Hindus today, tomorrow...?

"All religions must be tolerated....for....every man must get to heaven his own way." Frederick the Great, 1740.

LAST week's exposure in the Upper House by Government Senator Maniedeo Persad of the questioned distribution in schools of a booklet that was anti Hindu has once more demonstrated, and not without regret, that religious intolerance in this country, as it is worldwide, is alive and well. The fact that the booklet was printed in the United States is of less concern than the recognition by the distributor or distributors that there is a market in Trinidad and Tobago for the intolerance it seeks to promote. That the market exists more than 40 years after Trinidad and Tobago gained its Independence is a reminder that many of us are still trapped in the mire of automatic dismissal of any religion that is neither Roman Cathlic nor Church of England, nor major Protestant.

It is an old colonial assumption of the superiority of some religions over others, a dangerous line of thinking that saw all non Christian believers as heathens, condemned forever to a Christian hell. It is an arrogance, first backed up by the slave master's whip and then by force of 'law', that refused to admit that any African practised religion, whether Orisha, Muslim, or Shango should be allowed and encouraged. Later, with the advent of indentured labour from the Indian sub continent, the arrogance would be extended to discriminate against Hindus and Indian Muslims in the 19th century and early 20th century, and deny their children the right to education in schools with properly trained teachers, unless they were first converted to Christianity. Many Indians and Trinidadians of Indian descent pretended, even as late as the first quarter of the last century, to a Christianity to enable their sons and daughters to access education and achieve upward mobility.

I wish to make this clear that what I have said should not be construed as meaning that there were not persons of Indian descent who, voluntarily, accepted Christianity, in much the same way that there were individuals of West African descent who, of their own volition, accepted Christianity. The booklet's story, in comic book form, 'tells' of an 'Indian' who offers his first born son as a sacrifice to Kali. The inference is clear and obscene. But it goes further and alleges that Satan had "created all the gods of India", demons "who will rob your soul". It is a document, which should be seen as offensive not simply to Hindus, but to members of all religions and sects, and condemned by all right thinking persons. It represents the vulgar bashing of Hindus and should be rejected in much the same manner that the bashing of any other religion should be.

Those of us who are old enough may recall that up to 1952, Shouter Baptists, who practised a mixture of the Christian and Shango religions, were hounded down by the State because of their religious beliefs and practices. Indeed, it was only in 1952, thanke to the intervention of labour leader, Tubal Uriah Butler, and Albert Gomes, both of them members of the then Legislative Council (Gomes was also a member of the Executive Council) that legislation was introduced that freed Shouter Baptists from religious persecution. It had been a persecution of the Shouter Baptists that had begun during the days of slavery, when the slave owners and slavemasters were of the Christian faith and, whether through ignorance or intolerance or both, refused to accept that there were religions that had not come out of Nazareth. The refusal was also generated in part by considerations of race, and a misguided belief by the slave master class that since they were British and/or European and the slaves were African and non Christian, that they and their religion were superior.

With the abolition of slavery and the introduction of Indian indentured labour, this thinking would soon be extended to Indian indentureds. But even within the indentureds there was religious intolerance, the result of fundamental differences of religious views between Hindu Indians and Muslim Indians, differences readily exploited by the owners and/or managers of sugar estates in which the indentureds had been brought in to work. Of interest is that many Muslims from Middle Eastern States, for example Syria and the Lebanon, who had come out to Trinidad and Tobago very early in the last century, voluntarily converted to Roman Catholicism, in the belief, by some, that it was socially expedient. But not only the bashing of Hindus and members of other religions should be discouraged, but the bashing of atheists and agnostics as well. For although there is no direct reference to atheists and agnostics in the 1976 Republican Constitution, nonetheless their rights are tacitly enshrined in Chapter One, Section Four, sub Sections [h] and [i]. Sub Section [h] specifically refers to "freedom of conscience", while [i] guarantees the right of "freedom of thought and expression". Atheists and agnostics are perhaps the least tolerated groups in the country, the whipping boys of members of all religions. But I have strayed.

The placing of Hindus in a bad light, as represented by the booklet, even though it may be an aberration, should be discouraged. All citizens, Hindus, Christians, Orishas, Muslims, Spiritual Baptists  should be entitled to their right of freedom of thought and other fundamental freedoms. A challenge to any of these freedoms, I need hardly remind, is a challenge to all.