Food for thought

Jun 19, 2011 Features / Columnists, Ravi Dev

---

It’s not that I was unaware of the old adage about fools rushing in where angels fear to tread.
I just figured having publicly left the political realm, my contribution on the “PNC food ban” debate would be seen for what it was: offering an insight into what some obviously felt was an inordinate reaction of Indians to the ban.
I’d long proposed that part of our problem in this country is that our premises – always culturally tainted – might not always be in sync. We end up talking “at” and not “to” each other. Hence my comment about “incommensurable paradigms.”
All I can say after the reaction to my letter is, “Call me fool!” But maybe there might be some positives out of the episode.
It seems to me that the letter acted as a sort of Rorschach Test – you know, the one where you look at ink blots and describe your perception. Your projections tell a lot about where you’re coming from. In my book, greater understanding of each other can only further our rapprochement.
For those who missed the exchange, I jumped into the tail end of a debate between (ironically) two of my friends, Vishnu Bisram and Malcolm Harripaul, about the voting proclivities of Indians.
Inter alia, Bisram raised the issue of the political effect of the old PNC food ban on Indians, in rejecting that party. His interlocutors insisted he was really going over the top: they felt that the food ban affected all groups equally. A constant could not therefore explain a variable – voting behaviour.
I then mentioned the specific instance of the ban on flour affecting Hindu worship of the Gods – in addition to the furore over common foodstuff – which I felt might explain the extra angst of that subgroup of Indians towards the PNC.
The first response, incredibly, came from the Editor-in-Chief of the Kaieteur News, Mr Adam Harris. Now I had always been told that editors intercede only when one of their rules has been breached or if there is a blatant misstatement of facts.
Rejecting my citations from Chandogya and Taittiriya Upanishads and the practice of the Hindus that came to Guyana, Mr Harris announced, “In India the Hindus do not rely explicitly on wheat flour.” (Not true for the Bhojpuri Hindus, which most Guyanese are.)
And even more extraordinarily, that the ban on flour was a mere quibble: “We must also wonder about what happened during the World Wars when food imports were hard to come by. Surely, Hinduism did not die.”
I can only assume that Mr Harris, harking back to his days as editor of the PNC’s New Nation, was illustrating how he then defended the ban.
Dr. David Hinds of the WPA was next. He allowed that my assertion of the use of flour in Hindu worship was “arguable” but felt that the appended editor’s note was salutary, “for not allowing Dev’s narrative to be the only truth.” It appeared that Dr. Hinds was miffed his letters responding to my articles in KN had not been published. So even though he had been “banned” by the editor – shades of censorship! – the latter’s gratuitous intervention in the letters pages makes amends.
Never mind that editors have editorials to make their points. Anything to get back at that benighted Ravi Dev, who dares proffer pagan Hindu “truths” (Gods?) – which should not go unchallenged.
Across the divide came the most interesting intervention – since I have been accused of toeing the PPP line, in general, and working out of the OP in particular – from one Nigel Green, out of the stable of letter writers that defend the PPP in the Chronicle. It appears that, “Ravi Dev…the lowest of politicians… meant to racially incite Indians, thereby influencing their votes, since Hindus are predominantly Indians.”
Evidently my “influence” was supposed to steer them into the arms of the AFC, which had become “infested” with ex-ROAR members.
So imagine my surprise when Mr Emile Mervin, card-carrying member of the AFC, pronounced that I, “exposed a shocking shallowness” in claiming there was a “racial and religious perspective” to the ban.
What I explicitly said was that I was not questioning the PNC’s motives. I suspect if he realised I was working on behalf of his AFC he wouldn’t have called me “politically and racially myopic.”
But at least my faith in the always reasonable, Mr Robin Williams, who actually prompted my missive (not missile, as interpreted) was justified. I want to assure Mr Williams that I don’t think he implied that Indians or Hindus were unaffected by the PNC food ban.
I simply felt that non-Hindus might be unaware of the effect of a prohibition of an element in a form of worship concerned solely with specified actions and not beliefs.
I point him, and others, to the term “diremption” – a ripping apart or forceful sundering.

---

---