Latest update June 13th, 2026 12:40 AM
The ban affected Hindus
Dear Editor,
While I have never met Mr Robin Williams, over the years I have read so many of his very thoughtful interventions that I know he is a Guyanese who is very concerned about developments back home, and is passionate for an equitable and peaceful Guyana.
I was therefore a bit taken aback when he dismissed Mr Vishnu Bisram’s concerns about the impact of the PNC’s bans on certain food items back in the seventies and eighties as “loony”.
I do believe that if as careful an analyst of our society as Mr Williams has shown himself to be can be so flippant about the issue, it reinforces a point that the groups in our country deal with each other via almost incommensurable paradigms.
In response to Mr Williams riposte that the bans affected all groups with equal force, I would like to expand a bit on how it impacted on the religious practices of Hindus during that time.
Because of the explicit connection of matter as food with the sustenance of life in general and on providing the material nexus with the mind through which even God can be apprehended, Hindus of all persuasions place great importance on it. In the Taittiriya Upanishad, it is declared, “Do not denigrate food. Let that be the resolve. Life is because of food. The body consumes food. Life in established in the body. The body is established in life.”
Hindus are further exhorted to offer food to all guests: “The food that is prepared with the utmost attention and respect is requited in the same manner.” For Hindus that worship God in a personal form (Puja) the core ceremony replicates the elaborate sixteen steps in which a most honoured guest is made welcome.
In the Chandogya Upanishad, food is divided into seven kinds: the first is common food all living beings consume while the second and third are meant for the Gods, by way of sacrificial offerings.
What the ban did, especially with the one on flour, was to make illegal the food of the Gods – the Mohanbhog. Unlike some religions that say “believe and you will be saved”, Hindus are told “act and you will be liberated”. Sacrifices to the Gods are one of the stipulated actions. I can attest to the extreme distress this prohibition placed on observant Hindus.
I hope that Mr Williams and other non-Hindus may be a bit more sympathetic, especially to Hindus, when they describe the impact of the PNC’s food bans on their community. They are not asserting exceptionalism: it restricted, at a very fundamental level, their freedom to worship.
Ravi Dev
Editor’s note: In India the Hindus do not rely explicitly on wheat flour. Further, in Guyana, Hindus, right up to the 1960s relied on flours that they milled—rice flour.
We must also wonder about what happened during the World Wars when food imports were hard to come by. Surely, Hinduism did not die.
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