Abstract

This paper examines the paradox of democracy and race in Mauritius through an analysis of the constitutional ‘Best Loser System’ (BLS), an electoral mechanism designed to ensure minority representation in parliament. While Mauritius is often celebrated as a stable and multicultural democracy, the BLS requires political candidates to declare affiliation with one of four constitutionally recognised racial communities in order to contest elections. Drawing on Goldberg’s concept of the Racial State and Mamdani’s theory of the bifurcated postcolonial state, the paper argues that Mauritian political stability has been achieved through the institutional management of ethnic difference rather than its transcendence.

The analysis traces three dimensions of the system: its colonial origins, its legal and bureaucratic operation, and its political consequences. It demonstrates how colonial practices of racial classification were embedded within the independence settlement and continue to structure democratic participation through administrative and legal procedures. While the BLS has contributed to minority inclusion and long-term political stability, it also reproduces rigid communal categories and constrains the development of a more fluid national identity. The Mauritian case, therefore, illustrates how racial governance can coexist with liberal democratic institutions, producing stability through the bureaucratic management of difference.

Introduction

Mauritius has long been celebrated as a model of a multicultural democracy, a small island state whose remarkable political stability contrasts sharply with the ethnic violence that has troubled other postcolonial societies. However, beneath this image of harmony lies a paradox: Mauritius is one of the few democracies in which citizens must legally identify by race in order to contest elections. The constitutional mechanism that employs this requirement is the ‘Best Loser System’ (BLS). This system was introduced in 1968, when Mauritius gained independence, to ensure that minority communities, such as Muslims, Creoles, and Sino-Mauritians, are fairly represented in Parliament alongside the Hindu majority and Franco-Mauritian elite. This essay argues that the BLS embodies the paradox of what Goldberg (2002) terms the ‘racial state’. Goldberg’s theory of racial governance highlights how states actively produce and manage racial differences through formal institutions and administrative practices. Mamdani’s concept of the bifurcated state explains how colonial systems of differentiated rule continued into postcolonial institutions. Together, these theories help demonstrate that the BLS is not simply an electoral device for fair representation, but a vessel through which communal identity is organised by the state.

Drawing on Goldberg’s theory of racial governance and Mamdani’s (1996) account of the postcolonial bifurcated state, the essay demonstrates how colonial logos of ethnic categorisation have been codified into Mauritius’s democratic institutions. This paper argues that Mauritian political stability has been achieved through the institutional management of ethnic differences. Rather than analysing the entire system solely through Goldberg’s concept of the ‘racial state,’ this essay uses Goldberg specifically to explain how the BLS reproduces racialised categories through law and bureaucracy, while drawing on Mamdani’s account for differentiated postcolonial rule to situate the system within a longer historical logic of state formation. By tracing (i) historical formation, (ii) legal operation, and (iii) political consequences of the BLS, it contends that Mauritius’s stability has been achieved not despite race, but through its institutionalisation. The first section explores how the BLS emerged from colonial strategies of communal classification that were carried into the independence settlement. The second demonstrates that its legal operation continues to make communal identity a condition of political membership. Finally, the third section argues that its political consequences extend beyond representation alone, reproducing racial categories as enduring terms of democratic legitimacy. Mauritius sustains democratic inclusion through the bureaucratic management of difference.

Historical Formation

The origins of the BLS lie in the racialised structures of the colonial state. Under both French and British rule, Mauritius was organised through rigid hierarchies of labour, race, and religion. The French imported enslaved Africans to work on sugar plantations, while British colonisers, after abolishing slavery in 1835, brought indentured labourers from India and traders from China. These groups were governed through distinct administrative regimes that tied social status and political rights to racial origin (Eriksen, 1998). An example of this was enslaved Africans and their descendants who were largely confined to plantation labour, while Franco-Mauritian settlers retained land ownership and political influence, and indentured Indian labourers were governed through separate labour contracts and migration regulations (Eriksen, 1998). This was not merely social prejudice but a calculated strategy of divide and rule, where differential treatment was the primary instrument of power. By assigning different legal statuses, economic roles, and forms of political access to each group, colonial authorities prevented the emergence of a unified political constituency and instead structured competition between communities for resources and recognition (Mamdani, 1996). Colonial censuses further institutionalised these distinctions. Populations were categorised along lines of race and religion—“Creole,” “Hindu,” “Muslim,” and “Chinese”—categories that would later become constitutionally entrenched. Census-making, as Anderson (1983) has argued, is a powerful act of imagining communities; it transforms fluid identities into fixed bureaucratic realities. Once identities are recorded and reproduced through state statistics, they become the basis for political representation, resource allocation, and administrative governance. In Mauritius, these colonial classifications later informed the communal categories used in the electoral system, linking colonial knowledge practices directly to the institutional design of the BLS.

In Mauritius, the enumeration of differences produced a political landscape in which racial classification became the primary mode of state knowledge. The “General Population” category, in particular, is a colonial construct, a catch-all group created to encompass everyone who did not fit the “Indian” or “Asian” labels (Eriksen, 1998; Miles, 1999), thereby amalgamating the descendants of enslaved Africans with the European plantation oligarchy and obscuring their vastly different historical experiences and power positions. While Franco-Mauritians retained economic dominance through land ownership and control of the sugar industry, Creoles largely occupied marginalised social and economic positions following emancipation. Grouping these populations within a single administrative category concealed these inequalities and presented them as a unified political community despite their divergent historical trajectories (Eriksen, 1998; Miles, 1999). By the late colonial period, British administrators faced a political dilemma. As independence approached, Hindu Mauritians, forming a demographic majority, were positioned to dominate electoral politics. Minority communities, particularly Franco-Mauritians and Creoles, feared marginalisation (Eriksen, 1998; Srebrnik, 2002). To secure their consent to independence, British commissioners introduced constitutional safeguards designed to preserve communal balance. The Banwell Report (1966) explicitly recommended a mechanism to guarantee minority representation, a proposal that would evolve into the BLS. When Mauritius achieved independence in 1968, the constitution retained these communal quotas. The First Schedule of the Constitution institutionalised the four officially recognised communities, embedding racial arithmetic at the heart of democratic representation (Constitution of the Republic of Mauritius, 1968).

As Mamdani (1996) explains, postcolonial states often inherit the colonial bifurcated state, one that distinguishes between modern citizens and traditional subjects. In the Mauritius case, Indo- Mauritian populations were increasingly incorporated into the institutions of the electoral politics as the emerging democratic majority, while other communities—particularly Creoles and Franco-Mauritians—were positioned as minorities whose political participation was mediated through communal safeguards rather than through demographic strength (Boswell, 2006; Eriksen, 1998). In Mauritius, this bifurcation persisted not territorially, unlike in many African colonies, but communally. Citizenship remained mediated through racial classification. Rather than existing as an undifferentiated national status, citizenship was organised through officially recognised communal categories that determined how representation would be distributed within the political system (Eriksen, 1998; Srebrnik, 2002). The independent state thus did not create a unified citizenry but rather a federation of ethnic categories, each granted political standing through state-sanctioned labels. These labels determined eligibility for mechanisms such as the BL seats, meaning that communal identity became a prerequisite for accessing corrective representation within Parliament (Eriksen, 1998; Miles, 1999). Thus, independence did not dismantle the colonial racial order; it repackaged it within the language of democratic inclusion. The new state was founded on a contradictory logic, equality through differentiation. As Eriksen (1998, p. 3) aptly observed, “Mauritius’s unity has always been managed through difference.” The BLS would come to embody this ethos, ensuring political stability by transforming colonial racial hierarchies into administrative categories of representation.

Legal Operations

The BLS institutionalises the racial logic of the Mauritian state through the mechanisms of law and bureaucracy by formally classifying citizens into fixed communal categories, thereby making race a routine part of governance; for instance, candidates have historically had to declare themselves within one of four constitutionally recognised groups in order for BL seats to be distributed. The National Assembly consists of sixty-two directly elected members and eight “Best Losers” selected to correct communal imbalances. To be eligible for election, candidates must declare their affiliation with one of the four constitutionally recognised communities: Hindu, Muslim, Sino-Mauritian, or General Population (which includes Creoles and Franco- Mauritians). Refusal to declare one’s community results in disqualification (Constitution of the Republic of Mauritius, 1968).

This requirement has been legally contested. In Reshma Ramiah & Others v. Electoral Commissioner (2005), several candidates argued that being compelled to identify racially violated their constitutional rights to equality and freedom of conscience. However, both the Supreme Court of Mauritius and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council upheld the law, ruling that the classification was essential to the electoral formula that guaranteed communal balance. The decision affirmed the state’s authority to enforce racial identification, in effect, to determine the legitimate terms of belonging. By ruling that communal classification was necessary for the functioning of the electoral system, the court established that participation in representative politics requires citizens to make themselves legible through the state’s authorised categories. Political membership is therefore not grounded in undifferentiated citizenship but in recognition within a predefined communal taxonomy. Those who refuse classification are excluded from candidacy, meaning that full participation in democratic institutions is conditional upon accepting the state’s framework of racial identification. In this way, the ruling transforms communal identity from a social descriptor into a legal prerequisite for political participation (Goldberg, 2002; Fessha & Ho Tu Nam, 2015).

It established that access to representation rests not on undifferentiated citizenship, but on recognition through one of the state’s authorised communal categories. Citizens are thus rendered politically legible only so far as they submit to this classificatory order. This legal requirement reinforces racial identification because it continually reproduces the categories on which the BLS depends. Candidates must declare a community, electoral authorities must verify those classifications, and parliamentary seats are subsequently allocated according to communal arithmetic. Through these routine administrative procedures, racial categories are repeatedly enacted and stabilised within the political system. As Goldberg (2002) argues, racial states sustain themselves through precisely such institutional practices, where legal and bureaucratic mechanisms normalise racial classification as a basic principle of governance. The judiciary, in this case, became an active agent of the racial state, prioritising communal arithmetic over individual liberty and thereby legally sanctifying the production of racialised political subjects.

Political Consequences

While the BLS entrenches racial classification, it has also underpinned Mauritius’s remarkable political stability by institutionalising minority inclusion within the electoral system and reducing the risk that demographic majorities translate into permanent political domination. Scholars often cite it as a pragmatic solution to the dangers of ethnic domination. By guaranteeing representation to minority communities, the system has mitigated fears of Hindu hegemony and prevented communal violence (Lublin & Wright, 2013; Mahadew, 2013). Compared to other multi-ethnic postcolonial states such as Fiji or Sri Lanka, Mauritius has maintained an unbroken record of peaceful transfers of power and competitive elections (Srebrnik, 2002). This stability is often celebrated as an example of pragmatic multiculturalism: a model of governance that transforms diversity from a threat into an administrative asset by embedding ethnic representation within formal political institutions, allowing the state to anticipate, measure, and manage communal competition rather than leaving it to erupt unpredictably through extra- institutional conflict (Lublin & Wright, 2013; Modood, 2013). Political elites defend the BLS as a mechanism of ‘communal harmony,’ arguing that it ensures unity through inclusion. Abdool Razack Mohamed, leader of the Comité d’Action Musulman (CAM), was included in one of these elites. He lobbied for safeguards to ensure minority representation in the Legislative Assembly, leading to the development of the BLS (Dobson, 2011). Empirical evidence supports the inclusionary effects of the BLS. Lublin and Wright (2013) found that the system significantly increases the probability of minority candidates entering Parliament. No major ethnic conflict has occurred since independence; a testament, perhaps, to the system’s stabilising role. As Modood (2013) observes, multiculturalism can function either as a “celebration” of diversity or as its “bureaucratisation.” Mauritius embodies the latter: it recognises difference, but only to the extent that it can be measured, categorised, and administered. Comparative insights deepen this analysis. Singapore’s Chinese-Malay-Indian-Other (CMIO) model, examined by Barr and Skrbiš (2008), mirrors Mauritius’s racial state logic. Both societies operationalise ethnicity through formal categories, managing potential conflict via state-controlled diversity by requiring individuals to be officially classified within recognised ethnic groups, which are then used to structure representation, public policy, and social programmes (Barr & Skbiš, 2008). In Singapore, for example, ethnic categories shape electoral institutions such as Group Representation Constituencies, which require parties to include minority candidates on electoral slates, as well as policies such as ethnic quotas in public housing designed to maintain communal balance. These mechanisms aim to prevent the formation of ethnic enclaves or majoritarian domination by embedding diversity management within administrative rules (Barr & Skrbiš, 2008). Yet this harmony is ambivalent. Stability is achieved through the very mechanisms that perpetuate racial boundaries because the same policies that secure representation and social balance also reinforce the salience of ethnic categories by requiring citizens to continually identify within them (Barr & Skrbiš, 2008; Goldberg, 2002). The success of the BLS, then, cannot be separated from the logic of racial management. The Mauritian state has achieved inclusion not by transcending race but by institutionalising it. Stability, in this sense, is a form of governance, a racial peace administered through law. As Goldberg (2002) might suggest, Mauritius demonstrates that racial states need not be oppressive; they can be benevolently bureaucratic, producing harmony through control.

The same system that promotes stability also reproduces colonial hierarchies and limits social mobility. The four communal categories, Hindu, Muslim, Sino-Mauritian, and General Population, are frozen in time, bearing little resemblance to the island’s complex contemporary identities. Intermarriage, Creole diversity, and mixed-race identities are ignored because the electoral framework requires citizens to align themselves with one of the four constitutionally recognised communities regardless of the complexity of their social identities. Individuals whose background spans multiple communities must therefore select a single category for political purposes, effectively simplifying and erasing hybrid or evolving identities (Eriksen, 1998). This is important as the persistence of these rigid classifications demonstrates how colonial categories continue to structure modern political participation, transforming historically contingent racial labels into enduring institutional requirements (Eriksen, 1998; Goldberg, 2002). The census categories that once served colonial labour management now define democratic participation (Eriksen, 1998). For instance, the children of a Sino- Mauritian father and a Creole mother face an arbitrary and politically charged choice, forced to align with one part of their heritage for political purposes, a decision that has tangible consequences for their political viability depending on the constituency they contest. This ossification sustains old hierarchies. Hindus, as the demographic majority, dominate political institutions, while Creoles remain underrepresented in higher education and business (Shilliam, 2015). Political parties continue to mobilise along ethnic lines: the Labour Party being predominantly Hindu, the Parti Mauricien Social Democrats (PMSD) as Creole-Franco-Mauritian, in turn, transforming elections into exercises in communal arithmetic rather than ideological debate. This stifles the development of a robust, issue- based political culture because political competition becomes structured around the mobilisation of communal voting blocs rather than policy platforms, incentivising parties to appeal to ethnic loyalties instead of cross-cutting social or economic issues (Srebrnik, 2002; Eriksen, 1998) and discourages the emergence of political entrepreneurs whose platforms transcend communal appeals.

The BLS also produces exclusion through neutrality. Candidates who refuse to declare a communal identity are barred from participation. For instance, the United Nations Human Rights Committee (UNHRC, 2012) ruled in Koonjul et al. v. Mauritius that this mandatory classification violates the right to equality under international law. The case arose when Mauritian activists sought to contest parliamentary elections without declaring affiliation with one of the four constitutionally recognised communities. They argued that the constitutional requirement to classify themselves as specific ethnicities compelled them to adopt a racial identity imposed by the state and therefore infringed their rights under Articles 25 and 26 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which guarantee equal access to public office and protection from discrimination. The Human Rights Committee agreed that the requirement effectively excluded individuals who refused communal classification from standing for election on equal terms with other citizens. By making participation in the democratic process conditional on accepting the state’s racial taxonomy, the electoral system restricted the political rights of those who rejected communal identification (United Nations Human Rights Committee, 2012).

Yet the Mauritian government defended the system as essential to maintaining national unity. In its response, the state argued that the Best Loser System formed part of a constitutional compromise designed to prevent ethnic domination and preserve political stability in a deeply plural society. According to the government, a communal declaration was necessary to ensure that minority groups remained represented in Parliament and to maintain the delicate balance that had sustained peaceful politics since independence. This response illustrates Foucault’s (2003) notion of biopolitical management: the state defines who belongs and on what terms, exercising power not through repression but through classification. Rather than excluding citizens through overt coercion, the state governs the population by organising it into recognised racial communities and regulating political participation through those categories. The state’s defence is a classic biopolitical argument: the infringement of individual rights is framed as a necessary and benevolent measure for the protection of the population’s (racial) body politic as a whole.

Despite its historical success, the Best Loser System has faced growing scrutiny within Mauritius and abroad. For instance, from 2001 to 2014, a series of electoral reform commissions recommended replacing the system with a proportional representation model that would retain inclusivity without requiring racial declaration (Mahadew, 2019). Public debate intensified after the Reshma Ramiah case (Fessha & Ho Tu Nam, 2021). Younger Mauritians, raised in a more globalised society, increasingly question why they must “choose a race” to participate in a supposedly meritocratic democracy (Auerbach, 2023; Fessha & Ho Tu Nam, 2021). Civic movements such as Rezistans ek Alternativ and LALIT have called for a shift toward national, rather than communal, identity (UNHRC, 2012; Ah- Vee & Lallah, 2010). These movements often leverage the discourse of human rights and cosmopolitanism, arguing that the BLS is an anachronism that tarnishes Mauritius’s international image as a modern democracy. Yet reform has been slow. The state fears that abandoning communal safeguards might destabilise the delicate balance that has ensured peace for over five decades. This fear is potent; the spectre of ethnic strife is a powerful tool used by political incumbents who have built their careers within and benefit from the current communal system.

Fessha and Ho Tu Nam (2021) characterise this dilemma as the “Mauritian paradox.” The BLS is both the symbol of the nation’s unity and the obstacle to its modernisation. Efforts to replace it have repeatedly stalled because any reform that threatens communal balance risks undermining the very harmony it seeks to perfect.

The persistence of the BLS thus reveals the resilience of the racial state. Even reform discourse operates within its logic, seeking new ways to manage, rather than transcend, communal differences (Mahadew, 2019; Fessha & Ho Tu Nam, 2021). Proposed alternatives, such as a purely proportional system or reserved seats without individual declaration, still grapple with the fundamental question of how to define the communities being protected, thus remaining trapped within the taxonomic framework the state has created (Mahadew, 2019; Fessha & Ho Tu Nam, 2021). Mauritius remains a rare case where race is not a vestige of the past but a constitutional principle of democracy itself.

Conclusion

Mauritius’s Best Loser System illustrates how the racial state can thrive within a successful liberal democracy. The system embodies Goldberg’s (2002) insight that the racial state is not defined by overt racism but by its bureaucratic normalisation of race as a category of governance. Through the BLS, Mauritius has institutionalised race as the foundation of democratic participation. It has achieved peace by transforming colonial hierarchies into an administrative order. Mamdani’s (1996) bifurcated state persists, not through colonial despotism but through constitutional design. The BLS ensures inclusion by managing difference, a strategy that both empowers minorities and constrains the evolution of national identity. The paradox of Mauritius lies in its success. Stability has been purchased at the cost of perpetuating racial categories that no longer reflect social realities. Reform efforts continue to grapple with this tension: to abolish the BLS risks instability; to preserve it entrenches inequality. The Mauritian case thus forces a re-evaluation of the very timelines of decolonisation, suggesting that the formal end of empire may be followed by a long, indefinite period of institutional and psychological dependency on colonial forms of knowledge and control.

Ultimately, Mauritius invites a broader reflection on postcolonial governance. It challenges the liberal assumption, such as Goldberg (2002), that racial states are inherently illiberal, showing instead how racial administration can coexist with democracy, tolerance, and peace. Yet it also warns of the limits of bureaucratic multiculturalism, which can be viewed through the lens of Modood (2013). The Mauritian model, for all its pragmatic glory, ultimately represents a politics of containment rather than liberation. It manages differences efficiently but offers no vision for its dissolution into a more integrative and fluid national identity. True harmony may require not the management of difference but its transcendence; politics that affirms diversity without reducing it to race. Mauritius poses the international challenge of how to build a common future without being perpetually governed by the bureaucratic ghosts of a segregated past.

References

Ah-Vee A. & Lallah R. (2010). The Best Loser System and Communalism, in Perspective. LALIT. https://www.lalitmauritius.org/en/newsarticle/980/the- best-loser-system-and-communalism-in-perspective/

Anderson, B. (1983). Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.

Auerbach, J. (2023). Conscripting communalism: surveillance and resistance in contemporary Mauritius. Africa, 93(4), 759–778.

Banwell, G. (1966). Report of the Mauritius Electoral Commission. London: HMSO.

Barr, M.D. and Skrbiš, Z. (2008). Constructing Singapore: Elitism, Ethnicity and the Nation-Building Project. Asian Studies Review, 32(1), 35–56. https://doi.org/10.1080/10357820701862723

Boswell, R. (2006). Le Malaise Créole: Ethnic Identity in Mauritius. Oxford: Berghahn Books.

Chua, B.H. (2003). Multiracialism and the Politics of Identity in Singapore. Singapore: NUS Press.

Constitution of the Republic of Mauritius (1968, as amended). First Schedule: Allocation of Seats to the Communities. https://mauritiusassembly.govmu.org/Documents/Libr ary/constitution.pdf

Dobson, R.J. (2011). The Most Cosmopolitan Island under the Sun? Negotiating Ethnicity and Nationhood in Everyday Mauritius. University of Western Sydney.

Eriksen, T.H. (1998) Common Denominators: Ethnicity, Nation- Building and Compromise in Mauritius. Oxford: Berg.

Fessha, Y.T. and Ho Tu Nam, N. (2021). Is it time to let go? The Best Loser System in Mauritius. Journal of African Law, 65(3), 403–423. DOI: 10.1163/2031356X- 02801005.

Foucault, M. (2003). Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975–76. New York: Picador.

Goldberg, D.T. (2002). The Racial State. Oxford: Blackwell. Lublin, D. and Wright, M. (2013). Minority Rules: Electoral

Systems, Minority Representation, and the Best Loser System in Mauritius. Electoral Studies, 32(4), 785–798. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.electstud.2013.05.00

Mahadew, A.R. (2013). The Best Loser System in Mauritius: An Essential Electoral Tool for Representing Political Minorities. Democracy, Elections and Political Parties in Africa. Baden-Baden: Nomos, pp. 135–150. https://doi.org/10.5771/9783845254609

Mahadew, A. (2019). Reforming Mauritius’s Electoral System: More Gender and Less Communal Representation. ConstitutionNet. https://constitutionnet.org/news/reforming-mauritiuss-electoral-system-more-gender-nd-less-communal-representation

Mamdani, M. (1996). Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Miles, W.F.S. (1999). The Mauritian plural society and the Best Loser System. The Journal of Modern African Studies, 37(2), 203–230.

Modood, T. (2013). Multiculturalism: A Civic Idea. 2nd edn. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Shilliam, R. (2015). The Black Pacific: Anti-Colonial Struggles and Oceanic Connections. London: Bloomsbury Academic.

Srebrnik, H.F. (2002). Ethnicity and the politics of democracy in Mauritius. Journal of Democracy, 13(2), 127–142.

United Nations Human Rights Committee (UNHRC). (2012). Communication No. 1742/2007: Views Adopted by the Committee under Article 5(4) of the Optional Protocol concerning Mauritius (Koonjul et al. v. Mauritius). Geneva: United Nations. https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/3970949?v=pdf

United Nations Human Rights Committee (UNHRC). (2012). Narrain et al. v. Mauritius, Communication No. 1744/2007, CCPR/C/105/D/1744/2007. Geneva: United Nations.