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Closet communalists

17 novembre 2017, 17:13

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The only positive thing about the ousted Showkutally Soodhun’s sickening speech on Creoles and prostitution was this: He revealed his true face. There were no attempts to paint a Lexus emblem on a rusty old Toyota; no fancy Instagram filters to cover up a bad snapshot. No beating around the bush – just a candid this-is-me-and-my-blatantly-communalist-opinions moment. We ought to thank Soodhun for his honesty.

Granted, it would have been better if the ousted vice prime minister had revealed his communal opinions earlier – during the electoral campaign, to spare us the pain of being partly governed by a racist for nearly three years. But more than Soodhun’s sorry fate, what ought to worry us now are the closet communalists. The leaders who may share his views, but are too politically clever to express them in public forums. They are the real tumours on the societal body. The problem is just that our politicians aren’t the only culprits in the communal game. Most of us – dare we even suggest all of us? – are.

It’s no secret that communal opinions outnumber the coconut palms in Mauritius. But we are used to hiding the uncomfortable truth. Political correctness and hypocrisy in public along with full disclosure in private is our way. This is not South Africa, where the president rhetorically asked a cheering crowd to bring him his machine gun so that he could shoot some white farmers. This is Mauritius, where we both expect and accept a certain amount of communalism, as long as no one forces us to admit it openly.

We watch political parties select candidates with the right ethnic and communal profile for each constituency. We watch ourselves cast our votes based on community, not opinions of ideology. We watch our neighbours base the majority of their life decision, including who they should marry, on factors like ethnicity and cast. Every day, we hear dozens of jokes about supposedly greedy Chinese, supposedly sexually promiscuous blacks, supposedly arrogant and colonial whites, supposedly medieval Muslims and supposedly physically weak Hindus. We stereotype and generalise, then line up under the flag and sing that we are one people and one nation in peace, justice and liberty.

The lyrics of the national anthem are still true. We are still one of the few countries in the world where people can co-exist without putting bullets in each other’s heads for praying to different gods and seeing different features when looking in the mirror. But is that really all that we want to achieve? What if we could at least aspire to become a real rainbow nation, without the massive hypocrisy?

If we are wise, we will use Soodhun’s fall as a starting point for introspection. We need to ask ourselves how communal we really are. Is the younger generation any less communal, or is it just better at practising closet communalism? Either way, we need to start by acknowledging, openly, that we have a problem. Let’s come out.

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