---

Richard Lesage

A little piece of Mauritius at Harvard University

High in the stacks at the Widener Library at Harvard University, lies a little piece of Mauritius. Lined up on Stack 5W 5385-6200 is a trove of the island's cultural, political and literary history. Mauritius native Richard Lesage pulls out a few books from the selection and shows them to a visitor: Dictionnaire de biographie mauricienne; L'île de France sous Decaen, 1803-1810 by Henri Prentout, L'Administration française de l'Ile Maurice by Auguste Toussaint; Thacoor's Mahatma Gandhi in Mauritius, 1970; Recollections of Seven Years Residence at the Mauritius by a Lady, 1830, London; The Truth about Mauritius by B. Bissoondoyal, 1968; and "Creoles and Coolies" by Rev. Patrick Beaton, 1850. As librarian for the African and Asian Unit of the Harvard College Library, Lesage is at home in Widener's collection, which includes some 1,800 titles related to Mauritius.

Part of Lesage's job is to manage the acquisitions and processing of publications that Harvard receives from Sub-Saharan Africa and South and Southeast Asia through a cooperative acquisitions program sponsored by the U.S. Library of Congress. Cataloguing encompasses books or pamphlets, multimedia in a variety of languages and scripts: Swahili and Yoruba, Sanskrit or Tibetan to name just a few of the major languages, or Budu a more obscure African language spoken only in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Lesage, age 53, has always had a love for languages - he speaks five (French, English, Creole, Hindi, and Italian) - and for helping less fortunate people by empowering them with education and a commitment to living in peace with others. But it is only recently that he directed his passions into the complex world of books and libraries, at a time that they are being transformed by the internet and digital technology.

Growing up in a devout Catholic family in Vacoas, Lesage had his eye on the priesthood at an early age. He attended Catholic schools - Couvent de Lorette, in Vacoas, and College du St. Esprit, in Quatre Bornes "Like for many families in Mauritius, the Catholic Church had a great influence in shaping my identity" he said in an interview at the Harvard Library.

And like many others in a multi-cultural society like Mauritius, he had several identities to reconcile: English on his mother's side (his parents met while working in the Colonial Office in London in the early 1950s) and of French origin, with mixed ancestry, on his father's side. Lesage's paternal ancestors were French merchants who had settled on the Ile de France in the 18th century, some of whom had taken wives from Bengal. This heritage also meant that he spoke English and French, being sometimes at odds as a child with which group of kids at school he belonged - the children of the English expatriates, or the French-speaking Mauritians.

This struggle came into focus in the early 1960s as Mauritius moved toward independence. The Lesage family - with a British mother and Mauritian father - did not support independence. One of Richard's uncles, Maurice Lesage, was active in politics as an MP of the Parti Mauricien Social Démocrate, opposing independence while advocating additional self government.

"I remember the huge rally in Curepipe when Anthony Greenwood, the British Secretary of State for the Colonies, came to Mauritius to negotiate independence," Lesage said. "It must have been in 1966. I was 10 years old then. Greenwood had decided that there would be an election, rather than a referendum on the independence issue, as called for by the PMSD. On his way back to the airport to return to London, we gathered in town square dressed in blue outfits (the color of the Parti Mauricien) hand-stitched by my mother. As Greenwood's motorcade was approaching, the crowd was directed to shout 'anglais volère, anglais bézère!' and I and my elder brothers ceded to the pressure. My mother, Agnes, who is English, felt betrayed both by the British and her own children, and burst into tears. We were British citizens being abandoned by the British, and we were concerned about the future."

Independence and all its uncertainties was a turning point for Lesage, who was 13 years old at the time. "I developed friendships with Hindu Mauritians, learned Hindi and listened to the Ramayana in the local baithka. I did things totally different than most kids of my age and background" he said, adding that he volunteered to join a Chinese Scout troop at the invitation of a Sino-Mauritian classmate.

"In the end, I came to realize that independence was good for Mauritius. But we needed a different relationship with each other - to be more open to other cultures, religions and languages. I was interested in working toward reconciliation - to build bridges between peoples - and this is why I wanted to be a priest. This is how I saw my work - this is what made me join the Jesuits."

After high school, and while working at the Mauritius Commercial Bank, Lesage joined the Foyer Mgr. Murphy in Vacoas, the pre-seminary of the Catholic Diocese under the direction of Frs. Maurice Piat and Denis Wiehé (now Bishops of Port Louis, and Victoria respectively). Lesage wanted to be religious, rather than a diocesan, but wasn't sure as to which order or congregation. In 1978, the Diocese obtained a scholarship to send one seminarian study in Rome. Lesage was offered the scholarship with the understanding that he would continue to discern his vocation. While studying philosophy at the Gregorian University, he developed a relationship with the Jesuits, and upon returning to Mauritius in 1980 decided to become a Jesuit.

He was sent to India for four years, where he gained a greater appreciation for the legacy of Indo-Mauritians and visited many of their native villages. He did his novitiate (initiation to Jesuit life) in Bangalore; cared for leprosy patients in villages near Tiruvannamalai (Tamil Nadu); studied in Delhi and Patna, and worked in the Bhojpuri speaking region of Bettiah (Bihar).

His theology training continued in Rome and Paris, where he received a master's in theology at the Centre Sèvres (Facultés jésuites de Paris). "It was a rigorous intellectual experience," he said. "It was in Paris studying under the direction of Indologist Catherine Clémentin-Ojha that I developed the intellectual tools that allowed me to fully comprehend my experience in India." Lesage wrote his thesis on the encounter between Hinduism and Christianity as manifested by the life and works of Brahmabandhab Upadhyay (1861-1907), a Bengali intellectual and freedom fighter who was the first to advocate the independence of India.

After his studies, he worked briefly at a Jesuit high school in Paris as a librarian, and then returned to Mauritius for an assignment to the parish of Plaine Magnien-Lescalier from 1994-1996. "The people were wonderful, and I received a warm welcome," he said. "The parish encompassed 12 villages and I discovered a different part of Mauritius - especially the rural life on the sugar estates."

In 1997, life took a new direction. Lesage began to have doubts about continuing his vocation as a priest and needed time to reflect. He thought the United States would be a good place to do some "soul searching," so he put his name in for the "green card" lottery that is sponsored each year by the U.S. State Department. To his great surprise, he won a green card.

He came to the United States in May, 1997. Based on the recommendation of two Jesuit priests he met in Rome, he decided to make Boston, Massachusetts his new home. The Jesuits paid for his travel and for his housing for three months. "I was able to make a smooth transition to lay life in the United States," he said. He did temporary jobs - including painting the deck of a house - and then decided to search for a job at Harvard University. "I was walking through Harvard Yard one day and I felt like I belonged there," he said.

A job opening at Harvard caught his eye: a library assistant who spoke Italian and French. He landed the job based mostly on his language skills, and thus began a new career in library science at the largest university library in the world.

Realizing that he needed a professional library degree in order to succeed, he studied for a master's degree in library science at Simmons College in Boston. This gave him the skills needed to advance in his new career.

During his 12 years at Harvard, Lesage's work has mostly focused on rare books and special collections, as cataloger, digital projects librarian, and, since last April, Technical Services Librarian for the African and Asian Unit of the 10-libraries that comprise Harvard College. He met his wife, Rhea Karabelas, bibliographer for Widener's Modern Greek collection, at the library, which is housed in a handsome Beaux-Arts building on the south side of Harvard Yard.

Lesage has catalogued and digitalized a rare collection of more than 5,000 pamphlets from Latin America that document the political, social and cultural life of people from that region. And he helped make a collection of oral histories with more than 700 refugees from the Soviet Union available online to researchers.

His most memorable moments were re-cataloguing rare editions of English literature, a task especially meaningful to him since he studied English literature for his HSC at St. Esprit. Many of the titles were first editions and included dedications from authors like Coleridge, Wordsworth and Dickens. "I could hardly have imagined back then that I would one day have on my desk a copy of Songs of Innocence and Experience, printed and illuminated by (English poet) William Blake himself!" Lesage said.

Other highlights included holding Shakespeare's First Folio (a collection of 36 plays compiled after Shakespeare's death in 1623), and one of the remaining 48 copies of the Gutenberg Bible, published in 1454, that is a hallmark of the rare book collection at the Harvard library.

In many ways, Lesage is at the cutting-edge of changes in library technology. His work in digitalizing books reflects how people will use libraries and access information into the future. Thanks to computers, users no longer have to travel to libraries, and they can access information at anytime, day or night, and from any geographic location. Another advantage is that rare books and manuscripts that might otherwise be off-limits, can be accessible through the computer.

Lesage said he would like to help libraries in Mauritius move into the digital age. Such a technology will help preserve the country's cultural heritage and make it more accessible to a wider audience. He suggested that Mauritius look for ways to cooperate with institutions like UNESCO (The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) or universities that are interested in the preservation of rare and historic documents.

"It's important that the source materials on Mauritius stay in Mauritius, while being accessible electronically to scholars worldwide." he said. "I'd love to see Mauritius have its newspapers, out-of-copyright books, and why not archives - at least some series like notarial documents, governors' correspondence, preserved and digitized."

He acknowledged, however, that this could be a complex and costly project, especially considering the requirements for long term digital preservation. "This would only be possible through a collaboration involving the National Archives, the National Library, the Carnegie Library, and other private libraries --and perhaps even Google. It would also require funding from foundations, universities or organizations like UNESCO," Lesage said. "So far at Harvard there are about 50 books related to Mauritius that have been digitized, through the Google project for the most part."

Lesage has made one small step towards this goal by advocating for the microfilming of rare Mauritian newspapers at meetings of the Cooperative Africana Microform Project (CAMP). Founded in 1963, CAMP is a joint effort by research libraries throughout the world and the Center for Research Libraries (CRL) in Chicago to promote the preservation of publications and archives of nations of Sub-Saharan Africa and to make these materials in microform available to researchers.

He is hoping as a first project to get funding to preserve, in collaboration with Mr. Chan Kam Lon, Director of the National Library, early 19th century newspapers such as Berquin's La Balance and Baker/Ollier's Mauritius Watchman/Sentinelle de Maurice, which were the first to advocate civil liberties for all.

"We could then scan the microfilms, and move on to other newspapers focusing on the continued Mauritian struggle for freedom, right up to independence."

Lesage maintains strong ties to Mauritius - his mother lives in Vacoas and his eldest brother Philippe is Treasury Manager at the Mauritius Commercial Bank. Another brother, Eric, works for the Inland Revenue in Belfast, Northern Ireland, where sister Anne also lives. Denis, his younger brother, is a pianist in France where he also teaches at a Conservatoire near Versailles.

Lesage can be contacted at: rlesage@fas.harvard.edu

a m e r i c a n   s c e n e

WEEK-END --- dimanche 19 avril 2009