Professor Ker‑Lindsay's Chagos Calculus: Time to Factor in the Maldives

Professor James Ker-Lidsay

MC-REBUT 001: Professor James Ker Lindsay has long been a leading speaker in the global decolonisation debate. A veteran commentator on international controversies, Ker-Lindsay has been no stranger to backing Mauritius' claim to the islands of the Chagos Archipelago, notably in a series of public statements and explanatory commentary after the ICJ's Advisory Opinion of 2019. He acknowledged that the islands' inhabitants had not freely and genuinely expressed their will regarding the separation of the Chagos Archipelago. Yet, in his enthusiastic arguments on behalf of Mauritian sovereignty and in his fierce criticism of British colonialism, Professor Ker‑Lindsay overlooks a vitally important fact: Chagos's long, unbroken and historically enshrined history of connection to, and belonging with, that of Maldives – a relationship even antedating the arrival of the French in Chagos 1773. Including the Maldivian perspective is not a gesture towards equalisation; it is necessary for any decolonisation discourse that seeks to justify itself notionally.

 
In the Maldives' navigation registers and oral traditions, locals enshrine Chagos, known as "Foalhavahi," deeply in their historical memory and include it in administrative practices dating back to the 16th century. These stories of distant concerns and accounts attest to the Chagos Islands as part of the traditional maritime charter of the Maldives, well before European cartographers marked the map with colonial ink.

However, despite Ker-Lindsay's otherwise vigorous engagement with the debate on Twitter, via YouTube briefings, and in the broader decolonisation discourse, there's a deafening silence on the key regional voice. People often frame the Maldives as a procedural annoyance or a marginal watcher – a matter of law and justice, a strategic failure.

Professor Ker‑Lindsay defends the ICJ's position that the ongoing UK administration of Chagos constitutes a continuing unlawful act. However, he fails to reconcile this legal enthusiasm with the Maldives' sovereign sensitivities, particularly as demonstrated at the ITLOS, where Malé appropriately declined maritime delimitation while sovereignty remained unresolved.

Let's remember: the Maldives voted against the 2019 UN General Assembly resolution not because it repudiated decolonisation, but because it anticipated the erosion of its EEZ rights, a genuinely worrying possibility for a country of atolls whose economy and ecology depend on those waters. However, under the legal terms of the settlement, Ker-Lindy's stance, wrapped in anti-colonial righteousness, is playing fast and loose with that fine point. Ironically, when he criticises the UK for denying the impacts of its colonial history, he inadvertently makes the same mistake concerning the Maldives.

The Maldives in Ker‑Lindsay's narrative is a bit‑part player - a handy extra in another man's liberation drama. But the stakes, figuratively and literally, could not be higher for the Maldives. The detachment of Chagos has affected tuna fishing, marine conservation gates and the strategic equilibrium in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

By simply parroting the Mauritian narrative, Ker‑Lindsay threatens to give an academic veneer to the disavowal of a nearby state's rights at sea – an untenable oversight for someone who often purports to speak in favour of peace, fairness and regional stability. It's one thing to denounce colonial injustice - quite another to overlook its collateral replication under a different flag.

Ker‑Lindsay is right to highlight the historical marginalisation of the Chagossians, but his decolonialist viewpoint also appears curiously one‑eyed on the subject of Maldivian historical claims. For all his criticism of British double-dealing and Mauritian paternalism, he leaves no room for an Indigenous narrative that long predates the arrival. The result? A decolonisation that picks and chooses whose history counts, risking turning a battle for justice into yet another top-down redistribution of the power to narrate.

Professor Ker‑Lindsay, you're an influential figure in world debate. However, in your forceful promotion of Mauritius, you have overlooked one crucial component of legitimacy: the Maldivian connection to Chagos, particularly in terms of geography, history, and continuous habitation. Your public position must now advance beyond British guilt and Mauritian justice. There's a third and factually accurate side to this story.

We challenge you to revisit the following:

1. Maldivian documents about "Foalhavahi."
2. The Maldives' strategic and environmental claims to Chagos,
3. The legal synergy between sovereignty and the delimitation of the EEZ and
4. The privileging of one indigenous narrative over the other.

To help people genuinely unlearn a toxic colonial framing, rather than merely replacing one colonial artefact with another, we should include the motivations for sending the Maldives back to the Isles in the Chagos story. This should not be a question of diplomatic politeness but of law, historical reality, and regional justice.

It is time, Professor, for you to write the Maldivian chapter.