AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND, March 6, 2002: Ethnic Indians have been admitted to the officer ranks of Fiji’s battered military force, 60 years after their grandfathers raised a controversy for not signing up to fight the Japanese during World War II. “It’s been my childhood ambition to become a soldier and to serve the nation,” Shalesh Kumar, 20, told the Fiji Sun on Wednesday. He was one of 10 ethnic Indians signed into the Republic of Fiji Military Forces (RFMF) officer cadet corps for the first time. At one press conference during the 2000 coup drama, then RFMF spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Filipo Tarakinikini, referring to World War II, said that rather than fight even when the Japanese were close by, Fiji’s Indians went on strike for more pay. Journalist Shubha Singh, whose father served in Fiji as an Indian diplomat, notes the long-term impact in a just-published book, Fiji: A Precarious Coalition. “To this day, the Fijians point to the Indian reluctance to join the armed forces as a negative feature that called into question their loyalty to their new homeland.” Around 51 percent of Fijis 800,000 people are indigenous Fijian and 44 percent Indian.
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