26 October 2000, 809 words
The metaphor of "light" is usually used to represent two qualities: knowledge or goodness. In both respects, those persons who claim to speak for Hinduism in Trinidad and Tobago are abject failures.
Take knowledge first. In her Express column for last year's Divali, Rajnie Ramlakhan wrote: "Hindus believe that the sum total of creation is God...science is constantly giving credence to Hindu beliefs. Recent scientific research has uncovered the fact , through various tests, that the chemical make-up of the human brain and a stone is the same."
While this claim is as dotish as it sounds, it perhaps provides a good explanation for the hard-headedness of Ramlakhan and her Maha Sabha colleagues. Not that dotishness is restricted to the Maha Sabha spokespersons alone: leader of the Hindu Prachar Kendra, Ravi-ji, recently listed several attributes an elevated soul, which included long earlobes and deepset eyes. (I doubt, however, that he would categorize me as elevated in any way.)
All the Hindu newspaper columnists write less obvious, though no less egregious, nonsense about history, culture, psychology, politics, even religion. My motive in taking them to task - apart from having fun - was to embarrass them into being more rigorous and truthful. This was quite naive of me. What instead happened was that they simply began lying more (on the premise, I suppose, that if you tell enough untruths people must believe some).
But these persons' intellectual failure is nothing compared to their spiritual one. The Encyclopaedia Britannica says, "As a religion, Hinduism is an utterly diverse conglomerate of doctrines, cults, and ways of life." It is quite ironic that the brand of Hinduism promoted by local Hindu leaders is no different from fundamentalist Christianity or Islam.
The Hindu spokespersons like to condemn these religions for violence and arrogance and bigotry, yet they themselves embody exactly what they are criticizing. In a recent Guardian column, for example, Maha Sabha leader Sat Maharaj wrote, "The Pope...said reports from India were 'alarming, after many attacks were made against Christians'...If he had revealed the actual number of [Christians] killed, he would have made no impact. Not even a dozen persons have been killed in the 'alarming' attacks on Christians."
Maharaj did not say how many murders it takes before one should become alarmed. But this is not surprising. After all, a few months before he had unilaterally declared that ahimsa was expunged from the Hindu scriptures. On that occasion, he didn't say who had made him an avatar, either.
It is significant, however, that ahimsa, although usually translated as "non-violence", has a more complex meaning than this. The Britannica describes it as "respect of and consideration for life and fellow feeling with all living beings" and says that Indian thinkers define it as the keystone of their ethics. That in itself may explain why Sat Maharaj rejected it.
More significantly, when Maharaj expunged ahimsa, no word of protest came from other Hindu leaders. That tacit support has since been articulated in an Express column by Indira Maharaj who, in an interview with an Indian guru whom she described as equivalent to the Pope, made no demurral when he stated, "We now have to seek violence as part of the cosmic plan; it becomes necessary, morally, to save Hinduism."
An uninformed reader would be convinced that there is a Nazi-type genocide directed against Hindus, instead of mere conversions. But whenever you see religious leaders supporting violence in such a context you can be sure that their goals are political, not spiritual.
This is why Devant Parsuram Maharaj writes, either with unconscious irony or conscious hypocrisy, "If Hindus do not consider taking their protection seriously, then the Hindu civilizational presence in Trinidad will continue to be under threat from ideologies that continue to masquerade as religions."
Exactly what the "Hindu civilizational presence" is, is never concretely defined by the Hindu columnists. And perhaps they are wise to remain vague (though I suspect it's just intellectual incapacity). The manusamhita, on which Hindu law and therefore Hindu civilization is based, is a monarchical system in which the Brahmin is the "lord of all castes", sudras (workers) are "created by God to be slave of a Brahmin", women are denied freedom, and physically or mentally handicapped persons must be "despised by the virtuous".
This is not the kind of "civilization" that most people, not even Hindus, would want to live in. But Hinduism has many parts. The Bhagavadgita lists the following as some of the essential virtues: charity, austerity, non-violence, truthfulness, freedom from anger, forgiveness, and compassion. Qualities that should be embraced in today's festival of lights, but which are manifestly absent in those who most loudly claim to follow the Hindu way.
Copyright ©2000 Kevin Baldeosingh