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Politics and Religion

Apr 10, 2013 Editorial

 

 

The passing of Reepu Daman Persaud and Dale Bisnauth, within a week of each other, brings into focus the intertwined roles of religion and politics in Guyana. Persaud was a Pandit or priest of the Hindu religion while Bisnauth was a Christian priest of the Presbyterian denomination. They were both Ministers of Government in the present administration.
While the western tradition speaks of the ‘separation of Church and State’, this has never been interpreted to mean that members of ‘the Church’ could not enter politics. The injunction, instituted explicitly in pioneering democracies such as the US and the French Republic at the end of the 18th century, forbade an official role for “the Church” (broadly interpreted in modern times as including all religions) in the affairs of states. Prior to this, the Catholic Church has literally been the kingmaker in Europe and played a powerful role in determining state policies.
In the colonies, including our own British Guiana, the Church however, worked very closely with the colonial governments which placed them in charge of the educational institutions. These linkages were sundered in the early 1960s and in 1976 in Guyana when all schools were nationalised. But both here and in Britain, priests or clergymen were always represented in politics, albeit in their private capacities.
Sometimes the Churches also took an official stand against the government when they felt that they were acting against the moral interests of the country. In the sixties, the Roman Catholic Church openly opposed the PPP regime, which it dubbed ‘communist’ and ‘godless’. During the seventies and eighties, almost all the older Christian denominations worked with forces lobbying for ‘free and fair’ elections as the PNC regime worked closely with the Christian Pentecostal Churches.
Dale Bisnauth, first came to public notice when he wrote for the Caribbean Council of Churches’ regional newspaper, “Caribbean Contact’. That newspaper took an explicit stand against the PNC regime’s illegitimacy and Bisnauth’s columns reflected that posture. When Cheddi Jagan decided to go into the 1992 elections with a “Civic” component, Bisnauth was one of the candidates from the Civic list. He was made Education Minister and later Minister of Labour, but in neither position did he allow his religious affiliation to overtly colour the positions he espoused.
Persaud, on the other hand, had been a political activist from his youth – concurrent with his role as a Hindu Pandit. The two roles explicitly fed into each other: as a pandit he was able to command an audience in the PPP’s traditional Indian constituency and his political usefulness grew with his ascendancy in the mass Hindu organisation, the Guyana Maha Sabha.
The political and religious nexus became quite explicit in 1969, when the Maha Sabha was taken over by a faction under the leadership of Sase Narine, Speaker of the House of Assembly, who was supportive of the PNC. The Hindu Pandits’ Council also threw its weight behind the PNC and its leader Gowkarran Sharma was made a Minister in the PNC government.
Persaud launched the Guyana Hindu Dharmic Sabha in 1974 and soon most of the Mandirs affiliated themselves with the new organisation. The Dharmic Sabha performed an interesting balancing act in the political arena. While it did not bring out its members in open protests or other political activities, it provided a forum for politicians from the PPP to reach large audiences at its gala events such as the Annual Phagwah Parade. In addition, many of its local and national officials were members of sister PPP affiliates such as GAWU and the RPA.
Dale Bisnauth’s passing will not have any effect on his Church’s role in politics, since he did not try to influence that body in a political direction. Reepu Daman Persaud’s departure, on the other hand, will leave a vacuum in the Dharmic Sabha, that will be difficult to fill. His daughter Vindhya is already a PPP MP, but she is neither a pandit nor one with linkages to the grass-roots.
Be that as it may, politics and religion will continue to be intertwined in Guyana.

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