The intangible linguistic heritage of indian immigrants of Mauritius: the case of Tamil language.

Abstract

Mauritius is a multilingual and multicultural country with people of different ethnic groups cohabiting together ever since the settlement of slaves and indentured labourers. Each ethnic group has been very much preoccupied in the preservation of their respective linguistic and cultural elements. Among the Indian languages that survived the colonization pressures, Hindi, Urdu, Tamil, Telugu and Marathi, in order of their uses, are noteworthy. The Tamil community hitherto managed to maintain their ethnic language to some extent. This paper attempts to uncover the various strategies employed by the Tamil community and the role of other individuals and organisations in the maintenance of the language in Mauritius.