60 Years Ago, Voters Seize Wonderful Chance of Sending Maverick To Parliament

At that time it was called the Legislative Assembly and he's about twenty-seven-and-a-half years old on that 10th Monday of 1959 in colonial Mauritius. He already has a lot under his belt. He had co-founded the Mauritius Times roughly five years before and had spent 17 months outside of Mauritius literally globetrotting during which time he secured a 30-minute meeting with Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, the philosopher and Vice-President of India. That's barely a decade after the British had been sent packing. Just imagine the energy in the atmosphere. But more happens in that long trip. A lot more. He travels to London and on his way back stops at Paris where he's lucky to have lunch with l'Abée Pierre thanks to contacts established in India. These meetings and travels reinforce what his self-customized education - reading many right sutras very early in his life didn't hurt - has already taught him.

So voters elect him on his first attempt as a candidate in a general election. More was to come his way. Elected as Secretary General of the Labour Party a couple of years later, a post which he kept for about 21 years, he used this position to bring method to the madness in the party. This period would coincide with his work in three Ministries as one of the most important architects of our welfare state. 

Two other factors made the completion of such a massive amount of work possible. The first is that his biggest fan happened to be one SSR. The other is the mathematician he married.