Against communalism of the best-loser system - Lalit Mauritius

Preface
Communalism, racism, casteism, nationalism, all rise and fall with the ebb and flow of class
conflicts. Everybody knows that these ideologies never stand still. In general the more cornered
the capitalists are, the more they turn to the ideologies of race, community, caste and
nationalism. And the weaker the working class opposition is to this, the more the capitalists can
hope, in turn, to succeed in their push to displace class struggle against themselves and political
struggle for equality on to the inter-ethnic plane. On this inter-ethnic plane, at best the
philosophic aim is to make inequality look more “just”. And it is on this inter-ethnic plane, that
conflicts can become a mortal danger to all citizens, especially the poorer, and not just a danger
to the owning and ruling classes.
Right now, in this year of a general election, the basic economic crises that the bourgeoisie and
the government keep moaning about get worse and worse. And as they get worse, they, in turn,
keep producing political crises of all kinds. This context means that the dangers of
communalism, racism, casteism and nationalism are upon us.
This is why Lalit has launched a campaign against communalism and in particular against the
communal Best Loser system, to go hand-in-hand with our campaign for an alternative political
economy.
Lalit’s action by which our candidates for General Elections draw their community from a hat
will probably go down in history as the action that brought about the fall of this iniquitous
system of communal best losers.
But let us now look back, in more general terms, at the recent struggles against communalism.
Last major struggle against communalism
The Movement Against Communalism (MAC) twin documents against the Best Loser and
against Communal Classification came out at a time when communalism was dangerously on
the rise as a direct result of the State’s hideously communal “barter”. What was the “barter”?
The Government set up two Select Committees in 1992. The Dulloo Select Committee on
Oriental Languages and De L'Estrac Select Committee on Confessional Schools reports, and
both were made public by December 1993. One Select Committee on how to count Oriental
Languages for ranking of pupils moving to secondary school, and in direct “exchange”, the
other one allowing the Catholic Church (Roman Catholic Education Authority) to reserve 50%
places in its Government-subsidized Secondary Schools and to choose pupils as they wish, and
to give only half places for the Government to send children to these schools on the basis of
their ranking. Lalit members at once knew that it was important to oppose this kind of
institutional communalism, this setting “communities” one against the other, and, together with
some 15 organizations, we set up MAC.
The MMM-MSM’s whole “barter” went bad, of course, just in the way this kind of plot can be
expected to. The main very material reason for this was that most people who are supposed (in
the imagination of the politicians who thought up this hair-brained scheme) to benefit from
including Oriental Languages in exam result calculations do not, in reality, care much about the
issue, and this for many reasons. The main reason is, of course, that most children fail anyway,
their parents know beforehand they will fail and do not even know or care (quite rightly) on
what day examination results will be out. The ranking only concerns 2,000 out of some 30,000
pupils, and the people in their wisdom, know this. Others believe that their children are overloaded
for examinations as it is, without adding any other subjects. Secondly, the 50% reserved
places is loathed by almost everyone, who all firmly believe that they are discriminated against
because of it. Half the parents think they are discriminated against for not being of the correct
religion, and they do not intend getting baptized to get into a good government-subsidized
school. The other half firmly believe that they are discriminated against by the Church
authorities on the grounds of their race and/or class, even though their religion should assure