Mauritius prides itself on being a secular country where equality of opportunity is respected. Religion and cultural beliefs are left to the temples, mosques, churches or other religious establishments where people are given absolute freedom to play, pray and sing along. That is the minimum that must be allowed to every citizen of this blessed country. This country is blessed for a variety of reasons but essentially for the amount that the State – i.e the taxpayer, you and I – spends on what should be privately funded. If one believes in one’s faith or religion, then one has the duty to fund it and not rely on public largesse for that purpose.

But when one is dealing with the State and those men and women who service the public service, one expects religious neutrality and an absence of anything which might be associative of where one comes from and what one is. A secular society must demonstrate that it is one and no one should shield behind religion to undo what secularism is intended to do.

It is a sad reflection on Mauritian society that in the year 2012, when one would have expected these retrograde refl exes to have disappeared, certain ministers and other heads of the public service or even persons whose neutrality, independence and impartiality must be, like Caesar’’s wife, beyond reproach, are guilty of pandering to their sense of un-republican belonging by ensuring that their personal secretaries, bodyguards or other close personnel belong to their own faith and religion. Others go even further by ensuring that only persons who belong to the same caste as their own have
positions of proximity.

What one needs is neutrality of all public offi cers who serve the Government of the day, of whatever political colour the Government is. This is the very essence of public service. Any other attempt is an attempt to attack the foundation of the public service. In fact, it is also important that no one who is paid out of public funds should come out either by greeting or by being greeted in any special manner indicative of the cultural or religious background of the people involved.

Such forms of greeting are fi ne in any place other than a place where the Mauritian citizen expects equality of treatment, i.e in any office which is under the Government of Mauritius. Any departure from this fundamental principle creates the impression in the mind of the observer that the form of greeting can determine the outcome of any matter. It may be in order if all the parties involved happen to have the same origin, but it is most unlikely that that is the case. Perceptions are critical in sensitive areas.

The private sector and also some bodies which had as their origin state funding are guilty of the same attitudes and approaches which deserve outright condemnation. But the private sector at least does not depend on public funds – at any rate, not always. This, however, will be the subject matter of another piece.

But for present purposes, it might help to cleanse Mauritius of such anti-Republican values if we treated all public offi cers equally: their being posted in any department must be based on neutral grounds and nothing else.

They are public officers performing a task in the national interest.