Against communalism of the best-loser system - Lalit Mauritius

Another difficult terrain for the state to get into – even when merely seeking pointers as to
someone’s way of life – is the terrain of who exactly is a person practising a religion and who is
not. When questioned about names being “Muslim” names or not, and about “who” exactly is a
“Muslim” or not, Yousouf Mohamed again saw his witness, Maulana Haroon, scoring an own
goal. He said that in his opinion people who are Ahmadiya are not “Muslim” and are not
“members of the Muslim community”. This is a very thorny problem for the state to get
involved in: when some people claim to practice a particular religion, while others who claim to
be practitioners actually deny that the first ones are practitioners of the religion.
In the section on “Big Brother”, it should be mentioned that Counsel for the Applicant, Yousouf
Mohammed, once given free rein, seemed to lose all respect for people giving personal answers.
We were subjected to the nasty spectacle of seeing deeply private questions being invoked in
public, not as facts relative to the public domain, but as as part of the strange ritual of the state
“classifying” someone, often on the basis of his mother and father’s “community”. It felt deeply
sullying to everyone present, deeply reminiscent of Apartheid.
To give an example of the excesses. Counsel for the Applicant asked Diya Dholah the names of
her parents, thus starting the process of classifying Ms Dholah by classifying her parents first.
They are both dead. They died at the ages of 48 and 57 respectively within a matter of months
of one another, leaving 9 children, eight of them not yet married at the time. The violence of the
turn of questioning became apparent to everyone present in Court who knew that both her
parents are dead. She gave their names. This meant that because she had stood as a candidate for
general elections, she was subjected to the humiliation of having her dead parents classified in
public.
In the same vein, the Counsel then went on to insult Rada Kistnasamy for not knowing the “real
name” of his father, for only knowing a “nom gate” of his own father, who Rada Kistnasamy
had already said was dead. Those of us who know that his father died before Rada was big
enough to remember him were again quite upset at the line of questioning, classifying a father
he had never known. Later we found out that the name Rada Kistnasamy had given was his
father’s real name. That was what Yousouf Mohammed was laughing at in public in Court.
Then he asked Rada Kistnasamy what his son was called. When he gave his son’s name,
Yousouf Mohammed seemed amazed. Immediately after this, when Rada Kistnasamy refused to
answer questions about his religious faith, Yousouf Mohammed went on to threaten to get him
locked up for contempt of court for refusing to answer a question about his religion. Then the
Judge stepped in, saying that Mr. Mohammed had not threatened previous members of Lalit
with being locked up, so it was not appropriate to start threatening one member now.
But by then, no-one present had ever seen so shaming an event in Court.
So much for the state getting involved in this kind of private matter.
The real meaning of the four words “his way of life” in the Schedule
There could be nothing more difficult to distinguish in only a few words any one human being
relative to any others than by the vague term “his way of life”, or as it should be termed to be
more precise “his or her way of life” which incidentally already implies two categories, that of
male and female. The words “his way of life”, in ordinary English, mean quite simply
everything about a human being.
The broadest differences in “way of life” between different Mauritians would probably be
between people who work and live at sea, and those who work and live on the land. The way of
life of a professional sailor or fisherman, and that of others is different. Or between night-shift
workers and the rest of us. Or between those living in a “dependance” and others. Those who
are house-bound and those who move around every day. Those who are hedonists, and those
who work doggedly through life. Those who are young and those who are old. Or between the
four categories: Employer, employee, unemployed, self-employed. More objectively put,
whether one buys the labour of others or sells one’s own labour to another, or seeks to sell one’s
labour but cannot find a buyer, or produces and sells something independently. Or between
those without a home and those with a home. Or between rich and poor.
Justice Seetulsingh, himself said: “Our attention was drawn to the fact that a way of life can
also be dependent on class distinction, for a rich H… and a rich S-M… may have a similar way
of life, depending on their financial means, whereas a rich H… and a poor H…. may lead
altogether different ways of life.”
And indeed it would be hoped that a good political system would one day end up “representing”
all these different categories fairly.