Island of the Day Before

The continued flip flops of US President Donald Trump over the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean have put a question mark over the transfer of Chagos Islands to their original owner, Mauritius, by their former coloniser, Great Britain.

On Wednesday, Trump said the UK was making a “big mistake” by entering into a 100-year lease on Diego Garcia. Under a 2025 agreement, the island would revert to Mauritius but Britain would continue to have a 100-year lease over it. In practical terms, it makes no difference to the use of Diego Garcia as a military base. Before the 2025 agreement, the island was part of the British In­dian Ocean Territory (BIOT), a colonial relic that persisted some 57 years after Mauritius gained independence. Under these arrange­ments, Britain remained the island’s owner even as the US operated a secret military base on the island.

Even as Trump displayed anger against the British prime minister over the issue, his own State Department held talks with Mauritius authorities a day earlier on Tuesday. In the official readout the State Department said: “The United States supports the decision of the United Kingdom to proceed with its agreement with Mauritius concerning the Chagos archipelago…”

The high politics of sovereignty over Diego Garcia is one matter but the ruthless manner in which the original inhabitants of Chagos Islands were uprooted from their homeland is a matter of great shame. Consigned to poverty and destitution, the Chagossians have bravely litigated their claim over their homeland for decades now. Their efforts bore fruit in 2025. But with Trump’s erratic behav­iour, there is uncertainty over the transfer of the archipelago to its rightful owners. Most of them have lived on the island chain before the American War of Independence. It is doubly shameful from that perspective that a country that once claimed to be the leading light in the world against colonialism is now indulging in some very questionable tactics on Chagos Islands.

India has always questioned the military uses to which Diego Garcia has been put. It is heartening that it has not changed its stand on the subject.