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LOGIC AND REASON
There have been numerous exchanges on the food bans instituted in the 1970s and 1980s by the then Forbes Burnham administration.
It is indisputable that those bans affected all Guyanese. The fact that someone chose to highlight the specific (not necessarily primary) effect on one grouping, does not mean that there is a lack of acknowledgement that it affected other groupings.
To conclude that because someone highlights the effects on one group trivializes the effect on other groups is a strange case of reasoning and not one that is usually associated with intellectuals.
But then again being lettered does not make one foolproof, especially when dealing with issues in which there is the potential for reflexive reactions being substituted for logical reasoning.
To highlight the effect of the food ban on the religious practices of some groups is not the same as saying that the primary effect of the food ban was religious.
The flour ban affected the religious practices of some groups but this was not necessarily its primary effect on those groups, and no one, in the exchanges so far on this issue, has contended that it was.
Again, if someone chooses to make an argument about the religious effects of the food ban, it does not follow that the person is making an argument that the primary effect of the ban was religious; the person can be merely highlighting the religious effects. It is therefore a false premise to conclude that the argument was ever made that the primary effect of the flour ban on any group was religious.
But even if such a claim was made, it is disingenuous and illogical to contend that because someone asserted that the primary effect of the ban was religious and because the primary effects on others was economic, then it means that the religious is being primary to the economic. That sort of reasoning cannot pass logical muster.
If someone contends that today is a rainy day and another person contends that today is a sunny day, how can one draw an inference that the first person is asserting the primacy of the sun over the rain.
It is therefore illogical to conclude that if someone says that the primary effect of a policy measure was X and the person making that claim refuses to acknowledge that another person has contended the effect was Y, this represents a case of X being treated as primary to Y.
Even if the argument was that the primary effect of the flour ban on one group was religious and even if the argument was that the primary effect on another group was economic, the fact that someone highlights the religious effects over that of the economic, this cannot by any stretch of logical thinking be assumed to be a case of the religious being given primacy over the economic.
It must be said that the primary effect of the food ban on the poor of Guyana was always economic, regardless of the ethnic or religious composition of the food ban. Thus all groups suffered economically as a result of the flour ban.
One of the things, however, that we have grown accustomed to in Guyana, and something that it is hoped that intellectual discourse could have assisted with rather than contributing to, is the tendency of whenever one group asserts its own position for there to be a defensive reaction from other sections of the society.
Thus the assertion that the flour ban had particular adverse effects on the religious culture of East Indians has been greeted by defensiveness since it is presumed or concluded that this assertion ignores the effects of the same ban on others.
Whenever we see such reflexive reactions, it should be a signal for caution and greater sensitivity in dealing with issues of religion and ethnicity.
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