Against communalism of the best-loser system - Lalit Mauritius

and even compared it with the Nazis. The second leader of the RSS, Golwalkar wrote “the non-
Hindu people in Hindusthan must either adopt the Hindu culture and language, must learn to
respect and revere Hindu religion, must entertain no ideas but the glorification of the Hindu
nation i.e. they must not only give up their attitude of intolerance and ingratitude towards this
land and its age-long traditions, but, must also cultivate the positive attitude of love and
devotion instead; in one word, they must cease to be foreigners or may stay in the country
wholly subordinated to the Hindu nation claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any
preferential treatment, not even citizens rights.”)
This Hindu fundamentalist group in Mauritius seems to have a form of organization very much
like the “Broederbond”, which was behind the Nationalist Government in South Africa and
behind the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa, promoting the culture/religion of one
community through a close network.
This form of fundamentalism, new to Mauritius on any scale, will from now onwards be a major
problem for all progressive people in Mauritius to have to counter. No-one who wants to
prevent a dangerous communalization of the country can afford to ignore the rise of this new
Hindu communalism.
At the same time, the old fundamentalism of French colonial times has remained. It is
dangerous. It acts as a permanent detonator of new forms of communalism and fundamentalism.
When the Commissioner of Police, Raj Dayal organizes a “Maha Yaj” in the Line Barracks, as
he did on 6th August, 1995, we must criticize this, and we must criticize at the same time the
annual “mass” for police (and firemen, and judiciary) that the Catholic Church has always
organized, since colonial times, when it was the religion of the ruling class. Catholic
fundamentalism must have its “invisibility” stripped from it.
When there are Shiwala and Mosque being constructed in Candos hospital (when medical
facilities and space are sadly lacking), we must criticize this mixture of religion with secular
institutions; but we must criticize the Chapels that already exist at Candos. We should denounce
the fact that electro-cardiograms are done in a corridor at the Jeetoo hospital, while there is a
religious Chapel next door, in the middle of a secular, health-care institution.
We must work towards either closing down the Chapels or turning them into “quiet secular
thinking rooms for everyone”; instead, what are we, as a people doing? We are often responsible
for putting more and more scarce resources into religions, which are encroaching dangerously
into secular space.
There have been communal leaflets distributed to Catholic children for their parents only. There
have been a number of big assemblies of “Catholic parents”, and parents of children at
“Catholic Schools” at Ste. Helene and Visitation, overlapping with the communalist front “Front
pour la Justice au CPE”. All this against a backdrop of a wide communalist movement called
the “Malez Kreol”, partly within the Church and partly a more generally political movement,
involving parishes and socio-cultural organizations and the church hierarchy itself. There has
been the predictable counter-attack which rallies people on communal grounds for the defense
of the Oriental languages.
Movement Against Communalism formed
It was in the general context of this hotting-up of the communal situation and a drift towards
what has accurately been described by Ram Seegobin as “multi-fundamentalism” that
Movement Against Communalism (MAC) was formed in March, 1995.
There are two ways, in general, that MAC will be combating communalism and
fundamentalism.
Firstly, we will be identifying and opposing all institutionalized forms of communalism.
Examples of this are the best loser system, communal clubs running first division football,
communalist politics, institutional division of music and other art, the state and political parties
getting all intermingled with religions, and religions, in turn, giving special services and special
places to politicians and state institutions, especially the police. There are important institutional
remnants of old fundamentalism, a relic of the past, in the religious control of part of the
national education system, and in fundamentalist laws on religion and abortion, while new
forms of fundamentalism are fought for: some people want a return to Muslim Personal Law,
others work towards the BJP-type fundamentalism where the nation, religion and language all
get mixed together unhealthily.
MAC is running an on-going campaign against all these institutional forms of communalism.