Dear Editor,
There is a common thread – permeating the letters of University of the West Indies lecturer Dr. Kean Gibson (KN 02-16-2007) and former Deputy Governor of the Bank of Guyana Mr. Clarence Ellis (KN 02-14-2007) – which holds that inequality is an important facet of Hinduism. Moreover, Gibson’s primary thesis is that a system which structures itself on inequality will treat people of other groups badly.
The good thing about Gibson’s thesis is that it can be empirically tested and falsified if we have a clear definition of the variables under investigation.
The most important would be for Ellis and Gibson to clearly define their concept of inequality. Is it income, wealth or job distribution? Or is it mainly the distribution of political power?
Important inferences can be made once we have a clear definition of inequality. For instance, is India a more unequal society compared to “Christian” Brazil and Latin America? What about job distributions in Guyana? Are government jobs skewed in favour of one ethnic group today to the extent they were skewed in favour of only one ethnic group during Ellis’s days at the Bank of Guyana? Which group gets most of the scholarships today and so on?
Now, I want to say up front that I am in favour of power sharing. I also believe the current system and structure of governance is not useful for Guyana’s development. And I also believe that the current structure is not stabilizing in the long-term.
However, if Ellis and Gibson are going to make the sweeping claim that Hinduism is tantamount to inequality that creates conflicts with other groups, then they should at least define their variables and parameters.
It is important to define things because we have to quantify them when matters are this serious.
I would say if you cannot quantify things then just don’t talk about them. Of course, measuring things are always difficult and often problematic; but it is still better than idle verbal arguments.
Yours faithfully,
Dr. Tarron Khemraj
