --Rogier Reijm, 12:11, 5 Jan 2006 (EST)

The history section does not talk at all about the history of the people who were slaves, only the oppressors. I would like to know who were the slaves? When did they come? When and how did they gain their freedom? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.232.111.116 (talk) 23:03:03, August 19, 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Demographics

This section is confusing:

  • Hindi appears twice
  • If "Mauritians" are a minority in Mauritius, this must be explained
  • How is it that the "other Indian languages" are only spoken by a small minority, but these are the same as the Indo-Mauritians who comprise 60% of the population?

Yeah, the article should have said: "other Indian languages" are only spoken by a small minority of INDO-MAURITIANS.

And the article saying Mauritians are a minority in Mauritius makes no sense and therefore I cannot correct this error. (By the way- how can Mauritiand be a minority in MAURITIUS?!)

Someone familiar with Mauritius needs to fix this. Ubermonkey 3 July 2005 16:08 (UTC)

Mauritius was uninhabited when discovered by Europeans, if that helps. Tomer TALK July 3, 2005 18:17 (UTC)
Re: "Mauritians": I believe this was meant to be interpreted as "a minority of Mauritians". I have fixed.
Re: Indo-Mauritians: Indo-Mauritian refers to Mauritians with mostly Indian anscestry. Despite their heritage, the majority speak Creole, not indian languages. (According to the CIA World Factbook, anyway). --Spudtater 16:55, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
The CIA world factbook is correct. Dysprosia 04:05, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Most Indo-Mauritian are NON-Dravidian Hindu. This change has been made to the article.

There's an error on Sino-Mauritius ethnicity. There's no Mandarin ethnic group. Mandarin is just a language used to unify China in the past. It's usage, however has began to erode other ethnic tongues.

Also, From the Article: Mauritian society is highly multicultural. Island residents are the descendants of people from the Indian subcontinent, continental Africa, Madagascar, France, England, China plus a few other places. Can somebody rephrase that sentence? FruitMart07 19:28, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Population numbers

There is something not right with the total population number of around 1,200,000. Scroll further down and you will see that the there were around 1,900,000 voters in the 2005 election. Maybe that figure is divided by 3 votes.

Re: Quote from [[Elections in Mauritius]]: "Every voter has three votes. The total number of votes cast divided by three (648,316) is lower than the actual number people voting (666,178), because not all of them cast three votes."

Population statistics may be confusing. Central Statistics Office (Mauritius) demographics documents make a distinction between population of Mauritius and that of Republic of Mauritius (Will then include dependencies)


Reply: I do agree with the terminology. "Mauritians" is not a good term to describe non-indian descents. We are all Mauritians. Either way,there are so many intermarriages...how do you define who is who's descent. Also not all Indian descents speak indian languages and might speak french or creole or english . Does that mean they are "mauritians" , creole or what? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 205.233.93.3 (talk • contribs) 16:54, 28 September 2007

Speaking as a Mauritian I'd have to say this - yes, it would seem that there are so many intermarriages, but not enough to redefine the ethnic divisions of the island. Most people excluding Creoles, are, in fact, not ethnically mixed. Yes, there may be Gujarati-Marathi mixtures or so on amongst Indo-Mauritians, but they are called Indo-Mauritian, the largest ethnic group on the island. I am an Indo-Mauritian and no way would I class myself as mixed race. No, they are not CREOLE, they are MAURITIANS of INDIAN origin. They are both Mauritian and Indian (in the same way African-Americans are Americans of African origin) --Maurice45 (talk) 20:32, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Districts and Dependencies

Chagos Archipelagos is mentioned as a dependency of Mauritius. But Mauritius has only tried to assert its sovereignty on the archipelagos.

Britain has still not given up their control through the British Outer Islands Territories (BOIT). So is it correct to mention Chagos as a dependency or should 'disputed' be mentioned in brackets alongside?

Similar comment can be made about Tromelin Island, which is in French control. I guess both Chagos and Tromelin would better be categorized under "claims", which should need renaming than, as Mauritius both claims brittish and French possesions.

[edit] Commonwealth

In response to the Commonwealth question, this is not really necessary as Mauritius WAS a member. It left after becoming a Republic.

In fact, Mauritius IS still a member of the Commonwealth !!!! JKleo

[edit] Re: The Commonwealth

Just getting the facts right here: Mauritius, despite becoming a Republic, has NEVER left the Commonwealth.

[edit] Research material

Aeons | Talk 12:51, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] New search Engines dedicated to Mauritius

It may be of interest and important to know that there are several search engines dedicated only to Mauritius. These search engines help use web sites that do not have a search engine and if it does then probably does not work especialy the government sites. Here is a list below of some of the engines I found there is however a lot more you just need to pick and choose. I chose, what I consider, the most important ones.

[edit] Mauritius virtual tours

Hi there,

I am a complete newbie here so please excuse me if I am saying the wrong thing or saying it in the wrong place.

I have a website that features lots of virtual tours from various places around the world and includes 19 virtual tours of different locations on the island of Mauritius. If anyone on this board thinks these would be worth adding to the External Links for the Mauritius entry then please feel free to do so.

The direct link is:

http://www.360travelguide.com/listimage.asp?StartNum=1&CountrySelect=Mauritius&LocSelect=All+Locations

This link takes you to a page of thumbnails. Click on a thumbnail and the relevant virtual tour opens in a pop-up window.

Any & all feedback on this post and/or the images themselves would be gratefully recieved.

Thanks

Confreeky 13:00, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Miscellaneous

I added French as an official language based on http://www.geonames.de/coumu.html please check. 71.235.97.40 23:23, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Creole 80.5%, Bhojpuri 12.1%, French 3.4%, English (official;
spoken by less than 1% of the population), other 3.7%, unspecified 0.3% (2000 census) -
[1]
French is NOT an official language, and it spoken by less
than 5% of the population.
If French is listed as official in this article,
then Bhojpuri should be too.
However, really neither should be listed. English is the
official language, and Creole is the national language.
Interlaker 16:14, 11 May 2007 (UTC)


Shouldn't there be a mention of the British Commonwealth since Mauritius is a member.

Something seems wrong with the formatting; the empty line should move the graphic to the right. It does this on preview but not when saved. ?? 128.111.88.229

What do you mean? It looks fine to me. Dysprosia 00:10, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Would it be good to add an external link to the CIA World Factbook on this nation? It has a lot of good info.

I consider the map in the german wikipedia page to be better. But it seems that this worldmap with detail is kind of standard?! Nonetheless may be we could consider changing / adding the map of the german page about mauritius

The scale of the map seems to be wrong when I compare it to my atlas. 5 km should be about 10 km.

Actually there is no official language in Mauritius, according to the constitution. But English is the language mostly used by the government. French is the dominating language in the media and advertising and Créole the language used in daily life. Aaker 21:16, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Animal rights

Please confirm: is Mauritius _illegally_ exporting thousands of wild monkeys for laboratory experiments? Int'l treaties forbid this.

Mention of this can certainly be considered political pressure. So?! Any other place (on WP) you think this issue should be dealt with? Thanks.

It is certainly a valid thing to mention here but only if you can find trusted sources. You'll need to say something like: "According to XYZ (link to source or footnote), n% of monkeys exported from Mauritius are caught in the wild". Do make sure that there is actually an international law against what is going on as well; I'm just going on your say-so here.
N.B. don't get confused with the large legitimate trade in laboratory monkeys, which may quite legally be the offspring of wild monkeys.--Spudtater 22:39, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

NO- Mauritius is NOT exporting any animal of any sort (inc. monkeys) for laboratory experiments.

[edit] Concerning External links

For those wishing to include links to external sites, but are not sure if they are relevant, these may be of interest to you:

Aeons | Talk 10:32, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Other

Had to cut out the name of local politians, the brillant victories of some political parties...lot's of third-world faggot mentality here :) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Vempyrcharm (talk • contribs) 22:54, 6 February 2007

[edit] Bollywood Movies

It's a popular location for shooting Bollywood movies. Almost all the large grossing movies have some scenes shot in Mauritius. Maybe a mention somewhere? --nocturnal omnivorous canine 13:30, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Immigration

The demographic section says that many immigrants from China are coming in but on the Demographic page it shows a net loss in migration. No where does it talk about people leaving the Island. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.110.221.182 (talk • contribs) 01:12, 11 May 2007

Please explain why they should. This is the page talking about the island and its people, NOT its diaspora! If you would like to start a page on that, please create an account and do so, providing you have significant enough information (I myself am part of this "diaspora" but have nothing to comment on) --Maurice45 (talk) 20:06, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Mauritian wikipedia

hey, has anyone started a kreol version? I would help... also why is there a bit at the bottom with 'regions with an indo-iranian official language'..hindi, bhojpuri and urdu are spoken languages BUT not official!!! please..Domsta333 14:28, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

I have helped create the Mauritian Creole Test-Wikipedia here. You can start contributing articles in the Mauitian language there. When a sufficient number of articles have been created (ie. 100+ or 200+), the test-project can then qualify to become a real Wikipedia. --Jose77 21:35, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Possible conflict of interest

Wikipedia policy
Article standards
Neutral point of view
Verifiability
No original research
Biographies of living persons
Working with others
Civility
Consensus
No personal attacks
Dispute resolution
No legal threats
Global principles
What Wikipedia is not
Ignore all rules

Used following policies as guidelines: WP:SPS, WP:COI, WP:NPOV, WP:VERIFY, WP:SPAM, WP:EL

The link http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?sectionID=2&ItemID=11954, posted by User:Leveque, is a possible conflict of interest and target article may not comply with neutral point of view policy. Whole article was previously posted on Wikipedia by User:Loulou 50, which is a previous account of User:Leveque (Talk page of editor Leveque).

Article was also previously posted in mainspace of wikipedia on Rodrigues (island) article and was also subsequently discussed on the talk page.

The following was first suggested by contributor Channer and adhered to:

Greater liberators may become worse dictators when they can't accept other people to be wrong. This is clearly a political proclamation, a beautiful and harrowing text, but not an encyclopedic one, and not fitted for Wikipédia because everybody is here free to arrange it. So don't change a word of it, but remove it from wikipedia and put a link to the site where the article has been published. User:Channer 17:11, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

For the moment, the link is under the Notes and references section of this article, but was added to the External link section of this article (Therefore double posted). So, should this link be kept, re-assigned to another section (Possibly Further reading or External links) or completely removed?

Aeons | Talk 06:52, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

In my opinion, M. Alain Levêque is someone who has much to say about his island's political status, who wants to do so and who publishes articles on the matter in some newspapers or websites. What he says is interesting but his writings are clearly a spell for independence. These writings are partial by nature, they are lyric in style but right in historical references though not completely honest in presentation (stake of polling in 1967 was what he says but question of attachement or non-attachment was not so clearly asked). Of course this kind of writings has no place on WP because of their political commitment but they are an actual evidence of the national debate in Rodrigues. Linking to or quoting in a way or another such declarations of a declared opponent seems to me logical. Rodrigues is a small country : don't expect to get headlines in major world newspapers or top sale essays as references. Although, article should be better well-balanced if all different political trends with their respective weight were exposed. Leveque's one seems somewhat extremist in the current political scene.--Channer 16:16, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Bonjour Channer, the question in the 1967 election was explicitly: Independence or not? However, to the Rodriguan people, the implicit question of attachment or non-attachment was more urgent than another's Independence. In todays McWorld, anyone who says no to the powers of the establishment, indeed anyone who dares to swim against the tide of oppression, is labelled extreme - not under proper control. What if Channer suggested Independence for La Reunion? Yes, my friend, you got it in one - Channer's views too, would seem somewhat extreme. So, if extremist means, disimilar to the norm, then, thank you. I try very very hard, not to be like other people. Take it easy.Leveque 01:56, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Since I was asked... I really don't know anything about the matter at hand; my reference was only pertaining to the case of M. Leguat, and how Rodrigues always seems to have been a bit of "that other island" from a Mauritian perspective. I think the matter of Rodrigues' status and relations could benefit from a more thorough treatment (as everytning...), but that's all I can say. Dysmorodrepanis 22:39, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Dysmorodrepanis, your (reluctant) analysis is flawless. Leveque 05:13, 9 July 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Peacock words

I've tagged this article as utilizing excessively subjective language (see Wikipedia:Avoid_peacock_terms for further information). I've pulled a handful of quotes to illustrate this:

  • As Mauritius opens to the world, aiming to transform itself into a competitive global business platform, the national investment promotion agency, the Board of Investment (BOI) has put at the service of the international business community a range of services, free of charge, to attract international investment and talents in the country.
  • The "mine-frit" (Chinese fried noodles) and "niouk nien" (dumplings) are loved by all and readily bought by the Mauritian community either in restaurants or on the sidewalks of main streets. 'Alouda' (a milk-based drink with basil seeds) has become a typical Mauritian drink and the 'dholl puri' can be considered a favourite with all communities.
  • The island has also given rise to a diversified literature, prominent in French, English, Creole and Hindi languages.
  • Mauritius is gearing towards becoming a duty-free island within the coming four years. Duty has been decreased (and for many products completely eliminated) for more than 1850 products including clothing, food, jewelry, photographic equipment, audio visual equipment and lighting equipment. The main motivations are (1) Attract more tourists going to Singapore and Dubai, and, (2) Give all Mauritians easier access to quality products at affordable prices.

These are only examples, but it seems that the Economy, Demographics, and Culture sections in particular could use some cleaning up, either to edit out the unnecessary fluff or to add proper citations to reputable sources who have made these claims (the first quote does have a citation, although it leads to a BOI website). jonny-mt 08:28, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Regarding the paragraphs you quote, I've made some changes.
  • First quote, removed. I thought the same thing on the first edit round. The whole quoted paragraph seems to be more of a promotional campaign (by the BOI perhaps? who knows) for attracting investment rather than being anything relevant to an encyclopedia.
  • Second quote, completely rephrased. It turned out to be a word-by-word copy from an external source.
  • Third quote, left as is. I think the fancy words used are within "acceptable" limits. Probably "prominent" could be exchanged with another more suitable word.
  • Fourth quote, modified, with external source added.
I made other changes in the article as well, so it should be mostly free from these "peacock" terms. Check it out, and post your comments. Remember, you are free to make changes yourself as well.--Mfolozi 09:09, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
This one would still require an update:
  • The rhythm, however, remains very festive and while the men are at the instruments, the Creole women gyrate in large fluid and revealing skirts with bright colours.
Any ideas? Regards.--Mfolozi 09:15, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
Rewrote as: Men are usually at the instruments while women perform an accompanying dance. Hope it is good.
Here are some links that explains the local culture and sega a bit more:
Ǣ0ƞS 13:47, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
It looks great to me! Now that multiple people have had a look at it (I didn't want to unilaterally change an article about a subject I'm not otherwise familiar with) and the problems seem to be fixed, I went ahead and took off the Peacock words template. I also went through and performed some minor copy and style editing and added in a few {{fact}} tags where I thought they were needed.
Thanks for the hard work :) --jonny-mt 04:22, 10 October 2007 (UTC)


[edit] No copy and pasting

A part of the 'economy' section is as the same as the part of the CIA worldfactbook! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 222.166.160.240 (talk • contribs) 9 October 2007

[edit] I find it funny

That africans are not mentioned in the demographic section yet somehow they created creole, the languge that all the people on tthe island speak. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.238.27.30 (talk) 19:54, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes I know it's late, but I'll say this to settle things: THERE ARE NO AFRICANS IN MAURITIUS!!! THEY ARE CREOLE!!!!!!!!! Why? because they are a mixture of African/Malagasy/French ancestry. There may be a few of pure African ancesrty (indeed there is evidence in the archives to suggest so) but they comprise a very small segment of the otherwise mixed ethnic group called CREOLE. Read the article before making assumptions (as with Réunion and the whole Vietnamese replacing Chinese thing) --Maurice45 (talk) 20:16, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Geography and Flkora and Fauna

Can we please have a seperate section on these like other country articles. Thanks Enlil Ninlil (talk) 10:01, 8 March 2008 (UTC)


There is already a Geography section. Not sure about how to go around atarting a Flora and Fauna section- I'd like to, but I can't find many good sources. It seems there are many websites but not enough info. Books would be a good start, but I am unable to find any in London --Maurice45 (talk) 20:21, 13 May 2008 (UTC)