Dear Editor,
I have long held the belief that some of the most vulgar sociological thoughts come from people who preach religion, and this goes for all denominations.
I could never bring myself to use the word swami in from of the name of Hindu preacher Aksharananda. I find Mr. Aksharananda’s hypocrisy simply unbearable. I refer to his letter in the Stabroek News of April 21, 2017 `In the drought and famine of ideas, there has been recourse to coarseness and obscenity’, the contents of which I am revolted by. I feel I have a deep obligation to the readers of newspapers all over this country to reply to his miasmic semantics.
I hold the inflexible belief that such a poisonous and bigoted mind should never be in charge of a school. Aksharananda reminds me of how destroyed a society Guyana is. Here are some of the appallingly egregious opinions of this man. He wrote; “Both (Ravi Dev and Ryhaan Shah) of these writers are educational and informative and, above all, honest. The issues that they have raised and continue to speak about are not different from those articulated by people who almost on a daily basis complained about disenfranchisement, marginalization and discrimination perpetuated by the previous administration.”
How can anyone be honest when the previous government held power for 23 years and Ryhaan Shah was nowhere to be seen and when she was seen in those 23 years, her comments were never about the victims of marginalization and discrimination but about the East Indians of Guyana needing to be on equal par with Africans in the police force and the public service. If there is anything about Shah and Dev it certainly is not honesty. Dev has never once written even one line calling for equality in the access to resources of Guyana and that is because he, Shah and Aksharananda himself are content with Indian domination of the economy.
Here is Aksharananda’s nauseating bigotry; “What sense of hope are we supposed to have when hundreds of Indians were removed from various state offices? Why should we be not concerned about the trend of authoritarianism that is once again raising its head in Guyana?” Make no mistake that when he writes about “authoritarianism that is once again raising its head in Guyana” he means the rule of the PNC from 1964 to 1992. He leaves out the period in Guyanese history that is the worst the British West Indies has ever seen – the reign of the Jagdeo/Ramotar cabals. It was a period when even in the ugly days of Burnhamism, the state had not reached the level of fascistization that we saw under Jagdeo.
The writer referred to the dismissal of hundreds of East Indians by the present government but is too indecent to look at the other side of the coin. Perhaps they got their jobs through the displacement of other persons who held those jobs but were of a different race. He used vulgar semantics to describe other people just as Shah does in the Bobby Ramroop newspaper that Ravi Dev is in charge of. But he does not mention this because after all, if he does, then his attempt to paint an elegant picture of his fellow tribalists falls down. Maybe he doesn’t read the newspaper Ravi Dev is in charge of so he wouldn’t know how deep in the gutter are the people he heaps praise on; but really, you think Aksharananda cares. I shudder to think what this man tells those young minds at his school when the discussion is one on the leadership of the present government.
Yours faithfully,
Frederick Kissoon
