(1) Christianity and Hinduism: Domination or Dialogue - Swami Aksharnanda
(2) The core of `Indianness' is `Hinduness' - Swami Aksharananda
(3) Who comes first, the missionaries or God? - Swami Aksharananda
(4) Mahatma Gandhi's Life should be a Painful Reminder to Christians of their Excesses - Swami Aksharananda 
(5) Christian hegemony continues in Guyana - Swami Aksharananda
(6) An Act of Aggression - Swami Aksharananda
(7) The racist allegations against Gandhi have blurred the distinctions between history and fantasy - Swami Aksharananda
(8) What Nelson Mandela wrote about Mahatma Gandhi - Swami Aksharananda
(9) Crass, stupid and dangerous, `Agree to Disagree' is an opiate for the Indian masses - Swami Aksharananda
(10) Hindus must be free to support any political party of their choice - Swami Aksharananda
(11) Indian immigration did not affect the ability of freed Africans to negotiate better working conditions - Swami Aksharananda
(12) The Aryan Invasion Theory is Built on Speculation Only - Swami Aksharananda
(13) Rodney Fell Back on European Stereotypes in His Book 'Laxshmi Out of India' - Swami Aksharananda
(14) This Tract is Buttressed by Rumors Unworthy of the National Enquirer - Swami Aksharananda

■ Christianity and Hinduism: Domination or dialogue?
Author: By Swami Aksharananda¹
Source: Stabroek News, Sunday, July 7, 1996 (Sunday Stabroek News Guest Column)
Republished: Hindu Jaagaranam (A magazine commemorating the visit of Pujyneeya KS Sudarshanji, Chief of the RSS to the Caribbean Hindu Community in New York, July 28, 2001) 

Mission of civilization
Throughout the colonial period Christianity enjoyed a specially favoured relationship with the state and, together church and state cooperated to reproduce a western European Christian culture in the Caribbean. In this context, indentured Indians and Hindus, introduced in the colonies not only for the fruits of their labour but also for the salvation of their souls, were viewed as outlandish and foreign aberrations, heathen savages, and sinners that needed to be civilized and Christianized. The instrument chosen to effect this higher civilization was, of course, the Christian church.

Christianity and the Caribbean States
The principal expression of Christianity in the Caribbean is the hegemonic Christianity inherited from Europe, and enunciated by white metropolitan theologians located in and sensitive to, their environment of power and domination. With the decline of European global domination, United States became the center of this brand of Christianity and its concomitant ideologies of conquest and domination. From this new and fertile source Christian missionaries armed with their fundamentalist ideologies and endless material resources, come descending on us with concerns of our salvation.

The dominant classes in any society tend to order the dominant religion official or quasi-official at the service of the expansion, deepening and consolidating their dominance. Conversely, the dominant religion actively struggles for attainment of and participates in hegemony of the dominant classes. In the Caribbean, commencing from the Columbian era, officially sanctioned Christianity, more than any of our institutions, has served to legitimize and sanctify the dominant values of the ruling classes of the colonial state. To the extent that nuances of the church-state relationship and the dominating ideologies it produces are deeply embedded in Caribbean Christianity. Hinduism in the region still confronts hegemonic Christianity.

The continuation of this relationship of values and structures is no accident, no conspiracy. It is part of our colonial legacy. How often do we not hear "our Judeo-Christian values" being invoked? There is an unquestioned intimacy with which the symbols of the Christian church and Caribbean states intermingle. Look, for example, take the Trinity Cross, the highest civilian award of Trinidad and Tobago, the propriety of which as a national award in a multi religious society, has only recently been questioned by members of the Hindu community much to the outrage of the wider society. The presumption of Hindus! After all are not Christian and Western values, the norms? And is not conversion meant to accord status and approval from those who are the producers of the dominant western Judeo-Christian values?

Missionary Discourse: Its Socio-Political and Theological Background
Historically, it has been the powerful military and economic nations that sent missionaries abroad as part of their apparatus of conquest. Great Britain at the height of its imperial power supplied the majority of missionaries. Now the missionaries, who in ever-increasing numbers invade our shores, come from the United States, the current super power on earth.

Being a super power founded on conquest and subjugation, the pervasive social discourse in the United States tend to reflect triumphalism and domination. Missionary theology is a product of this environment. It is informed and empowered by, participates in and perpetuates the culture of imperialism and domination.

Any speech that denigrates and devalues a people is tantamount to an act of violence. Missionary theology devalues and denigrates individuals and groups. Since the days o Constantine, whenever the Christian church received the support of military power, individuals and groups labeled as "unbelievers," "sinners," "idolaters," "heathens," "savages," and "pagans" were victims of oppression and extirpation. Labels of hostility are the precursors to violence.

The assumption of superiority
Missionary theology is explicitly based on the assumption of superiority of Christianity over the religions of the world. Since Christianity is the only way to salvation, all deviants are cast into the fires of everlasting hell. The world is polarized into saved and sinner, free and condemned. Hence the imperative to convert to save. Even the usually liberal Vatican Council II has arrogated to itself the authority to assign to Hinduism a mere ray of truth, reserving for itself the full truth. Thus the council declares: All must be converted...all must be incorporated into Him by baptism and into the Church which is His body.

The fact is that missionary Christianity has been so obsessed with its own truth, it has failed to recognize even the possibility that others may have their truth. It has been so engrossed in proclaiming, announcing and sending that it seems to have permanently lost the compassion and love to listen and receive. In its profound arrogance it anointed itself the teacher of humanity and has steadfastly refused to learn from others. In the more than 150 years that Hindus have lived in this region, has Christianity learned anything from Hinduism? Hindus have been important only as objects of evangelism. Hinduism is still an "area of darkness" to many.

Is dialogue possible?
Hinduism is a confederation of religions, a living laboratory of faiths, and itself being churned out of an ongoing process of perpetual dialogue. Hinduism holds every religion to be an authentic modality of the divine and the sacred. God reveals God’s self fully and directly to all humanity and, being equally active in every faith tradition, is the ultimate inspiration and source of freedom and wholeness. There are no privileged recipients of revelation.

Hinduism teaches that all humans are destined to transform a self-centered life to a God or Reality-centered life, in their respective traditions. God accepts us all as we are. We are not required to present ourselves in any particular garb or caricature. True conversion, the discovery of the ultimate ground of being takes place in the heart of one’s own religious and spiritual traditions and not outside of it.

Human life is characterized by diversities. We possess many cultures, foods, clothing, music, languages. No one seeks to supplant one or all human languages with a single one. Linguistic diversity is a fact of nature. Similarly, religious diversity and the plurality of faiths is the natural order of human society, God’s own creation and gift to humanity.

We Hindus, conscious of our contributions to the rich cultural mosaic of the Caribbean rejoice in the plurality of our peoples, the plurality of cultures, the plurality of our religions. We therefore view with grave concern any activity, especially those bred on cultural monolithism, that threatens to rupture the fabric of tolerance and hospitality for which our region is famous. We are committed to preserve the plural cultures of this region. But as long as we are under the specter of Christian domination, the quest for genuine religious understanding and harmony will continue to evade us.

Now is the time for the practitioners of the various faiths to join together in some form of dialogue to strive for understanding, respect, and harmony among the religions of this region. Not only it is possible, dialogue is an imperative. The alternative may be a degeneration into further dehumanization.

■ The core of `Indianness' is `Hinduness'
Author: Swami Aksharananda
Source: Stabroek News, Sunday May 24, 1998

Dear Editor,

I refer to the letter by Mr. Sherwin Browne (SN l0.5.98) under the caption "Indianness is not synonymous with Hinduness." I write with some trepidation knowing that these are contentious times of sharp divisions.

1. Sindhu, Hindu, and Indus, India. It is common knowledge that the word Hindu is derived from Sindhu, the name of the sacred river already referred to in the Rig-Veda, 4000 BCE. It was the ancient Persian invaders who first applied the term Hindu to the people whom they found living along the banks of the Sindhu. Centuries later they were followed by the Greeks who, also attempting to enter the sub-continent from the north-west, gave to posterity Indus, which in later European sources became India, Inde and so on. From this brief historical misadventure and linguistic peculiarity, both of which contrived to give us Hindu, Indus and India, it can be seen how the connection between "Indianness" and "Hinduness" goes beyond mere synonymy. It is a connection that grows out of the soil itself.

2. Hinduism is not a religion Much of the confusion regarding what constitutes the essence of Indianness and how this is related to Hinduness lies in conceiving of Hinduism as a religion in the narrow western sense of the word.

When sociologists and anthropologists like Weber, Durkheim, and much later, Clifford Geertz, launched their classic definitions of religion, the essential model they had before them, though they were aware of eastern spiritual traditions, was European Christianity.

By this time Christianity was cleansed and purified of the autochthonous paganism that was indeed the way of life and culture of the people before the imposition of Christianity. Doxology was superimposed on and sought to displace, though it never completely succeeded in doing so, the indigenous culture of the people.

If one follows this definition of religion, inherent in which is a disjunctive between culture and faith, one must agree with Mr Browne that Indianness and Hinduness are not synonymous. When in this case, by conversion or otherwise, the Hindu abandons culture for Christian doctrine the two cease to be synonymous.

But of course this is the danger of conversion in the normally accepted sense of the term. One is forced to give up faith and culture. Precisely for this reason many Hindu converts (doctrinal converts that is) to Christianity literally cease to be culturally speaking Hindus/Indians.

However, now western scholars and their Indian disciples are becoming more aware of the complexity of Hinduism and to appreciate that it is not a mere religion, in the above sense, divorced from the way of life of the people. If Hinduism is understood in this context, as Dharma, as it should, then Indianness and Hinduness would not be seen as disparate phenomena and this is how it appears that Mr Khemraj is using the terms.

In this sense the convert may be doctrinally a Christian or a Marxist or even an atheist, and culturally a Hindu. 3. Indianness and the legacy of Hinduness: What do we mean when we speak of Indian metaphysics? Is there an Indian metaphysics without the Hindu Upanishads, or the Bhagavad Gita, or the Brahma Sutras?

Indian metaphysics is Hindu metaphysics. Can we conceive of Indian philosophy without the Hindu Shankara? Indian philosophy is Hindu philosophy. And though there is an effort to secularise yoga, in order to merchandise it, can there be yoga unadulterated yoga without Patanjali's Hindu Yoga Sutra? Yoga is Hindu Yoga.

What is meant where we speak of Indian epics? Do we not mean the Hindu Ramayana and the Mahabharat? Indian epics are Hindu epics. Can we have Indian music, Indian dance and Indian drama without Bharat Muni's Hindu Natya Shastra? Indian music is Hindu music.

Is it not the same rasa, the same bhava, the same raga and tala whether the singer is the Christian Yesudas, the Muslim Nasrat Fateh Ali Khan or the Vaishnava (Hindu) Bhimsen Joshi? Hinduness is embedded in the very landscape.

Hundreds of thousands of Hindu places of pilgrimage spring out of the land as is the case of Ganga among rivers and Mount Kailash among mountains. Every nation has its defining characteristic by which that nation is known or identified and deprived of which that nation ceases to be. What is Indianness? What is that core of Indianness without which there is no Indianness?

It is Hinduness. Take Hinduness out of India and what is left excepting a mere carcass. All else goes, but Hinduness abides and the heart and soul of Indianness remains intact. It is this Hinduness that permits a person to be doctrinally a Christian and culturally a Hindu, doctrinally a Muslim and culturally a Hindu, a position analagous to Palestianian experience where a doctrinal Christian is a Palestianian as much as a doctrinal Muslim is a Palestianian.

Yours faithfully,
Swami Aksharananda

■ Who comes first, the missionaries or God?

Source: Stabroek News, Tuesday, October 29, 2002
Author: Swami Aksharananda

Dear Editor,

In recounting the blessings that Islamic civilisation has brought to Africa, Maulana Alhassan in his letter, "Islam has encouraged and promoted positive African traditional and cultural beliefs ....." (SN 10/19/02) seems to have a problem with the "traditionalist" not being inclined to a "revealed religion" and not accepting the "authority of any Divine Book or Religion." The traditionalist, he laments, refuses to be influenced by the Quran or Bible. This stance is typical of believers who perch themselves on high and sermonise about "revealed religions" and the "authority of Divine Books or Religions," etc.
Coming straight to the heart of the matter, was God active in the lives of Africans before the arrival of the so-called revealed religions and divine books? Did God have a plan for African salvation before the revealed religions and authoritative divine books, that is, the Bible and the Quran, reached the continent or even came into existence? Judging from Maulana Alhassan's letter it would appear that God put African salvation on hold until the arrival of the revealed books and religions of which he speaks.

If it is indeed so that God does not speak authentically, or does not speak at all, to Africans or other people except through the medium of the Bible or Quran, then this poses a great problem for the process of liberation that God designs for humanity. The process of the Christianisation or Islamicisation of the world has a certain chronology. If we were to apply the logic of Maulana Alhassan it would mean that God so designed human salvation that people at the origin of these religious systems were the first and favoured recipients and beneficiaries of the message or good news. And as these religions spread, by whatever means, other people were brought within the sphere of God's salvific mercy.

Why would God plan human salvation in such a way that the people of Arabia in the case of the Quran or the people of Palestine in the case of the Bible would be the first to be blessed while the people of Nigeria would have to wait for centuries to go by before receiving their salvation? Like justice, salvation delayed is salvation denied. The fundamental assumption in pointing out the absurdity in this position, which assumption I think all religions share, is that God loves all human beings equally.

This being so, and this is where I think the religions depart, would not God speak to all people equally, would not God save all people equally? God's salvation is not a pipeline which begins in one place and takes a while to reach another. For salvation to have any meaning it must be simultaneous salvation.

Religions in many cases are like imperialisms. Once they conquered any people they must show that what that people possessed was defective and that they needed the new masters to bring about perfection. Thus, in the case of Africa (elsewhere too), the conquering religions had to demonstrate that God was absent. They brought God to Africa. But who comes first, the missionaries or God?

African religious systems are oral traditions that have been transmitted unbroken for untold centuries. These are not "book" traditions. Spirituality and righteousness are not in books but in people's lives. Take any thought, religious belief, metaphysical concept however abstract from any part of the world and it can be matched, and in some cases surpassed, by what "traditional" Africa has produced.

Yours faithfully,
Swami Aksharananda

■ Mahatma Gandhi's Life should be a Painful Reminder to Christians of their Excesses
Author: Swami Aksharananda
Source: Stabroek News 1998

Dear Sir,

1. Steve Foster's "One cannot proselytize..." (SN 10/31/98) excuses those Europeans and their descendants who unleashed untold atrocities on Indians and Africans and on other native peoples across the world, as practising a "heretical or apostate form of Christianity".

To contend that Charlemagne, Columbus and Cortez, the Nazis, Jim Jones and David Koresch are aberrations in Christian history, mere examples of apostasy, excuses self-examination and opens the door for the repetition of the horrors they executed. But if what the Europeans did in the Caribbean, India, Africa, East Indies, and what their descendants did in the Americas "felling Indians and trees" from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego as they evangelised and proselytised, are all examples of an apostate form of Christianity, then where on earth is the real Christianity? Instead of seeking an easy out we should be asking ourselves whether these "aberrations" are not inherent to the Gospels themselves.

2. Regarding Gandhi's "misconceptions about the Christian message" as Steve Foster alleges, Gandhi would be the last person to pretend that he had a perfect understanding of orthodox Christianity. He would however claim to be a sincere seeker of truth having spent many years learning about Jesus and his life. But his was not a mere intellectual appreciation of the beauty of the teachings of Jesus. His understanding was grounded in the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount and emerged from the crucible of involvement and action in a world where some of his partners and adversaries professed to be Christians with whom he was engaged for over fifty years. In the process he has left us two edited works: "What Jesus Means to me" and "The Jesus I Love".

3. Mahatma Gandhi was profoundly influenced by the life of Jesus. Here was a Hindu who had the courage to declare: "the example of Jesus' suffering is a factor in the composition of my undying faith in non-violence which rules all my actions, worldly and temporal". In turn, he had a great impact on some of the most remarkable Christians of this century from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Dorothy Day, and Thomas Merton to Martin Luther King Jr. But this power to influence came not from his erudition but from the simple truth that he was able to live the message of Jesus in a remarkable union of theory and practice and with every ounce of his will embraced the ethical claims of Christ. He was able to live the commandment of radical love that Jesus spoke of in the Sermon on the Mount.

4. Mahatma Gandhi's life, therefore, constitutes the greatest challenge to Christians all over the world. In the stark simplicity of his living, his food and clothing which he produced with his own hands, and the strict principle of non-possession he adhered to, he is a constant and a painful reminder to Christians, especially in the west, of their betrayal of Christ, of their excesses, their over-eating, their over-wearing. Compare and contrast the pomp, power, and pageantry of the Christian church today and of the Jimmy Swaggarts, Pat Robertsons, and Benny Hinns of the world with the life and message of the man who was born in a stable and eventually nailed to a cross and you begin to see the truth in Gandhi's conviction that western Christianity has negated the message of Christ.

5. At the same time Gandhi had considerable difficulties, both theological and ethical, with the fundamentalist way Christianity was presented to him. One of these was the idea that Jesus is the only Son of God, a literalist teaching that has been used by missionaries as a starting point to condemn other faith traditions and to exclude anyone else as a possible son or daughter of God. For Gandhi, as for all who value experience above the clangour of mere belief, literalism is the stultification of faith. Instead he would hold that it is through the symbol, the myth, the metaphor that inner, life-giving meanings are grasped. Hence of Jesus Gandhi stated that, "I do not regard him as the only begotten son of God. That epithet in its material interpretation is quite unacceptable. Metaphorically we are all the begotten sons of God..."

6. Even literally speaking, translating the Greek, uios tou Theo, to mean "son of God", it has been observed that the definite article "the" does not appear in the original Greek and the phrase could as well be translated as "a son of God." Further it is that Jesus himself did not assume or claim any title implying a messianic role and status: not "Messiah", nor "Son of David", nor "Son" nor , "Son of God". The question then is how by the end of the fourth century CE Jesus came to be seen as "the son of God". The answer to this question lies in the examination of the highly syncretistic milieu in which Jesus lived and taught and in which the Gospels had their genesis. The title "son of God" was common in the ancient world whence it found its way into the belief and language of the early Christians. Generally kings and miracle workers alike in some parts of the ancient world were held to be the begotten of God. Roman emperors, in the New Testament period, were designated divi filius.

7. Within Judaism also the phrase is used. It is used to refer to the whole people of Israel as "Son of God" kings bore the title, and persons with a special commission from the Hebrew God, such as angels, were also so called (Psalms 2:7). It is therefore not surprising that Jesus as a spirit-filled prophet and charismatic healer should have been given the title by early Christians. And what happened, as the gospel went beyond the Hebraic and already highly syncretistic context into the Greek-dominated intellectual world of the Roman empire, was that the metaphorical son of God was transformed into a metaphysical son of God and, what eventually was a clear degradation of the idea, into literally a physical and biological son of God. On the ethical ground of Christianity, Gandhi was horrified to see the ease with which Christians separated ethic and morality from belief. He held the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount to be the cornerstone of Jesus' message, the power and grandeur of which would did not depend on the recognition of Jesus as the exclusive saviour.

8. The world is struggling to move out of religious narrowness as more and more people, including Christian, have come to recognise exclusivism as religiously regressive, for it turns the Lord of the universe into a white tribal God of Europe and the United States and their spiritual colonies. Mahatma Gandhi, the devout Hindu, perhaps more than any other single individual in this century has enriched Christianity enormously though the testimony of his personal life. At least one Christian scholar, Robert Ellswood, has paid his homage to this Hindu saint when he declared: No attempt to understand twentieth century Christianity can exclude the contribution of Gandhi. The Mahatma lives.

Yours faithfully,
Swami Aksharananda

Christian Hegemony Continues in Guyana
Author: Swami Aksharananda
Source: Stabroek News, September 11, 1999

■ An Act of Aggression
Author: Swami Aksharananda
Source: Guyana Chronicle, Tuesday, January 18, 2000

CARLTON Campbell's letter `A definite disservice' (Chronicle 1/10/00) deserves a close examination, contradictory though it is.

In his initial paragraph he accuses Hindu leaders of panicking at "peripheral conversions" and towards the end of his letter concedes that Hindus are switching to Christianity in such numbers as to panic Dharmacharyas, Gurus and Swamis.

What is peripheral conversion? Let us take the case of Guyana.

At the end of indentureship in 1917 Indian Christians were less than one per cent of the Indian population. Today, the Christian population among Indians is more than 12 per cent. Certainly a cause for concern among Hindus, especially when the state in Guyana functions to perpetuate Christian dominance.

Whatever is the problem of conversion it is Hindus who must decide what constitutes a threat to our existence and the appropriateness of any response.

Campbell also affirms the "right" of making converts demanded by Pope John 11 on his recent visit to India. But, where and how did Christianity get the "right" it so often invokes to propagate its teachings and make converts in other countries?

Jesus himself never claimed such a right. His immediate disciples never claimed such a right. Even early Christians never saw evangelism as a right.

Furthermore, the concept is alien to what is believed to be the teachings of Jesus. The answer to this claim of right can be found in history.

Evangelism and making converts became a right when Christianity became powerful enough to enforce that claim of right, that, is, when it became the official religion of the Roman Empire, the world's most militarily powerful empire at the time.

As Christianity spread across Europe with the help the sword, musket and canon, new Christian empires eventually arose in the west: Portugal, Spain, France and Britain, and finally across the Atlantic, the United States, and as their frigates and gunboats went around the world demanding landing rights and trading rights, they also demanded the right to make converts for Christianity.

In due course there developed a clear commensurate relationship between right and power. So when Christian leaders speak of the right to propagate their religion and make converts they are actually participating in the arrogance of western imperialism.

Of the religions of the world Christianity best epitomises the old adage "might is right". Let's come back to the Pope's demand for the freedom to make converts in India. What does Catholicism have to offer to the Hindus, freedom and democracy? In fact freedom and Catholicism can hardly be said to go hand in hand.

Catholicism gave the world that barbarous system known as the Inquisition that trampled on the freedom of people for centuries, Catholics invented the Index Librorium Prohibitorium (Index of Forbidden Books) a practice discontinued only in 1966, that also has for centuries suffocated the intellectual freedom of untold numbers.

Now Pope John Paul II goes to India to lecture the Hindus on the need for religious freedom. Yet it was this same Pope who had no qualms silencing and then excommunicating Catholic priests such as Matthew Fox, Leonardo Boff, and that fine Catholic intellectual Swiss Hans Kung. What an irony that John Paul II, the infallible representative of the Catholic church, arguably the most dictatorial and undemocratic institution in the world, goes to India demanding freedom and right.

As countries won their independence and freedom from centuries of slavery and domination from the middle part of the last century onward, they began to challenge the ideology of colonialism and imperialism which also meant challenging the ideology of Christianity itself.

In this India took the lead and many Hindu intellectuals openly challenged the Christian claim of the right to make converts under the guise of religious freedom.

The challenge is still a weak one, because India is still weak. Yet twice in the past decade the Supreme Court of India, one of the most respected judiciaries in the world, declared that the right to propagate Christianity does not mean the right to make converts.

The day is soon coming when every Hindu will begin to understand that whenever a Christian missionary comes to a Hindu home he or she does so with the sole intention to destroy Hinduism.

This is an act of aggression against the Hindu religion and Hindu people. And the time is also coming when Hindus will deal with it in the appropriate manner.

■ The racist allegations against Gandhi have blurred the distinctions between history and fantasy
Author: Swami Aksharananda
Source: Stabroek News, 9/18/01

Dear Editor,

Reading Mr AA Fenty's 'Frankly Speaking: Was Gandhi a racist?' (SN, 7.9.200l) in which he reviewed an ACDA programme presented by an "Afro-Guyanese, Africanist/scholar," one gets the impression that some people in pursuing their psychological need for primacy and dominance seek to do so via a methodology that blurs the distinction between history and fantasy.

Mr Fenty's column did catch my attention, as it normally does. However it was not for the long discredited Aryan-Dalit divide invented by racist European historiography of India two hundred years ago, and which continues to be reproduced and parroted in some quarters. My attention was arrested by the characterisation of Mahatma Ghandi as a "racist" against Black South Africans because he is alleged to have called them "niggers," among other crimes.

I found two references to the Blacks of South Africa as "Negroes" in Ghandhi's autobiography The Story of My Experiments with Truth (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Press, l927). Speaking of a white policeman who had rudely assaulted him Gandhi said, "He no doubt treats Negroes just as he has treated me" (page 97). Later, writing about the outbreak of the pneumonic plague in one of the gold mines near to Johnnesburg Gandhi states: "The workers in this mine were for the most part negroes" (page 2l7). In none of his writings so far have I found any reference to South African Blacks as "niggers."

Mahatma Gandhi was in many ways a very complex man. He freely admitted to his own mistakes, failures and weaknesses on numerous occasions. Even though he was a victim of white oppression in South Africa he was still able to find and praise the many admirable qualities of his oppressors. In the beginning of his political career he hoped that the British Empire would live out the ideals of equality and justice so much talked about during his life as a student in England. He was prepared to give the empire a chance to prove itself.
So when war (l899-02) broke out for the second time between the Boers and British in South Africa Gandhi decided to rally around the empire. After all one of the announced war aims of the British was greater internal justice in South Africa. By then Gandhi was already a devotee of non-violence. He organised instead an Indian Ambulance Corps for the British. Mahatma was never in Boer military uniform. Incidentally, the Boer War (l880-8l) and (l899-02) were not wars between blacks and whites. They were wars between the white British and white Boers of Dutch extraction. It is therefore specious, if not disingenuous to speak of Gandhi taking the side of the whites.

What probably Mr Fenty (and ACDA's programme) is referring to is Gandhi's role during the Zulu Rebellion in Natal. He again organised an Indian Ambulance corps and this time was made a temporary sergeant-major outfitted with the appropriate uniform. Again Gandhi provided detailed reasoning for his decision making it clear that he "bore no grudges against the Zulus." (The Story... (page 235). His corps was given the responsibility of nursing wounded Zulus.

Gandhi writes in his other book Satyagraha in South Africa (Ahmedabad: Navajivan, l928, p. 97-98), "We were only too glad to do this. We had to cleanse the wounds of several Zulus which had not been attended to for as many as five days and were therefore stinking horribly. We like our work. The Zulus could not talk to us, but from their gestures and the expressions of their eyes, they seem to feel as if God had sent us to their succour." So much for ACDA's (and Mr Fenty) Gandhi, the racist.

If, as in my case, Mr Fenty's copy of VT Rajeshekhara's Dalit..." has a picture of the author then he may care to comment on the great Dalit leader, Rajashekhara's, "pronounced African physical characteristics," if they are present. I know that it is extremely dangerous and simplistic to be guided by the "physical characteristics" of a people. These are the divisions that racist European scholarship imposed on us Indians. We one billion Indians and Hindus, of ten thousand years of civilisation and culture, are too diverse for simplistic labels. But if I may venture to say so, when I look at the majestic and splendid "physical characterists" of VT Rajashekhara then, like Mr Fenty, I am moved to say "We are truly all one."

Yours faithfully,
Swami Aksharananda

■ What Nelson Mandela wrote about Mahatma Gandhi
Author: Swami Aksharananda
Source: Stabroek News 11/27/10

Dear Editor,

My response to Mr. A. A. Fenty's critique of Mahatma Gandhi (SN, 10/19/01) will come later. First, however, it would be instructive to hear another perspective, one provided by former President Nelson Mandela, arguably mother Africa's greatest son of all times. His critique and appreciation of the Mahatma, entitled "The Sacred Warrior" appeared in Time Magazine, December 31, 1999. He writes:
"India is Gandhi's country of birth; South Africa his country of adoption. He was both an Indian and a South African citizen. Both countries contributed to his intellectual and moral genius, and he shaped the liberatory movements in both theatres. He is the archetypal anti- colonial revolutionary. His strategy of non-co-operation, his assertion that we can be dominated only if we co-operate with our dominators, and his non-violent resistance inspired anti-colonial and antiracist movements internationally in our century. Both Gandhi and I suffered colonial oppression, and both of us mobilised our respective peoples against governments that violated our freedoms.

The Gandhian influence dominated freedom struggles on the African continent right up to the 1960s because of the power it generated and the unity it forged among the apparently powerless. Non-violence was the official stance of all major African coalitions, and the South African ANC remained implacably opposed to violence for most of its existence.

Gandhi remained committed to non-violence; I followed the Gandhian strategy for as long as I could, but then there came a point in our struggle when the brute force of the oppressor could no longer be countered through passive resistance alone. We founded Unkhonto we Sizwe and added a military dimension to our struggle. Even then, we chose sabotage because it did not involve the loss of life, and it offered the best hope for future race relations.

Militant action became part of the African agenda officially supported by the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) following my address to the Pan-African Freedom Movement of East and Central Africa (PAFMECA) in 1962, in which I stated, "Force is the only language the imperialists can hear, and no country became free without some sort of violence."
Gandhi himself never ruled out violence absolutely and unreservedly. He conceded the necessity of arms in some situations. He said, "Where choice is set between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence ... I prefer to use arms in defence of honour rather than remain the vile witness of dishonour..." Violence and non-violence are not mutually exclusive; it is the predominance of the one or the other that labels a struggle.

Gandhi arrived in South Africa in 1893 at the age of 23. Within a week he collided head on with racism. His immediate response was to flee the country that so degraded people of colour, but then his inner resilience overpowered him with a sense of mission, and he stayed to redeem the dignity of the racially exploited, to pave the way for the liberation of the colonised the world over and to develop a blue-print for a new social order.

He left 21 years later, a near maha atma (great soul). There is no doubt in my mind that by the time he was violently removed from our world, he had transited into that state. He was no ordinary leader. There are those who believe he was divinely inspired and it is difficult not to believe with them. He dared to exhort non-violence in a time when the violence of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had exploded on us; he exhorted morality when science, technology and the capitalist order had made it redundant; he replaced self interest with group interest without minimising the importance of self. In fact, the interdependence of the social and the personal is at the heart of his philosophy. He seeks the interactive development of the moral person and the moral society.

His philosophy of Satyagraha is both a personal and a social struggle to realise the Truth, which he identifies as God, the Absolute Morality. He seeks his Truth, not in isolation, self-centredly, but with the people. He said, "I want to find God, and because I want to find God, I have to find God along with other people. I do not believe I can find God alone. If I did, I would be running to the Himalayas to find God in some cave there. But since I believe that nobody can find God alone, I have to work with people. I have to take them with me. Alone I can't come to him." He balances the religious and the secular. His awakening came on the hilly terrain of the so-called Bambata Rebellion, where as a passionate British patriot, he led his Indian stretcher corps to serve the Empire, but the British brutality against the Zulu roused his soul against violence as nothing had done before. He determined, on that battlefield, to wrest himself of all material attachments and devote himself completely and totally to the elimination of violence and serving humanity.

The sight of wounded and whipped Zulus, mercilessly abandoned by their British persecutors, so appalled him that he turned full circle from his admiration of all things British to celebrating the indigenous and ethnic. He resuscitated the culture of the colonised and the fullness of Indian resistance against the British; he revived Indian handicrafts and made these into an economic weapon against the coloniser in his call for swadeshi-the use of one's own and the boycott of the oppressor's products, which deprive people of their skill and capital.
A great measure of world poverty today and African poverty in particular is due to the continuing dependence on foreign markets for manufactured goods, which undermines domestic production and dams up domestic skills, apart from piling unmanageable foreign debts. Gandhi's insistence on self-sufficiency is a basic economic principle that, if allowed today, could contribute significantly to alleviating Third World poverty and stimulating development.

Gandhi predated Franz Fanon and the black consciousness movements in South Africa and the US by more than a half-century, and inspired the resurgence of the indigenous intellect, spirit and industry. Gandhi rejected the Adam Smith notion of human society as motivated by self-interest and brute needs and returns us to our spiritual dimension with its impulses for non-violence, justice and equality. He exposes the fallacy that everyone can be rich and successful providing they worked hard. He points to the millions who work themselves to the bone and still remain hungry. He preaches the gospel of levelling down, of emulating the kisan (peasant), and not the zamindar (landlord), for "all can be kisans, but only a few zamindars." He stepped from his comfortable life to join the masses on their level to seek equality with them. "I cannot hope to bring about equality...I have to reduce myself to the level of the poorest of the poor."

From his understanding of wealth and poverty came his understanding of labour and capital, which led him to the solution of trusteeship based on the belief that there is no private ownership of capital; it is given in trust for redistribution and equalisation. Similarly while recognising the differential aptitudes and talents, he holds that these are gifts from God to be used for the collective good.
He seeks an economic order alternative to the capitalist and the communist, and finds this in sarvodaya, the well being of all based on non-violence (ahimsa). He rejects Darwin's survival of the fittest, Adam Smith's laissez-faire and Karl Marx's thesis of a natural antagonism between capital and labour, and focuses on the interdependence between the two. He believes in the human capacity to change and wages Satyagraha against the oppressor, not to destroy him but to transform him, that he ceases his oppression and join the oppressed in the pursuit of Truth.

We in South Africa brought about our new democracy relatively peacefully on the foundations of such thinking, regardless whether we were directly influenced by Gandhi or not. Gandhi remains today the only complete critique of advanced industrial society. Others have criticised its totalitarianism but not its productive apparatus. He is not against science and technology, but he places priority on the right to work and opposes mechanisation to the extent that it usurps this right. Large-scale mechanisation, he holds, concentrates wealth in the hands of one man who tyrannises the rest. He favours the small machine; he seeks to keep the individual in control of his tools, to maintain an interdependent love relationship between the two, as a cricketer with his bat or Krishna with his flute. Above all he seeks to liberate the individual from his alienation to the machine and restore morality to the productive process. As we find ourselves in jobless economies, societies in which small minorities consume while the masses starve, we find ourselves forced to rethink the rationale of our current globalisation and to ponder the Gandhian alternative.

At a time when Freud was liberating sex, Gandhi was reining it in; when Marx was pitting worker against capitalist, Gandhi was reconciling them; when the dominant European thought had dropped God and soul out of social reckoning, he was centralising society on God and soul; at a time when the colonised had ceased to think and control, he dared to think and control; and when the ideologies of the colonised had virtually disappeared, he revived them and empowered them with a potency that liberated and redeemed.

Yours faithfully,
Swami Aksharananda

■ Crass, stupid and dangerous, `Agree to Disagree' is an opiate for the Indian masses
Author: Swami Aksharananda
Source: Stabroek News 12/25/98

Dear Sir,

For most of us concerned with the controversy surrounding the sitcom/soap, Agree to Disagree, the intervention of the still paramount leader and other luminaries of that once paramount party raises many questions.

Humour in which ethnic stereotyping is the main menu, as in the case of Agree to Disagree, has its basis in forms of aggression and hostility. Such humour is created and nourished on a dichotomy constructed between self and other and is possible only by the objectification and, of course, the commodification of the other. The other is stereotyped and stigmatised to the extent of being portrayed as less than human. This becomes for most people an object of laughter. We laugh at the weak, never at the strong. We laugh at people with physical disabilities such as the blind and the disfigured, at people who are mentally and/or developmentally retarded. We laugh at obese people, at short people, at gays and lesbians. While most societies have evolved out of this state of backwardness, in the Caribbean, and obviously in Guyana, this dark and cruel humour is the order of the day.

The first and most important polarisation in Agree to Disagree is the one based on ethnicity, African and Indian. In terms of their representation, the African (Franklin) is richly endowed as intelligent, mature, strong, and very masculine. The Indian (Puddock) on the other hand is portrayed as essentially and fundamentally weak, dependent and effeminate, a groping immature child who keeps fainting at the sight of blood. Puddock is spineless, literally unable to stand or walk without constant wobbling. The distinction is further accentuated by the fact that the principal African character possesses and is addressed by his proper name, Franklin.

`Puddock', on the other hand, is a misnomer, a `false name'. He has no true name, no proper name, hence, no true and proper identity. But the question is why does the producer, himself an Indian who has gained a measure of reputation as a retailer of song and dance Indian culture, indulge in such a degrading representation of the Indian? The sitcom/soap needed a wider audience, the African audience, since Indian loyalty is always taken for granted. And what could attract this segment of the population more than a spicy menu of Indian bashing? It is no accident that the majority of the people who have expressed their outrage at the discontinuation of the sitcom/soap are Africans.

Clearly this is what sells: the vulgar, the macabre, the transgressive. It attracts audiences. It brings in dollars. If you want a calypso to be number one you bash Indians. If you want the sitcom/soap to sell you bash Indians. The societal pimp operates at different levels: selling people, selling culture. And this is exactly what Agree to Disagree has done. To have done otherwise would have required a special subversive ingenuity, a courage and a singular devotion to truth aimed at the interrogation of the dominant canonical and hostile stigmatisation of the Indian and the creation of a `counter-discourse' in popular culture.

But if the artist, so ecstatically supported by Congress Place, collaborates with the dominant structures on the art field, how come the consumers of this product also enjoy it even though it mocks at them. It happens because historically the society has been conditioned into accepting Indian bashing as humour. Further in almost every society, oppressed masses have a way of participating in their own oppression. We laugh at our own denigration in Agree to Disagree, as did blacks in the United States who were made to participate in their own vilification and enjoy it in such popular radio and television shows as Amos `n' Andy with Sapphire and Kingfish its two principal characters. We all cheered Tarzan the lone white lord of African men and beasts alike as he conquered that mighty continent.

This brings me more specifically to the Sunday Stabroek editorial (13-12-98) where the editor, speaking for the nondescript and amorphous `some' claims that the Puddock character is `more a case of rural stereotyping than ethnic stereotyping.' What blatant intellectual disengenuity! From its very inception Agree to Disagree began to reproduce ethnic stereotypes of Indians and blacks. How many times did we not hear the expressions `you black this, you black that', `you coolie this, you coolie that'? The sitcom/soap itself does not indulge in any such pretensions.

Why then is the editor so eager to ignore the ethnic dimension, obscuring it with rural and urban? The only thing that comes to mind is the statement of the literary critic, Edward Said, who notes "there is nothing more reprehensible than those habits of mind in the intellectual that induce avoidance."

But the sitcom/soap indulges in avoidance of another kind. A cruel and a dangerous kind. We are at the juncture of our history in this society where Indians are brutalised, not only on occasions of mass hysteria and hate such as January 12 last, but on a daily basis, not only in Georgetown as it used to happen in the past, but now in our very homes. From Charity to Crabwood Creek, this forces every Indian to live in perpetual fear. And it is at this juncture of a state of generalised terror against Indians that Agree to Disagree enters. And what does it do?

It further demoralises the Indian, already an endangered species. It should be recognised that Agree to Disagree is not a mere innocuous attempt to create some laughs. By his own admission the producer continues to suggest that the sitcom/soap is about racial and national unity. It therefore claims for itself a highly political objective. But by his airy-fairy notion of national unity that longs for the time when as one of the actors put it `we used to eat from one another's plate' I contend that the producer of Agree to Disagree is contemptuous of the anguish of the Indian people.

Artistic expression in his context, independent or not of its own awareness and intentions, by secularizing the stereotypes and stigmas created by the dominant artistic class, produces, preserves, reproduces, propagates and inculcates those practices and beliefs in accord with the interest of the dominant class-the class that has the ultimate power to deprive Indian people of their very lives. Such art not only gives consent to the established dominance but also simultaneously tends to reject any opposition to such dominance. By creating an artistic discourse that is foreign and even contemptuous to the basic question of security for Indians, by assigning priority to matters that are distinct from this fundamental concern thereby diverting attention from it, by its preoccupation with `national unity' thus seeking to deny the reality of the ongoing attacks on Indians, by equating a militant concern for Indian security with racism, and by the non-production of an artistic discourse that explicitly names and condemns the aggressors, the producer of Agree to Disagree has given consent to the established order in which Indians are the daily victims of gruesome crimes.

Crass, stupid and dangerous, Agree to Disagree is an opiate for the Indian masses.

Yours faithfully,
Swami Aksharananda

■ Hindus must be free to support any political party of their choice

Source: Stabroek News, 2/24/01
Author: Swami Aksharananda

Dear Editor,

Please permit this rejoinder to Mr Deodat Mahadeo's response, "Swami seems to have teamed up with ROAR", (Guyana Chronicle 5.2.2001) to my letter "PPP meetings held near Hindu Temples" (Stabroek News, 31.2.2001). I cannot say that I am surprised to see the haste with which a matter of principle has been converted to one of personality and partisan politics. The question for Mr. Mahadeo is: Had the PNC held a public meeting near the temple during worship would I have been justified in complaining and would he have been so incensed by my complaint?

The Christian Sunday morning service that goes on in the Cornelia Ida primary school next door to the mandir is indeed provocative and has the potential for conflict. I have written about this situation in the national newspapers and this particular problem, among others, was the topic of an hour long live television programme.

On the other hand if Mr. Mahadeo thinks that this situation at Cornelia Ida is objectionable enough to be condemned then he too should complain. It is the responsibility of all Hindus to defend Hindu dharma from all forms of abuse and provocations. He should address his petition to other religious leaders and organisations he knows to also register their protest. But in doing so Mr Mahadeo should remember that it is "our" administration that is permitting this eye-pass to continue, not only in Cornelia Ida but in several other villages on the coastland.

The problem of religious leaders using their influence through mandirs to persuade Hindus to support political parties is real enough and has been part of our history for about fifty years now. However since Mr Mahadeo considers me a mere "religious leader" there is no need to worry about my influence. I boast of none and the religious organisations to which I belong do not believe in controlling mandirs and certainly do not believe in the farce of affiliations.

To find examples of real religious leaders of power and influence using mandirs and the Hindu religion for partisan political interests Mr Mahadeo should look no further than in the very party he so staunchly defends. There he will find a connection between a Hindu religious organisation and the party. Every Hindu in this country knows which Hindu religious organisation also serves as a front for which political party. Is the timber in Mr Mahadeo's eye so large that he can't see what's under his own nose? Or is it because once the party in question is "our party" it becomes okay for mandirs and Hindu religion in general to be made to subserve its interests?

I am sure that there are many Hindus who hold the view, expressed to me by one angry elderly Hindu gentleman, that it is "our party, our religion, and our mandir, where is the conflict?" There are even some Hindus who would be prepared to shut down the mandir if it conflicted with "our party." And, I also know a few for whom the Hindu Dharma comes first.

As a Hindu in Guyana I am aware of the dangers of saying or writing anything that displeases "our party". Hindus, especially when they invoke the support of their religious traditions, have traditionally been made to believe that they commit the most heinous of sins when they dare to express views different from the official doctrines of "our party". So in writing my letter of 31.1.200l I weighed the risk with care, fully conscious what I was getting into.

Whatever I say on Hinduism or on Hinduism in relation to politics is said in the open. One cannot be more open than speaking on CNS television. I also occasionally use the print media to express concerns which in my view affect Hindus. My main activity with Hindu children and youths is done in open fields for all to see, an example of which goes on in Cornelia Ida. One really does not need to speculate. My utterances and my conduct are open for scrutiny by all.

I believe that Hindus must be free to support any political party of their choice and at the same time we must recognise that the common ground on which we stand is the Hindu Dharma. As Hindus we should not let politics and politicians make us enemies of one another. Dharma is paramount above the interests of any and every political party. Mahatma Gandhi realised this when he declared: "My politics is subservient to my God," And, in closing, let me say that Freedom House is not my Vaikunth.

Yours faithfully,
Swami Aksharananda

■ Indian immigration did not affect the ability of freed Africans to negotiate
better working conditions

Source: Stabroek News, Friday, Nov. 1, 2002
Author: Swami Aksharananda

Dear Editor,
Your editorial captioned “The ethnic debate” (l9.10.2002) in evaluating the “ethnic debate” conducted in your newspaper, makes reference to the distrust that attended the arrival of Indians to replace African slave labour and to the threat to the wages and well being of the free African. This contention has been in currency almost from the very inception of indentureship and has been articulated and promoted by generations of scholars. In contemporary times it is frequently pressed in service especially in the context of the “ethnic debate.”
Scholars in general maintain the view that it was this Indian intervention that is the genesis of Indian-Black relationship in Guyana. Others, notable among them African writers, have even gone so far to suggest that since it was Indian labour was the culprit, Indians of today bear responsibility and must pay a heavy price.

But can the claim, that it was Indian labour that crippled the ability of freed Africans to negotiate better working conditions, be substantiated? To answer this question we must look at the first decade of Indian immigration history in Guyana. From all accounts this was an extremely volatile juncture in our history. Slaves had won their freedom, freed slaves were leaving the plantations in droves and thousands of new recruits were being brought in.

During this period African workers organised two strikes over the issue of wages. The first in 1841-42 was an unqualified success and had planters retreating. However, the second strike, in 1847-48, was a dismal failure.
What was different? Though Rodney says that the decisive factor was the presence of “alternative labour,” this has always been taken to mean Indian labour. It was to become the official and fashionable answer resonances of
which continue to be heard today. Whereas in 1841-42 there was no significant Indian presence, between 1845
immigration resumed and by the end of 1847 when the second strike was called, approximately 8,296 Indians had been brought to Guyana. These Indians, we are instructed, were willingly prepared to work for lesser wages
thus weakening the African bargaining power and ensuring the failure of the 1847-48 strike. This is the genesis of Black hostility and violence so evident today. So runs the tune of rationalisation. The carnage will continue.

There is no question that surplus labour can adversely affect the power of the established labour force to bargain for better conditions. Look at the way Burnham and the PNC brought in the GDF to subvert the heroic struggles of sugar workers in the 1970’s. But in 1847 Guyana were Indians the only immigrants? In the discussion of the impact of indentured workers on the ability of the African worker to demand better wages, what our “historians” consistently and conveniently ignore was the presence of a much larger number of non-Indian indentured workers in Guyana.

By end of 1847 there were approximately 44,176 indentured immigrants, including small amounts from Malta and the United States, consisting of: (1) some 15,747 or 36% from Madeira, (2) 12,898 or 29% freed Blacks from the
West Indies mainly Barbados, and (3) 6,957 or 16% from Africa itself. All of this gives a total of 35,880 or 81% of non-Indian immigrants as against 8,296 or 19% Indians. Is it not tantamount to dishonesty when scholars
conceal significant information that can affect the way history is understood? Why does Indian immigration get blamed for the failure of wage negotiations? Why has the animosity been reserved exclusively for Indians,
and that too the Indians of today?

In holding Indians responsible for the low wages planters offered we have to ask how free were these Indians to negotiate their own contract. Who formulated the “agreements” that were read out to hundreds of them at a time
as they languished in the Calcutta depots awaiting transportation? Did Indians know of the conditions in Guyana? Did they know that they would be used to depress wages?

These are important questions that need answers, because those who accuse not the indentureship system but Indians themselves, give the impression that indentureship was a free and voluntary system, and imply that Indians chose to enter in a deadly competition which today bears the poison of repression and banditry.
Another factor that has to be taken into consideration when we deal with the perpetuation of these dangerous half-truths is the departure of freed Africans from the plantations. They did not need the presence of immigrants, least of all Indian immigrants, to accelerate their departure from the plantations en bloc. It had become clear to Blacks that despite legal manumission slavery was still a persistent reality for them and, as Hugh Tinker tells us, they were aware that, “slavery was the plantation and the plantation was slavery; and if they wanted release from the one, they must quit the other.”

Consequently, ex-slaves embarked on a series of collective purchases of abandoned sugar and cotton plantations beginning with North Brook in as early as 1839. By 1850 some 25 plantations had been bought. In discussing
this most significant demographic shift, this act of defiance and real emancipation, Allan Young calculates that while in 1838 the slave population in Guyana was about 84,000, in ten years time, that is, by 1847-48 over
44,000 ex-slaves had moved out of the plantations to the villages. Was this massive movement due to the 8,296 or 19% Indian immigrants in the population? Have scholars been able to determine the role of the 19,855 or
45% Blacks who came in from the West Indies and Africa and the 15,747 or 36% Portuguese all of whom came in prior to 1848? Why the fixation on Indians?

While Africans were in the process of withdrawing from the plantations, the failed strike was a key push factor. As a matter of fact it can be said that the strike of 1847-48 was a watershed event in our history for the Blacks who departed from the plantations never looked back. But another important point which scholars have consistently overlooked is the fact that between 1848-51 another embargo was placed on the importation of Indian labour, coinciding with the period of further mass exodus of Blacks to the villages. They did not need the presence of immigrants, least of all Indian immigrants, to force them to do this.

The use of the wage argument has no value, except in the enterprise of racist representation, in explaining Black attitudes of resentment and animosity toward Indians. Because, even if we were to look at Indian
immigration after 1851, the fresh recruits were used to depress Indian wages which were destined to remain stagnant at five shillings a week for approximately 100 years from 1838-1938.

The Indians who were brought here during the indentureship period were transported from one system of oppression created by the British in India to another system of oppression in Guyana. To be blamed for the failures in
wage negotiations is to have an unnecessary and unjust burden of history placed on their shoulders. Worse yet, to use this argument to rationalise and condone the violence against Indians is only deepening the degeneracy
and depravity.

Yours faithfully,
Swami Aksharananda

Editor’s note:
What the editorial actually said on this issue was:
“Our historians will readily explain, for example, the distrust that arose when the indentured labourers arrived from India as a replacement for African slave labour after emancipation thus posing an immediate threat to
the wages and well being of the free African. That is no one’s `fault’, except perhaps that of the then imperial power which saw the plantation society essentially as a vehicle for economic exploitation, it is a
structural fact of our history”.

There can be no doubt, as the writer points out, that Indians were not the only immigrants in the country in 1848. One is not seeking to blame Indians but to understand historical developments. In that regard, we offer some quotations from a pamphlet by Dr James G. Rose (History Gazette No. 23 - August 1990) on the strike of 1848. “The 1847-48 withdrawal of labour stemmed from an even greater sense of outrage and injustice. The labourers could not escape the knowledge that immigration was financed by the taxes they were forced to pay.”
“They were also aware that one of the fundamental aims of immigration was the reduction of wages. This objective was trumpeted pretty often by the planters, and what had always been a suspicion on the part of the labourers
had grown into a conviction.” “The strikers soon came to the conclusion that they could not count on the
support of the immigrants. They had refused to withdraw their labour and were working for a reduced wage rate. This was unlike 1842 when even the immigrants from Sierra Leone had withdrawn their labour. On this occasion,
the immigrants sided with the plantocracy. What was more, since 1842 the immigrant working force had swelled by the infusion of some 32,000 more agricultural labourers who had a significant effect on the state of the
economy during the course of the strike. Governor Light conceded that, “whatever is done and very little is doing - is performed by the Portuguese and Coolies”. Inevitably, therefore, conflict between the two groups was
generated. A small number of creoles was imprisoned for threats to, and ill-treatment of, immigrants who accepted lower wages, but the imported labourers continued to give their services and the intimidation persisted.”

“The disunity of the working class was the most crucial factor in the final resolution of the conflict. The contest between the planters and the creoles was as old as their relationship, but with the introduction of an
alternative work force in substantial numbers, another dimension had been added to the struggle.

Immigrants had been recruited to undermine the creole’s command of the labour market. By 1848, the inflow of immigrants was to a large extent countered by an ongoing withdrawal of creoles from the estates into the
villages as a comparison of immigration and village statistics show.” “The year 1848 which promised so much but offered so little to the emergent European nations, marked an important turning point in the affairs of the
creoles in British Guiana. It was the year in which their past triumphs in the struggle to keep the dominance of the plantation in check suffered a serious setback. The programme of immigration which was yet to reach its
peak, had begun to achieve its aims of lowering wages and breaking the creole monopoly of the labour market. This was the most important lesson of the creoles’ defeat in the 1848 strike. On that occasion, the immigrants had been used to frustrate the strike effort aimed on one level at maintaining wages at a rate acceptable to the creole but which at a more profound level, aimed at destroying the plantocracy. In the future, immigrants would be used to make the planter completely free of his dependence on the creole labour force.” The hostility created by immigration included the Indians though others like the Portuguese were involved.

■ Division between Africans and Indians was mainly due to the planter class

Source: Stabroek News
Author: K. Enver

Dear Editor,

Swami Aksharananda's brilliant letter captioned "Indian immigration did not affect the ability of freed Africans to negotiate better working conditions" (1/11/02) is one of the most important letters you have ever published, both because of its profound sociological as well as historical import and the reverberations it will continue to have.

It has cleared up, and hopefully eliminated, a fallacy, which has been perpetuated for decades in the schools, in textbooks, in the University of the West Indies and the University of Guyana. Generations of young people were taught the factually incorrect view... "the indentured labourers arrived from India as a replacement for African slave - labour after emancipation thus posing an immediate threat to the wages and well-being of the free African" which you carried in your editorial of 19/10/02 and which you repeated in an editor's note on 1/11/02 with halting modification.
The wages strike of 1847/8 by the freed slaves was broken, firstly, by the manipulation of the immigrant labour by the planters and secondly, by the flow of the freedmen themselves out of the plantations into the newly established black villages. But who were the immigrant labour who were manipulated into preventing the ex-slaves from getting higher wages? The immigrant labour were not Indian indentures but largely Blacks from the West Indies and Africa 45%, and Portuguese from Madeira - 36%. Indians numbered only 19% of the work force. Accordingly 81% of the immigrant labour on the plantations from 1847 to 1852 were non-Indians and it was largely on this 81% that the planters depended in their efforts to keep wages down, both of the ex-slaves and the indentured immigrants themselves.

In other words, the resentment of the freed Blacks against the immigrant workers for hampering their efforts at getting better wages could not be against Indian indentured workers who numbered only 19% as against the others at 81%. In actual fact, the relations between Indian indentured workers and their descendants and the Black freedmen and their descendants were generally good, with each community helping the other. And as the 19th century progressed onwards to the 21st century, relationships grew closer and there were numerous deep friendships and even familial relations.

But, on the other hand, major efforts were made to disrupt the good relations between Indians and Blacks from the 19th century onwards and these were:-
(a) The planter class worked assiduously to keep the Black and Indian working class divided since they subscribed to a policy of divide and rule.
(b) This same myth of the Indian indentured worker being used by the planters to depress wages, and particularly those of the freed Black slaves before their departure from the plantations, was a myth thought to have been invented by planter elements. In any case, it was taken up by Black teachers and journalists in the late 19th and 20th centuries and perpetuated, and succeeded, rather unwillingly, in somewhat souring ethnic relations. The corrective carried in the Swami's letter should be more widely disseminated so that the public and academics could have a better understanding of Guyanese history.
(c) Since the late 1940's to this day, various politicians, for their own selfish interests, have worked to excite racism in the society and stimulate adversarial feelings among Blacks and Indians. Most of to-day's present ill-will which exists among elements of the Black and Indian communities is due to the machinations and propaganda of such politicians.

I call upon Stabroek News to emphatically bring this important correction to the Ministry of Education and the University of Guyana.

Yours faithfully,
K. Enver

■ The Aryan invasion of India is a theory built on speculation

Source: Stabroek News, Tuesday, June 17, 2003
Author: Swami Aksharananda

Dear Editor,
The Aryan Invasion (of India) Theory (AIT) is now and again invoked in the letter columns of the Stabroek News. I refer to the letter captioned, “The preference in Indians for lighter skins dates back to the Aryan invasion” in
Stabroek News (6/4/2003).

This theory, given the manner in which it is being defended by its promoters, sounds more like a dogma serving a variety of political and ideological functions. It is invariably summoned into service to explain almost every traditional institution and social conflict in India. Even in Guyana, Black cultural activists have invoked it claiming that the supposed Indian, and more specifically, Hindu attitude toward Blacks stems from the
Aryan invasion of India. It has, not infrequently, been proffered as justification for the violence against Indians. In the present case the supposed Indian preference for lighter skins dates back to the Aryan
invasion of India.

While the AIT is avidly and dogmatically advocated by some, in and out of India, the preponderant mass of the Indian population is blissfully unaware of this interpretation of their history. Indeed it was only with the advent
of Europeans, more specifically around mid-19th century, that Indians for the first time came to learn that their ancestors were “Aryan” invaders who subdued and enslaved the native population and introduced the oppressive
caste system. South Indians too did not know that they had ancestral rights over all of India, having been kicked out of the north by the invading hordes. And clearly, north or south, no one had any awareness of the significance of the colour of the skin. All this became known only as Europeans began their conquest of the land and started to create institutions of governance. Though it is now seen as heresy to do so, many scholars, both in the West
and in the Indian sub-continent, have long challenged the AIT to be essentially a product of 19th century Eurocentric scholarship built on an edifice of speculation. Now with new tools of investigation, including
computers and satellites, new discoveries are regularly made and we are in a position to intern the AIT myth, once and for all, among the greatest hoaxes of history.

The writer of the piece in question tells us that the invaders who entered India sometime between 3000 and 4000 years ago were called “Aryans” but it has to be noted that nowhere else in the ancient world was there any people
called “Aryan” or who called themselves “Aryans.” It was in India alone that the term arya was used, and that too, in a non-racial sense to refer to a people. The word Aryan is recent coinage created in the 19th century by the
famous German scholar, Friedrich Max Muller. One of the main premises of the invasion theory is contention that the
so-called “Aryans” were a race of people. In this regard, it is significant that prior to its announcement by Europeans in the 19th century there was never any notion of an “Aryan” race. The entire ancient literary tradition
of India, particularly the Rig Veda, supposedly the masterpiece of the “Aryan” invaders, is not only silent about an outside invasion, but is also unaware of its people as an “Aryan race.” Hinduism’s other classical language, Tamil, is also eloquent in its silence about the so-called invasion as well as the notion of an “Aryan” race.
It is now known that the myth of an “Aryan” race is the product of Eurocentric scholarship born out of the historical need of the 18th and 19th centuries and the silly theories of race prevalent at the time. More
specifically the idea of the Aryan race and the Aryan nation has its roots in European anti-semitism and the rise of German nationalism. A number of historical events and movements came together to give birth to this idea.
There is an important addendum to the theory of an “Aryan race” inserted by its very creators which is conveniently overlooked by its present advocates and disciples. Max Muller was one of those responsible for giving the word
“Aryan” a racial connotation. In 1861 he gave a series of lectures entitled “Science of Language” in which he clearly took the Sanskrit word arya to mean a race of people. However in 1872 during an engagement at the
University of Strasbourg he came up with the idea that the word arya meant a family of languages-Sanskrit, Lanit, Greek, Avestan. The word meant not race but honourable, sir, noble one etc. Again in 1888 he declared with great vehemence, “I have declared again and again that if I say Aryas, I mean neither blood nor bones, not hair nor
skull; I simply mean those who speak an Aryan language... To me an ethnologist who speaks of an Aryan race, Aryan blood, Aryan eyes and hair is as great a sinner as a linguist who speaks of a dolichocephalic dictionary
or a brachycephalic grammar.” Generations of scholars who advanced their dogma of an Aryan race founded on the original pronouncement of people like Max Muller, have chosen to completely and deliberately ignore his later
retraction.

The AIT has been built on many speculative and arbitrary pronouncements. None however was more arbitrary than the date of 1,500BCE for the alleged invasion. Max Muller simply assigned a period of about 200 years for the
composition of the four Vedas and the Upanishads giving a total of 1,000 years. Going backwards in time and starting from 500 BCE, the date of Gautam Buddha which scholars at that time held to be the only sound historical
date, Max Muller arrived at a neat but arbitrary 1,500 BCE for the supposed invasion and 1200 BCE for the composition of the Rig Veda. Facing intense opposition from noted scholars both in India and Europe, the
great Max Muller issued his famous disclaimer; “I need hardly say that I agree with everyone of my critics. I have repeatedly dwelt on the entirely hypothetical character of the dates which I venture to assign to the first
three periods of the Vedic literature. All that I have claimed for them is that they are minimum dates. If we now ask how we can fix the dates of these three periods, it is quite clear that we cannot fix a terminus a quo.
Whether the Vedic hymns were composed 1000, 1500 or 2000 or 3000 years BC, no power on earth can determine.” This kind of intellectual honesty is rare among scholars and many, among them a few contemporary Indian historians,
continue to pretend that Max Muller’s disclaimer never really happened and still hold on to the date of 1,200 BCE for the composition of the Rig Veda.

One of the most amazing anomalies of the invasion theory is that none of the peoples alleged to have been involved, the Aryan invader or the native conquered, has any memory of an invasion or for that matter any memory of a
homeland outside India. Not even the Dravidian speaking peoples who are claimed to have lived in India before the supposed Aryan invasion have any memory of this alleged invasion. It is hard to imagine that both the “invading Aryans” and the “conquered native Dravidians” would conspire to eradicate from their collective memory
every trace of the invasion and its consequences. It is not likely that the Vedic people, so obsessed with origins and ancestry as demonstrated in the Rig Veda, would have forgotten and forsaken their origins and uttered not a
single word of where they came from. Every Hindu ritual contains a sankalpa, a statement of purpose, which
connects the performer to the primordial origin of the ancestors. That origin has always been Bharatavarsha, or India. Further, the joy with which the landscape is celebrated and the manner in which the poets sang the glory
and beauty of the Saraswati River can only indicate their deep attachment to the land which no recent invader could possibly have.

Another formidable objection to the invasion theory comes from the discovery of the dried up bed of the Saraswati River. Hindus have always invoked the mighty Saraswati which modern scholars thought to be a mythical river
because there was no body of water in India to correspond to the Saraswati. It is now known that the vast majority of the archaeological sites of the Indus Valley Civilisation are not on the Indus as such but are concentrated
in the basin where the Saraswati once flowed. According to one researcher, A. V. Sankaran, detailed evaluation of data obtained from remote sensing, geophysical, isotopic and other studies by various workers have been instrumental in sorting out many of the earlier speculative inferences and unsolved aspects of Saraswati river. Yash Pal, Sood, Sahai, and Agrawal have traced the palaeochannel of this river through Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan. They found that its course in these states is clearly highlighted in the LANDSAT imagery by the lush cover of vegetation thriving on the rich residual loamy soil along its earlier course.According to their findings, the river disappears abruptly in a depression in Pakistan, instead of in the sea, an observation shared by a few others also. But, digital enhancement studies of satellite IRS-1C data launched in 1995, combined with RADAR imagery (from European Remote Sensing satellite ERS-1/2) could identify subsurface features and thus recognize
palaeochannels. These and other scholars involved in the Saraswati research conclude that the desiccation of the Saraswati River occurred around 1900 BCE. since we know that the Saraswati is the most celebrated of all Rig
Vedic rivers, then this puts the invasion theory in great jeopardy. Finally, from the history of mathematics comes another piece of compelling evidence that is at variance with the invasion theory and its chronology.

Looking at the origins of mathematics in Greece, Egypt, Babylonia and India and examining the Sulva Sutra treatisis concerned with the construction of Vedic ritual altars, one scholar has concluded the following: “We do not
hesitate to place the Vedic altar rituals, or more exactly rituals exactly like them, far back of 1700 BC.” The relative antiquity of the various world traditions of mathematics is not the issue here. What is clear is, since the Sulva Sutra is placed “far back of 1700 BC”, there are sufficient grounds to reject the theory that places the composition of the Rig Veda around 1200 BCE and the invasion itself around 1500BCE? This is a prospect too intimidating to contemplate. It will require the chipping away of the Aryan Invasion Theory which according to a Cambridge anthropologist, Edmund Leach, is like cutting down a 300-year-old oak tree with a penknife. But it’s a work that has to be done. Ultimately, it will require nothing less than the total overhaul of Indian history.

Yours faithfully,
Swami Aksharananda

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