Latest update April 19th, 2024 12:59 AM
Apr 04, 2017 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
I remember when the 2015 election campaign was in full swing, a Hindu priest by the name of Aksharananda began a fierce debate on the need for Indians to assert their identity. Aksharananda was subtler than Ravi Dev, Ryhaan Shah and the nest of vipers in Richmond Hill in New York, whose existence is based on the preoccupation of Indians versus Africans in Guyana. They openly called for race voting in the May 2015 poll.
Election campaigning in Guyana is about ethnic competition. The Indianized PPP in 2015 had already become a minority presidency due to the AFC’s electoral success in the 2011 poll, and faced formidable challenges in the 2015 election battle from the AFC. Daggers were drawn. People like Dev and company did what they know best – perpetuate the binary of “we versus them.” In so doing, Dev and company were simply helping the PPP’s campaign.
It was Aksharananda’s entry into the “we versus them” discourse that caused raised eyebrows among people between April and May 2015. This man was the head of a secondary school, said he was the holder of the title of Swami, and was a religious preacher. Aksharananda, during the 2015 campaign, wrote a number of letters in the newspapers, the contents of which were indistinguishable from ethnic propaganda.
The intention was to help the PPP’s campaign. Aksharananda’s letters are too numerous to quote here, but the main strategy was to advocate that Indians be proud of who they were and assert themselves. His letters denounced PNC violence against Indians during Burnham’s rule. It was Aksharananda’s way of urging people to vote for the PPP.
The PPP lost the election and Aksharananda changed his tactic. He now claimed that the Coalition Government was practicing large scale discrimination against Indians. Here is a quote from his April 2016 letter; “Since the present administration came to office, a large number officials have been dismissed from their positions, or as has been euphemistically stated, “sent on leave.”
“Among these are persons who occupied high profile offices, but as we are learning the dismissals did not stop there. Individuals from across the board have been affected, with lives and families damaged… It would appear that the vast majority of those dismissed are persons of a particular ethnic group.
“I would like to suggest a sort of ethnic impact statement to include the ethnicity of those dismissed, the positions they held, and reasons for the dismissals. Of course, such a statement must also include whether those positions have since been filled and by which ethnic groups. Such transparency will immeasurably help the cause of social cohesion.”
Last week Aksharananda wrote a long letter, denouncing the headmistress of Central High School for allowing a Christian preacher, Pastor Steven Anderson, to sermonize the students. Here is what the Hindu priest had to say about Anderson; “It is true that Mr. Anderson foams as he gleefully unleashes his venomous fulminations and that he holds and preaches hateful and dangerous ideas about persons, and religions, other than his own.”
Aksharananda had a mouthful to say about Mr. Anderson, but what caught my eyes is his description which is also applicable to him. Words like “venomous fulminations” and “preaches hateful and dangerous ideas” are apt descriptions for Aksharananda in 2015 and 2017.
In the May 2015 election season, he suggested that Ramjattan demand an apology from the PNC for past atrocities, but he rejected a similar contrition from the PPP’s 23-year-old reign. He refused to acknowledge there was a PNC president, Desmond Hoyte, who moved away from ethnically based policies. He refused to acknowledge that a PNC president, Desmond Hoyte again, had done great things and even arrested people, like the House of Israel agents, who had committed past atrocities.
Now Aksharananda descends to the same level he accuses Anderson of going. Aksharananda is telling Guyanese that the Government is dismissing en masse, East Indian public sector workers. Isn’t this the preaching of hateful and dangerous ideas, the very thing he accuses Anderson of doing? Is Aksharananda telling us that it is wrong for a pastor to go into a public school and unleash poisonous doctrines based on fictions but it is alright if he, Aksharananda does it in the letter pages of the daily newspapers?
This is the dilemma of human civilization. We can only see the wrongs in others and when we embody those very sins, they become virtues. Will the incident with the preacher in Central High School deter Aksharananda from inciting ethnic anger in Guyana? I doubt it. I hope I am wrong.
Please share this to every Guyanese including your house cats.
Apr 19, 2024
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