Increasing Darkness

Nov 11, 2012 Features / Columnists, Ravi Dev

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Divali is being celebrated this Tuesday. Traditionally it is a five-day festival, and last night there was a very vibrant and colourful programme at the Mandir two blocks away from my home. I would hope, with Hindus living in this country for 174 years, all Guyanese would know about the basis of the festival. But with things Hindu, I wouldn’t bet on it. There’s a persistent strain in Guyana to dismiss Hindu practices as ‘beyond the pale”.
Studying his history book earlier this week for an expected test, my son wanted to know why the term ‘pagan’ was still being used. To people like Hindus that fell under the rubric, was it not as offensive as the ‘n’ word that is now thankfully banned from civilised discourses? What could I tell him? Hegemony is a powerful weapon.
Divali’s origins are lost in antiquity and was probably a harvest festival marking the ever-increasing darkness of the upcoming winter. The traditional lights (Deepavali – ‘row of lights’) symbolised resistance against the hardships of that winter that would be associated with the darkness. It was one more bit of evidence that light has to counter darkness.
The reckoning of the harvests at this time also led to the still extant tradition of Hindu businesses settling their accounts at this time of the year and of Mother Lakshmi, the Goddess of wealth, being so closely associated with the festival. We clean our houses most scrupulously at Divali to welcome Mother Lakshmi into our homes. Non-Hindus, who have bought the Orientalist version of Hinduism as ‘other-worldly’, are sometimes puzzled at the quite open celebration and prayers for the possession of wealth.
“Artha” or wealth, power and status, is one of the acknowledged ultimate values or pursuits of man. Without wealth, it is asked, how will the householder be able to fulfil his duty to his family and society? Poverty, the sacred texts repeatedly proclaim, is the worse form of agony. But the pursuit of wealth or power cannot be accomplished through improper (adharmic) ways such as greed, avarice or violence. The means inevitably become the ends: corrupted.
And we arrive at the circumstances under which we will be celebrating Divali in Guyana this year. We know it will be Amaavas night – the darkness night of the month – but will the darkness in our society start decreasing come Wednesday morning, as we know the physical darkness eventually will? I’m not too sanguine.
Ever since the last elections, we’ve been beating to death the theme, ‘let’s give peace a chance”. I thought that with the last elections demonstrating the proof of my thesis, that changing demographics and incumbency fatigue might lead to a more ‘regular’ politics. One bereft of the storm and fury of protests and marched that can so easily get out of control.
All these protests do is to send the natives back into their respective laagers. Linden, Agricola and now the contretemps in parliament has certainly lengthened the political darkness in Guyana. Linden and Agricola need concrete programmes – as do so many communities across Guyana – to improve their living conditions. We do the youths no favour to let them believe that sustained and sustainable change can come out of arson and strangulating other citizens.
I am looking forward to Andaiye’s promised expatiation on ‘civil disobedience’. Is it directed by citizens at Governments for proven transgressions or by aggrieved citizens against fellow citizens? I see the latter playing out in Guyana, fuelled and stoked by politicians who yet claim faith in the political system that has delivered them control of the legislature. Violence and pressure exerted against innocent citizens to exert pressure against a government sounds suspiciously like ‘domestic terrorism”. I remember being part of a parliament that passed a bill to counter such actions.
I’m not sure why the Opposition is so insistent on shooting itself in the foot with this ‘acting out”. Where have such actions ever given them a lasting victory? Let us take the ‘drowning out of Rohee’ in parliament. Do they really think this is redounding to their benefit? All it does is to confirm the historic suspicions of the electorate of PNC’s bullyism.
Let us accept Andaiye’s account of Dr Jagan’s knocking over of the law books on his desk in parliament in the 1980s in contravention of parliamentary norms. But she confirmed he was suspended by the Speaker and could not re-enter parliament until he apologised. So what do we say to the present Speaker whose specific order was flagrantly and persistently disobeyed by the entire opposition? Should they not also have been suspended until they apologise to him? Further, why should the Honourable Speaker find this option ‘absurd’ when the specific Standing Order was spelled out to him?
But then the darkness will not end until we each light our little ‘diya’, will it? Happy Divali.

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