4 March 1995, 852 words
Geologists tell us that the Earth was formed about four billion years ago. However, if the Equal Opportunities Bill becomes law, I may have to pay a hefty fine for repeating what geologists say. After all, according to the Bible, God made the Earth 4006 years ago, so any Christian who believes the Bible to be the Word of God - and I assume every Christian must believe this in order to be a Christian - could accuse me of insulting their religious beliefs by claiming the Earth to be more than 4006 years old.
I could get in even more trouble with Hindus if I start quoting biologists, who tell us that humans first evolved in Africa between 130,000 to 60,000 years ago. Given her perspective on this matter, Rajnie Ramlakhan would no doubt claim that I was insulting her racially by implying she is a descendant of Africans. (I guess I'm lucky the first humans are dead, for they might turn around and accuse me of exactly the same thing.) And not only science, but history becomes a touchy subject: the Maha Sabha, for example, insists that Hinduism is nearly 8,000 years old. But scholars tell us that Hinduism dates from 1500 B.C., making it only 3,500 years old - 5,000 at most if you want to define the sacrificial religion called Vedism that preceded it as Hinduism. (You'd be mistaken to do so, of course, but such errors of "scholarship" don't bother Devant Maharaj.) But if the Maha Sabha leaders feel insulted by my saying all this - and they seem to get insulted by any comment which doesn't hold Hinduism to be the fountain of art, philosophy, science, civilization and the universe itself- they could haul me before the Equal Opportunities Tribunal so fast you'd hear the sonic boom in Grenada.
Even an abstract subject like quantum physics may not be safe for me to discuss. For example, if I ever wrote about the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, which says that "fuzziness" is a fundamental limitation of the universe, any devout Muslim could haul me before the Tribunal for blasphemy. After all, the Qu'ran clearly says, "He multiplies in certain what He will. Lo! Allah is able to do all things" (35:1). Chemistry is just as risky: phenomena like Rayleigh-Benard hydrodynamic instability or the Busselator feedback or the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction all suggest that Nature has certain self-organizing principles. If this is true, then there is no need for a Supreme Being to explain order in the universe, so anybody who believes in such a Being could have me charged for blasphemy under the provisions of this Bill. (Rayleigh, Benard, Belousov and Zhabotinsky need not worry, however, for they are all either dead or not living in Trinidad.)
I guess, though, I could stop mentioning physics, biology, chemistry and history in my columns. A newspaper columnist should really concentrate on social issues, anyway. I could instead devote more space to promoting women's rights - no wait, that could still cause devout Christians, Hindus and Muslims to accuse me of insulting their religions, since all their Holy Books say women mustn't have equal rights. The Bhagavadgita describes women as being of "lower birth" along with labourers and tradesmen (32:32). The Bible says that "man was not created for woman's sake but woman for the sake of man." (1Corinthians11:8). And the Qu'ran asserts that "Men are in charge of women because Allah has made one to excel the other." (4:34)
So promoting the cause of women will be out if this Bill becomes law. Maybe, though, I could devote my writing skills to fighting child abuse. Surely no one could be insulted by that. But no, I just remembered: under this Bill, badtalking pedophiles could get me arrested. Sat Maharaj has already said that the Maha Sabha would object to any attempt to change the Marriage Act so as to make the marriage of 14-year-old girls illegal. (Apparently there are enough men in the Maha Sabha who want to marry 14-year-olds to make Sat want to defend their right to do so.) I can't even object to pubescent girls getting married: Ahamad Baksh of Rio Claro, in a letter to the editor, asserts that under the Hadith it is a sin for girls to remain unmarried once they start to menstruate. "It is well known that girls start menstruation as early as age ten," writes Mr. Baksh happily, and not a maulana has disagreed. Thus, if the Equal Opportunities Bill becomes law, I certainly can't denigrate any devout Muslim who wants to marry a child.
In fact, now that I look at the list of things this Bill would prevent me writing about, I realize that it may soon be impossible to write about anything intellectual or important at all in this country. But maybe that is the real intention of the Bill since, between Clause Seven and making religion compulsory in schools, the populace will eventually become so dumb that politicians and demagogues can continue to fool us well into the next millennium.
Copyright ©1999 Kevin Baldeosingh