His Early Life
Pandit Vishnu Deo was born on 17 July 1900. He attended Marist Brothers School and was gifted with a keen intellect and was a fluent debater in both English and Hindi. He joined the immigration department as a clerk in 1918, taught at a school established by M. N. Naidu in Lautoka in the early 1920s, and started his own importing and exporting agency in 1927. In 1922, he had assisted the Raju Commission which had been sent to Fiji to make enquiries into the plight of the Indian community. Vishnu Deo was the founder of a number of social and religious organisations. The Governor of Fiji proclaimed 15 May 1929 as a public holiday to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the arrival of the first Indians in Fiji but Vishnu Deo wanted this to be a day of mourning and at a meeting in Lautoka on 12 May 1929, it was decided to fast and pray on the day and to form the Fiji Indian National Congress. While there was an official ceremony and floats through Suva, Vishnu Deo and his associates displayed a black flag and burnt the indenture system in an effigy.
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