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Respecting Religious Diversity

May 15, 2011 Editorial

Earlier this month, an Australian fashion house, displayed images of the Hindu goddess, Lakshmi, on swimwear posed by models at the Australian Fashion Week in Sydney. One image was in the front of the one-piece swimsuit between the breasts of the model and another was on her buttocks. The pictures of the model strutting down the runway with the images of the goddess quickly spread like wildfire over the internet.
It sparked widespread protests from Hindus not only in India but across the world – including here in Guyana. Photocopies of the offensive pictures were burnt as well as Australian flags and thousands of messages of outrage were e-mailed to the company.
As the protests mushroomed, the company offered an apology and pulled the offensive swimsuit from its line. However since over the last couple of years relations between India and Australia had already become frayed over several highly publicised acts of racism against Indians in Australia, questions linger as to the wider implications of the act. Was it simple ignorance of the religious beliefs of others or was it a subset of the wide latent racism of Australian society?
These questions resonate in our society, which is highly multi-religious in its composition. But we first have to note that the questions are neither new nor unknown. Just a few years ago, there was a tremendous furore created when cartoons involving the Muslim Prophet Mohammad were published in Denmark. The protests were even more intense and widespread than in the instant Australian case and several individuals were killed. The issues of the religious sensitivities of Muslims were more widely debated  than the protests.
From the evidence after the Danish cartoons, it would seem that there has been heightened sensitivity to Muslim religious sentiments. But ongoing threats and instances of burning the sacred book of Muslims, the Koran, have kept the issue alive.
For the Australian desecration of the Hindu goddess, two explanations as to its origins have been circulating on the blogs and websites. The swimwear company offered the first – that it was oblivious to Hindu sensibilities. Since it is almost impossible that it was unaware of the Danish incident and its backlash, it could be that the company did not extrapolate from the specific Muslim reaction to the need for a broader religious sensitivity.
If this is the case, it is extremely troubling since almost every society in the world today, exhibits religious pluralism to one degree or another. Are we to have protests from every religion – one after another -before we wake up to the need for religious sensitivity?
The other explanation is that since Hindus are normally very easygoing and non-dogmatic about their tenets – believing as they do that all religions ultimately lead to the same Divinity and therefore are all deserving of respect – they are easier targets for religious bigotry.
It may be calculated that they would not respond as intensely as Muslims have done. And here we arrive at the clear and present danger if every society does not deepen its respect for all religious beliefs. Adherents of disrespected religions will feel themselves compelled to defend their beliefs with ever increasing passion — as happened with Hindus in the instance under review.  And the denouement will almost certainly be violence of one form or another.
In Guyana, we have laws against religious abuse. But when laws are not in sync with societal mores they will more often than not be observed in the breach. Living in a society, like Australia, where for hundreds of years Christianity was the state sponsored religion, many of us still refuse to acknowledge the equality of all other religions.
At the very best some tolerate other faiths, long defined as “heathens” and “pagans”, under sufferance.
This will not do. We have an Inter Religious Organisation (IRO) established in Guyana and rather than only reacting to reported slights on specific religions, it should have an active programme to inculcate the acceptance of religious pluralism in our society.

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