30 June 1999, 936 Words
According to Health Minister Dr. Hamza Rafeeq, about 20 percent of the population of Trinidad and Tobago have mental health problems. He was smiling when he said it but, then, Dr. Rafeeq never stops smiling. (Hmm.)
At any rate, the accuracy of this figure really depends on what you mean by "mad". If we accept, as the broadest definition possible, that "madness is the inability to see reality as it is", then I would have to disagree with Dr. Rafeeq. I think the percentage of mad people in our society is much higher than 20 percent.
Fundamentalist Hindus seem especially subject to this malady. Not that I know every fundamentalist Hindu in the country, of course. I am merely extrapolating from a survey of their spokespersons, whose grip on reality is uniformly tenuous. Take the Maha Sabha columnists, who spout history and science from a different planet located in a different universe. One such column said: "Hinduism holds the view that time manifests in a four cycle [sic] pattern...When this cycle is repeated 1,000 times, this constitutes a kalpa, i.e. 4.32 billion years. It is interesting to note that this number approximates that given by the eminent Dr. Carl Sagan as to the age of the universe."
It might indeed be interesting, if Sagan had ever said such a dotish thing. However, cosmologists are in general agreement that the universe is between 12 and 14 billion years old. But the Maha Sabha's departure from reality is easily explained: "This method dating shows the superfluousness of arguments advanced by a number of people in respect to the presence of the first man in the world and his country of origin," the writer explains, for in her reality it is impossible that her ancestors were once African.
An even greater departure from reality occurs in a column headlined "The Caste System - a true perspective" by Devant Parsuram Maharaj. In it, he writes: "Subjugation by Islamists and later by British is responsible for many evils...this business of caste oppression was one of them...this issue of classifying upper and lower castes did not exist then, it is a recent invention of politicians..."
Now since the Bhagavadgita clearly says "Brahmanas, kshaytriyas, vaisyas and sudras are distinguished by qualities born of their own natures." (18:41), and since 9:32 clearly states that the last two, plus women, are of "lower birth", and since the Laws of Manu also list many clear caste distinctions, I can only conclude that Devant is either a damn liar or crazy. And, since he is such a devout Hindu, it is obviously impossible that Devant would depart from the principle of satyam (truth).
His Maha Sabha colleague Rajnie Ramlakhan also suffers from cognitive dissonance. In a recent column, she wrote, "Hindu men did not exercise the option to cohabit with women outside their race." I can readily excuse Rajnie's lack of knowledge about men, but only a person totally disconnected from reality could believe that all the Indian-mixed children never had live-in fathers. Rajnie's delusions get even worse when she tries to be intellectual. In order to "prove" the Vedas have scientific information, she quotes the theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking as saying, "The participatory anthropic principle based on quantum physics states that consciousness brought the universe into being", as though Hawking agrees with this. Hawking is, in fact, an atheist, which makes Rajnie either a liar, a fool or mad as a coot.
Now these fundamentalist Hindus might excuse themselves by saying that their religion teaches that all reality is maya (illusion), so that they are justified in ignoring or inventing facts. But fundamentalist Christians have no such excuse. Just the other day, Pastor Cuffie was saying that responsible parents would ensure their children have a balance between secular and spiritual. To prove his point, the pastor quoted Proverbs 11:1 "A false balance is an abomination to the Lord." But this proverb actually refers to weights and scales and, since Pastor Cuffie would obviously never endanger his immortal soul by misrepresenting the Bible, I can only assume that he also is losing his grip on reality.
But I can hardly blame him. Even a social psychologist, one Gordon Husbands, asserts that "the spiritual approach is the only one that might make any difference in the crime situation." If a trained psychologist can ignore the obvious reality that countries with a low crime rate all have a narrow gap between rich and poor, laws which are equitably enforced, and secular political systems - well, clearly he must be suffering from the same sort of malady he is trained to deal with.
Nor are Muslims better off, unfortunately. According to ASJA president Dr. Mansoor Ibrahim, the Ms Universe Pageant symbolizes "disrespect and desecration of the sacred status of women and their exploitation." He seems totally unaware that the societies where women have least rights and are most ill-treated, including ritual removal of their sexual organs, are all Islamic ones. Since this is so obvious, I can only conclude that Dr. Ibrahim, too, suffers a chronic disconnection from reality.
The statements of our politicians, which are so often at odds with reality, do not need quoting. Our academics are little better. The real question is, if all our leaders are suffering from various degrees of insanity, what about the average citizen? Well, the average citizen believes that hanging will actually help stop crime. If they don't believe that, it means they are just as murderous as the people they want hanged. In either case, madness is the only possible diagnosis.
Copyright ©1999 Kevin Baldeosingh