Ethnic and Economic Politics, 1945–1980

This chapter deals with the ethnic base of the VHP, the ethnic Hindostani political party. It argues that peasants’ interests were hardly represented by the VHP whose leadership had an urban orientation. This neglect of the agrarian constituency led to rifts in the political communityCommunitypolitical. Ethnic loyalties were differentiated, first by regions (city and districts), and later by classes and political views. Nevertheless, the Hindostani community required some ethnic unity to bear the VHP. This argument is structured as follows. Section 9.2 discusses some elements of the unification of the Hindostani community. Section 9.3 examines the background of the VHP, while Sect. 9.4 analyses the socio-economic planning in Suriname after WW II. Section 9.5 examines the link between the agrarian background of the VHP and agrarian planning in post-war Suriname, in an attempt to establish whether the party defended the interests of the Girmitiya peasantry. Section 9.6 addresses the internal differentiation of loyalties or political oppositions within the Hindostani community, specifically the separation between economic and moral community and the spatial division between district and city.