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Mar 18, 2022 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
Kaieteur News – Today is Phagwah. Every year, it reminds me of my mom and the Hindu world I grew up into. But each year, Phagwah reminds me that we are born into this world to appreciate the essence of the human and human existence rests on the fulcrum of humanity.
People of different races, religions, cultures and countries, have one thing in common – the need to live and let others live. And life can only be guaranteed to each one of us if each one of us appreciate that humanity can only survive if others recognise it and in recognising it, culture, race, religion and nationality come second.
This was at the heart of the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes. I think Hobbes is the second most misunderstood philosopher after Karl Marx. People judge Hobbes by the shape of the government he advocated. But Hobbes’s fear was that humanity would be lost if we didn’t surrender ourselves to a powerful hand who could compel people to recognise and contribute to the existence of humanity.
Each year, when Phagwah comes around, I think of my mom and her world that I left behind. I grew up and nurture a displaced nature. I left Hindu culture behind for philosophy books. I married a Muslim woman and travelled the world where I found that whatever ethnicity people belong to, there are good people in this world who would give you half a loaf of their bread without looking at the colour of your skin or asking your name.
Here is what David Hinds wrote about me in the online paper, Village Voice of March 6, “Prior to 2020, he declared he didn’t care about race, that he was a non-racial person. Yet today, he is the leading proponent of Indian suffering and victimhood.” I still don’t care about race. I am still non-racial. I make no apologies for writing about the historical and contemporary mistreatment of Indians by Guyanese society. I would do the same for any other victimised ethnicity.
What the writer failed to mention is that I opposed an Indian government for years and suffered in ways that only Walter Rodney’s sacrifice was greater. What the writer left out was my scholarly paper on discrimination against African Guyanese, the contents of which no academic of Guyanese origin and Guyanese nationality has matched so far.
In many contexts, we are African, American, Indian, Christian, European, Muslim, Hindu, etc. In the context of philosophy, we step outside of our ethnicity, culture and religion and the dialectics shape us just as we shape the dialectics, to quote the great French philosopher, Jean Paul Sartre.
The dialectics remoulded the Kissoons siblings a long time ago. Four of my siblings married African spouses. Two of my sisters became Catholic. That is how nurture defeats nature. I have a healthy respect for the culture I was born into. But as someone born to Hindu parents, I refuse to see humanity with Indian lenses, with Hindu lenses, with Guyanese lenses.
I see the world through the telescope of philosophy and will continue to do so. I believe the Russian invasion of Ukraine is wrong and should stop immediately. I believe the American invasion of Iraq was wrong. I believe the French bombing of Libya was wrong. I believe the Palestinian people are and should be given their own country right this minute.
I believe Prime Minister Modi of India is going to stain one of the great countries of civilisation if he is not stopped sooner than later. I believe China and Russia are autocratic countries that do not allow for the spirit of freedom to roam. I believe the Cuban government has mistreated the Cuban people for over half a century. I abhour the horrible mistreatment of African-Americans in the US, a degeneracy that has been going on for centuries and continues with energy and barefacedness in the 21st century.
I believe the West has contempt for Third World people who they will never treat as equals. I believe the rich West continues to give a pittance to the Third World that they call aid. The treatment of African people fleeing war in Ukraine by the Ukrainian and Polish should be condemned by every government and every human in this world.
Back home, in Guyana, I believe that from Burnham to Granger, including all the presidents in between failed to shape a future for this country. I was actively involved in criticism of every one of those presidencies. Those presidents were African and Indian with one being Caucasian. Race never ever entered the hallways of my psyche over those long decades. It never will.
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)
Where is the BETTER MANAGEMENT/RENEGOTIATION OF THE OIL CONTRACTS you promised Jagdeo?
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