Gan Aft Agley

"It is difficult," pontificated the Times of London two years ago, "to imagine either extreme nationalism or a scrupulous addiction to neutrality arising seriously in the Maldives." Seldom has the Times been more wrong.

Unceremoniously kicked out of their sea-air bases by newly independent and neutralist Ceylon, the British decided to set up new bases farther south on the placid island of Gan in the Maldives, a splatter of palm-fringed dots in the Indian Ocean 400 miles from Ceylon. There are only 93,000 Maldivians--nut-brown, peaceable folk who have been under the wing of the British Empire since 1802. The world has largely passed the Maldives by. But six years ago, after 800 years of Sultanate rule, the Maldives became a republic. Their first President abolished purdah, designed a Mother Hubbard national costume for Maldivian women, and pushed a road-building program for the island's three cars--which all happened to be his. The Maldivians soon got rid of him.

When the British began landing workmen from Pakistan and materials for the airfield on Gan, the Maldivian Parliament grumbled audibly about the arrival of progress. There was a flurry of demands for independence, charges that too many concessions had been made to the British, and loud outcries that the Maldivian way of life was in danger. Once again a government fell, and a new Prime Minister, Ibrahim Nasir, asked that work on Gan be halted. In reply, Britain's High Commissioner Alec Morley steamed from Ceylon to the Maldives aboard the cruiser Gambia, and that led to hysteric Maldivian outcries of "gunboat diplomacy." Because of Britain's eagerness to establish a new steppingstone airbase to break the flight from Europe to Australia and New Zealand, the British are pushing grimly ahead with construction.

Not everybody in the Maldives shares the government's horror at the peaceful invasion, though the islands' simple economy of coir (coconut fiber) and dried fish was totally disrupted by the British arrival. (Also disrupted was the domestic economy of Ceylonese housewives who regard Maldivian fish as an indispensable ingredient of curry, are now limited to a monthly ration of eight ounces per adult.) Gan's schoolteachers quit their jobs to sign on as high-paid laborers on the base, joining the 1,200 workmen imported from Pakistan. A Maldivian official sent from the capital island of Male to persuade the people of Gan to go back to their proper jobs was attacked by a mob and had to appeal to the British for protection.

The British insist that they cannot understand just what "the Maldivians are up to." Replied a Maldivian spokesman: "We do not want to be involved in world controversies."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.