Double standards in criticizing religious intolerance

Dec 15, 2015 Letters

Dear Editor,
I respond to Devanand Bhagwan’s letter, “Wesleyan pastor is guilty of Pharisaic blindness” (KN Dec 10). His was a response to two other letters (KN Nov 20 & Dec 7) written by Mr. Ganesh Mahipaul wherein Mr. Mahipaul highlighted the dangerous practice of religious intolerance of the Wesleyan Church for Hindus on Wakename Island evidently after a ban imposed on a teenager of the church because of her participation in a Diwali cultural programme.
Mr. Bhagwan while pointing out the error of the Wesleyan pastor and urging her to apologize to Mr. Ganesh and Hindus in Guyana, in the same breath he attacked the very Hindus and also revealed his double standard. He wrote, “Christians are called to be ‘salt’ and ‘light’. What an opportunity to do so in the Hindu temple! We need to go (as we are commanded) into places that make us uncomfortable, so that we could be salt and light”. Here most candidly at best, Mr. Devanand considers Hindus the same as the Wesleyan pastor or perhaps worst. If the pastor is guilty of intolerance for things Hindu and Hindus, then Mr. Bhagwan has only added fuel to the intolerance in a strategic manner.
He is guilty of the same Pharisaic blindness he attributed to the pastor.
Quoting from Mahipaul’s letter the answer of the Wesleyan pastor, “you cannot dine at the lord’s table and the enemy’s table at the same time”, Mr. Bhagwan penned, “if this is true, the pastor has grossly erred in her social and spiritual stance”. He questioned, “Where is the love that is the bedrock of the Christian faith in that stance?”
What love is he speaking of? The love that reminds him “…how incensed Jesus’ disciples were when they found out he wanted to dine with the ‘worst’ of sinners; they called him a wine-bibber, for a good religious person who never have mingled with such sinful people”?
Editor, should we blame the Wesleyan pastor or Mr. Bhagwan for the intolerance or instead the doctrine or ideology to which they both subscribe faithfully?
Bhagwan asked Mahipaul to forgive the pastor “for she knew not what she did”. Soon he may be asking Mahipaul to forgive him for he knew not what he did in his missive, for he has done worse than the pastor did. One has to read him between the lines. The Wesleyan pastor stayed in her church and suspended her member, but Mr. Bhagwan wishes to go into the mandir to spread his beliefs. Without any remorse in his conclusion he expressed his desire to visit Mahipaul’s mandir and sing “yeshu ka pyaar” (Jesus’s love) and “share the good news of God” to the Hindus. I ask Mr. Bhagwan if he will allow me in his church to sing Krishna’s love and share the news of God to him and his flock.
Pandit Charranlall Nandalall

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