If we are really wiser after the event, the denouement could not have been otherwise and we should have seen it coming. In recent years Mauritius has been witness to the assertion of different communities especially in some distinct well-defined regions populated mainly by one community. Displaying sharpened ethnic and communal and other socio-political cleavages, identity politics has become increasingly significant in the emerging political landscape.
They have become the new arena/configuration where political and economic choices are being made and unmade. The rise of varied religious identities, the compartmentalisation of the majority community, proselytization, failures of proper governance, pauperisation across communities including the middle class, perceptions of exclusion and injustice have all contributed to the significance of identity politics. Our democratic set-up and our leaders have also played their part in the assertion of various identities and power struggle between various sections of people. These identities also function as “an instrument” to access material gains in the present political and power set-up. Please note that such an analysis may be more complicated than it seems if none of the ensemble of the people subsumed by these identities are homogenous in their character. Instead, they may be highly diverse for the simple reason that the constituents of such composites are all vertically stratified with varying social and economic competencies or because of conflicting religious affiliations. But what is more important is that these are not perceived as such by the other competing communal groups.
For many of the proponents of the identity politics from the minority communities the present socioeconomic system is biased towards the majority community and caste which is enjoying a relatively greater share than what they merit. The political system has frozen mobility in social structures and socioeconomic relations. Ethnic groups and castes have increasingly become competitive horizontal groups; their main demand is social justice in the narrow terms of caste and community socio-economic uplift.
The political or communal mobilisations therefore need to be read as attempts to unfreeze/overthrow the order of things to get the wheel of economic and social mobility turning. A remnant of colonialism, the division of voters on sectarian lines thus continues unabated in its new form of identity politics, seemingly to protect minorities from domination, exploitation and suppression by the majority. But this division has further intensified, fuelled by radical religious groups, financed partly by wealthy foreign countries, and a partisan media, while the community’s intelligentsia preferred to watch passively and most of the time aligning themselves with the ethnic groups that most closely spoke for them.
As in the colonial times, where one specific community controlling the colonial bureaucracy was hated by the majority community, now the conflicting message of identity politics is that any identity as majority community and caste controlling the levers of power is morally wrong whereas every minority identity must be protected, must be uplifted. This notion completely leaves out the need to assess the quality of ideas out of the realm of identities to be determined as good or bad thus essentially forcing people to discard their fight of ideas and move towards identities, When people move towards identities radicalism they tend to fall back on themselves or the vested interest of the group and seek support from their own caste/communities rather than appeal across castes and communities.
It was in such a context that the recent elections were held. The majority community and caste, both from urban and rural areas, first impressions were that the minority communities were ganging up together against them-the pro-minorities MMM and a pro-Muslim, high-caste backed Labour Party against a pro-Hindu Alliance Morisien. Both the MMM and the Labour Party, instead of reassuring the majority community and eliminating these first impressions, emerging at the beginning of the campaign, on the contrary, reinforced these perceptions. Both the MMM and the LP have been largely absent in addressing the most pressing issue facing the majority community -the strong feeling of insecurity that was building up, as the campaign progressed, that they will be the losers if the political power is wrested from the majority community. (The MMM, for e.g , didn’t have a member of the majority community of high standing and substance in its front bench and it lacked consistency on the BAI saga Their continuous assertion that they will be the king maker and thus in coalition with the "galimatias " after the elections meant that their criticism of the latter was arguable ).
It is not uncommon for the political parties to use-scientific communalism- religion or caste as a base to consolidate and stabilise their power among voters behind their facade or maxims of ‘unity in diversity’ or “enn sel lepep end sel nation”. But what they did not bargain for was that it was not the leaders but the followers that were driving the narrative guided by their own identity politics, polarised in a rhetoric of victimisation entitled to reparation and redress. It was not a call for reform of the system, for a sharing of the fruits of progress, for more meritocracy , for inclusive institutions that are accessible to all (or most) citizens and do not favor a narrow group of elites, cronies and community over the rest of society. It was a question of us against them. “Kick the majority community and caste out !” Identity politics had altered the terms of the political discourse. Its inroads in the Mauritian psyche were too deep to hope that years of these low-level intercommunal tensions and tussles were gradually being erased by our occasional show of cross-sectarian solidarity during so-called national festivals and celebrations, the Indian Ocean games or the Papal visit or....
With the perception that their political survival was at stake, the majority community reacted by banding together and minutely organising a well-targeted campaign focussing on the regions where they could make a difference and many of them who were obfuscated by the “Entrailles du pouvoir” episodes started reverting back to their traditional latent communal allegiance to the Alliance Morisien. Navin Ramgoolam’s blunder at Plaine Verte, ingeniously exploited by Alliance Morisien and expertly doused by our dear Dulthuman and the MBC TV with their own doses of communal politics , rallied the majority community to the only party that could secure them about their future,the Alliance Morisien.
Identity politics is the syndrome in which people’s beliefs and interests are assumed to be determined by their membership in groups. But any hopes for human improvement are not necessarily served by pitting group against group in a zero-sum competition. Pere Jocelyn Grégoireʼs FCM does not demarcate from other sectarian socio- cultural groups fighting that their “nou-bannes” get a bigger share of the national cake, but his strategy was different. His consultations with his public seemed to have convinced him that there is a huge silent majority within his community which feels that, like with other regimes, they have been mere bystanders for the past five years, bypassed on many of the so-called pro-poor measures taken by the government. His community has more to gain by cosying up to those in power. Lots and lots of money changed hands .....And most of his candidates from Alliance Morisien, got elected ! What were his instructions to his community ? While the majority community was voting "bloc" for Alliance Morisien, the minority community 's tactical voting ended in benefiting the latter, dealing the lethal final blow to the opposition parties.
Whatever the analysis we will be coming forward with, it will be difficult to hide it that we are still dealing with the same dirty old tricks of the trade but in new forms that are move divisive and conflicting, rendering us more fragile. Finally it is not a question of development, employment, growth prospects or good governance or electoral promises , or the interminable "casseroles" of a regime that determine the outcome of the election, it is plain identity politics elevated to the altar of morality and ethics.
But it is taking us to dangerous ways. We have accepted their vile ways, their hate mongering , we even encouraged them aligning ourselves with the group that most closely speak for us, we have adopted the “ rodère boute” mentality and as Kwame Anthony Appiah in his book “The lies that bind: Rethinking Identity “, explains it “Identity is a lie that binds when we allow it to imprison us but equally it remains a lie when we suppose we’re free to choose our identities at will.” Any hope for human improvement is better served by encouraging a recognition of universal human interests than by pitting group against group. We still have a long way to go. But we can afford to ask ourselves, could it have been otherwise ?
