Dear Editor,
A colleague alerted me to a new feature on Google Earth. The space we know to be Guyana appears to be three countries. On zooming in, the yellow international boundary line with Venezuela disappears and relocates to red lines between the border and the Essequibo River. Likewise, the yellow boundary line with Suriname disappears from the Corentyne River and shows up red at New River. The boundary with Brazil remains unchanged.
Meanwhile, back in real spacetime much is being said about who is the father of the nation. The PPP wants Cheddi and the PNC wants Forbes. And so, we go back in history to try to justify this and that. The Europeans, lastly the British, took over Indigenous lands and enslaved mostly Africans to extend their civilization into what became British Guiana. At the same time, they conquered India to enrich themselves while driving those people into poverty, aided primarily by vastly unfair tariffs and secondly by the machines of the industrial revolution. When slavery of Africans became uneconomical, it was replaced by indentureship of the consequently impoverished and mostly illiterate Indians, who got a little better deal when indentureship was over and they were in the majority. When it became too onerous to keep the colony, political independence was granted, but economic slavery continued through the monetary system of the world.
So who should we blame? The British? They were themselves once illiterate slaves to the Vikings, and before that to the Romans, during which times high civilizations were flourishing in Africa and India (and China and the Americas). There was a pressure on them to defend themselves against rivals who might become invaders. That motivated their adventures into conquest, so that they could keep down potential enemies, while exploiting them. Other nations had the same motivation, so history is replete with wars and the rise and fall of empires.
But why were the British so successful and powerful enough to draw our map? And before them those other empires, some for as long as a thousand years in one form or the other? The scriptures tell us that God has made of one blood all the nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the Earth, and has determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitations [Acts 17:26]. But the greedy world wants to take our minds away from this and to replace it with a recent, wholly materialistic, vain version of science that scientists like Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton and Louis Pasteur would not recognise. We become hell bent on acquisition of material wealth at the expense of the welfare of others of the “one blood” God, our true Father, made us of.
So at this confluence of the Christian repentance season of Lent, which recalls when God took the blame and shed His own blood for all who would believe, the Muslim spiritual growing season of Ramadan, and the Hindu Rama Navami festival of the victory of good over evil, let us turn our hearts and minds back to our Maker. Allah bestows favour on whom He will [Sura 16:80-81; 39:47-53; 62:4], so let us ask Him to bestow on us the noble Sattvic character in the Upanishad that Krishna sings to Arjuna in Chapter 18 of the Bhagavad Gita. Therefore, stop this endless tit for tat that benefits only our exploiters, publicly repent of the sins committed against our country and ask the one living and eternal Father of all nations, who is capable of recognising true repentance, to be gracious and merciful and use His absolute power to draw authoritative national boundaries wherein we can truly praise Him together in our diversity. Work at doing the right thing, people, or else Google will reflect our divisions. Life is short and eternity is long.
Sincerely,
Alfred Bhulai
