In Fiji, the word “communalism” has become a ghost at the feast. It is invoked with a shudder—usually by urban, educated, multiracial progressives, who see it as the opposite of national unity. For many Indo-Fijians, communalism evokes the coups of 1987, the 1990 constitution’s guaranteed parliamentary majority for indigenous Fijians, and the lingering suspicion that in any crisis, blood will speak louder than citizenship.
But here is a difficult truth: communalism is not going away. And more importantly, for the iTaukei, it is not merely a political preference. It is a philosophy of survival, identity, and dignity. To demand that iTaukei abandon their communal framework is, in effect, to demand that they cease being iTaukei. That is neither realistic nor just.
The question, then, is not whether communalism should exist. The question is whether Indo-Fijians can learn to read it correctly—not as a threat, but as a different grammar of belonging. And whether, in that reading, a new kind of national conversation becomes possible.
A Lesson from Philadelphia: Anger Is Not the Enemy of Understanding
In March 2008, at the height of a presidential campaign that had already broken racial barriers, Barack Obama stood before a nation deeply divided over the inflammatory sermons of his former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Obama could have condemned Wright and moved on. Instead, he did something rare. He acknowledged the roots of Wright’s anger—the generations of racism, segregation, and neglect that had shaped black churches. Then he also acknowledged the resentment of working-class white Americans who felt they had watched their jobs and communities disappear.
He said: “The anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.”
Fiji can learn from this. Indo-Fijian anger about coups and the fear of being permanent outsiders—that anger is real. iTaukei anger about land alienation, cultural erosion, and the feeling of being strangers in their own ancestral home—that anger is also real. Neither can be wished away by a constitution or a national slogan. The first step toward a more perfect union is not to suppress communal anger, but to listen to what it is actually protecting.
What Communalism Actually Means in iTaukei Life
Let us strip away the political caricature. For an iTaukei villager in Ra or Cakaudrove, communalism is not a doctrine imposed by a nationalist politician. It is the daily reality of veilomani (mutual care), solesolevaki (shared labor), and veivuke (assistance). It is the mataqali (land-owning unit) holding together families who have tilled the same soil for generations. It is the yavusa deciding together whether to lease grazing land to a sugar farmer or to reforest a watershed.
When iTaukei speak anxiously about “land” or “custom” or taukei (owners of the land), they are not speaking about property deeds in the Western sense. They are speaking about Vanua—a word that means land, but also people, also custom, also the spiritual presence of ancestors. To be iTaukei is to be in relationship with the Vanua. That relationship is inherently communal. No iTaukei stands alone before the state. They stand within a web of obligations and inheritances.
What iTaukei communalism seeks is recognition—that their ancestral way of organizing society has a legitimate place alongside the individualist, contract-based, market-driven logic that arrived with colonialism and sugar, and is now embedded in the imposed 2013 constitution.
Why Indo-Fijians Often Misread Communalism as Exclusion
The misunderstanding is understandable. Indo-Fijian history in this country is a story of individual and family survival. Arriving as girmitiyas between 1879 and 1920, Indo-Fijians had their communal bonds systematically broken by the colonial plantation system. They rebuilt them—through panchayats, through mandalis, through temples and sangams—but those bonds were always voluntary associations, not ancestral birthrights.
Indo-Fijians feel they do not belong but have overhwelming economic power. Are they willing to share these in a genuine manner that embraces being Fijian, in the iTaukei sense? iTaukei have seen their land and culture stripped away. Neither grievance cancels the other. As Obama put it: “We can condemn a statement without condemning the person. We can acknowledge the pain of a community without endorsing every word spoken in that pain.” Indo-Fijians can reject ethno-nationalist politics while still understanding the pain behind iTaukei communalism. iTaukei can reject the bitterness of some Indo-Fijian leaders while still understanding the trauma of girmit and its aftermath.
What Thoughtful Understanding Looks Like
To “understand” iTaukei communalism does not mean agreeing with every iTaukei political demand. It does not mean accepting racial discrimination or supporting the abolition of the common roll. It means three things.
First, understanding that iTaukei communalism is primarily defensive, not aggressive. The fear that drives most iTaukei anxiety is that globalization, land sales, tourism development and climate displacement will erode the Vanua until nothing is left. When an iTaukei elder insists on communal land tenure, they are trying to prevent a future where their grandchildren sell the last piece of ancestral soil for a resort and a second-hand SUV. Indo-Fijians, who have no ancestral land base of their own, can afford to see land as a commodity. iTaukei cannot.
Second, understanding that communalism and multiracial democracy are not mutually exclusive—but they do require new institutions. Switzerland manages three languages and two religions through a federal system that gives cantons significant cultural autonomy. Belgium has been held together for decades by sophisticated power-sharing arrangements. Fiji has never seriously attempted a consociational model—one that guarantees iTaukei communal representation alongside common-roll seats, with iTaukei vetoes on matters of culture and land. Instead, we have swung between iTaukei-dominated ethnocracy (1987–2006) and a “one man, one vote” system (2013 onward) that many iTaukei see as imposed without addressing their existential anxiety. A thoughtful Indo-Fijian might ask: Is there a middle way that protects my vote and their Vanua?
Third, understanding that iTaukei communalism contains wisdom that Indo-Fijians might actually need. The global climate crisis is going to devastate Fiji’s coastal villages and sugar belts. Individualist responses—buying your own higher ground, insuring your own assets—will fail. Survival will require veivuke: collective decisions about relocation, resource sharing, and mutual obligation. iTaukei have been doing this for centuries. Their communal structures, adapted wisely, could become Fiji’s resilience architecture. Indo-Fijians who dismiss communalism as backward are walking away from a toolkit that might save their grandchildren.
The Path Forward: From Fear to a More Perfect Union
Obama concluded his Philadelphia speech with a simple, powerful image: “I have never been so naive as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle. But I do believe that we can get beyond them if we work together.” He did not demand that anyone leave their identity at the door. He asked only that each side extend the same grace to the other that they would claim for themselves.
No one is asking Indo-Fijians to stop being Indo-Fijian. No one is asking iTaukei to stop being iTaukei. What thoughtful understanding asks is this: Stop seeing each other’s communalism as a zero-sum threat.
When an iTaukei speaks of the Vanua, an Indo-Fijian could learn to hear “home” rather than “hierarchy.” When an Indo-Fijian speaks of individual enterprise, an iTaukei could learn to hear “aspiration” rather than “greed.” These translations are not easy. They require humility, patience, and the courage to sit in discomfort.
But the alternative is what Fiji has known for too long: a politics of mutual suspicion where each community waits for the other to weaken. That is not a nation. That is a ceasefire.
The Bose Levu Vakaturaga could be one space for this translation. A reformed parliamentary system, with genuine protections for both communal and individual rights, could be another. But no institution will work if the heart is not willing—if we refuse to see that, as Obama put it, “we may have come on different ships, but we are all in the same boat now.”
Indo-Fijians do not need to embrace communalism. They need to understand it—as a living, breathing, wounded, hopeful expression of iTaukei humanity. And in that understanding, perhaps, discover that their own survival is not separate from the survival of the Vanua. It is the same ocean, same shore, same storm.
The difficulties will pass. But only if we stop rowing against each other, and start rowing toward the same horizon.
Pasifika Talanoa by a traveled ITaukei Fijian 