Dear Editor,
Contrary to Swami Aksharananda’s letter in SN of June 25, 2019 `Every Dharmic tradition speaks unambiguously of the evils of greed’, I did not state that corruption is motivated by Hindu religious beliefs. I stated that greed is an element of the human condition and that the PPP tolerance of corruption is motivated by religious beliefs.
Also, I did not rail against scientific literature for ignoring social and cultural context. I stated: “When one is doing a scientific study one generally ignores social information – and this is a problem I have with economists and political scientists”.
Very often economic figures might indicate a tendency but they often obscure the social reality. A case in point is that good economic figures for economic growth do not often capture the social condition of a society. For example, according to the current President of the United States, the US economy is humming; but the reality is that many people are still living from pay-check to pay-check. Furthermore, I am a Professor of Linguistics and Anthropology which fall under Humanities and Social Sciences. I have written Linguistic papers – specifically analyses of Guyanese Creole – based on scientific principles without social information.
All sacred texts have a tendency towards kindness and the neighbour, but they all have an underbelly of violence and greed. Within Hinduism there is the colour-coded caste system or the moral order which is dharma and herein lies the problem for Guyana; and as President Cheddi Jagan said to an audience of East Indians in Toronto in 1996 – “…because as we know, black people are at the lowest scale of the social ladder.” Without dharma there would be no Hinduism. All the other precepts Swami has outlined are marginal to the core concept of inequality. Gandhi said that the whole of the Mahabharata (the Gita was part of the larger work) revealed the futility of violence. It was his experience with the futility of violence that led him to take a nonviolent approach to the successful independence movement. But he never denounced the caste system because to do so would have destroyed Hindu society.
Yours faithfully,
Professor Kean Gibson
