Dear Editor,
I believe that Swami Aksharananda’s interpretation of John Rawls is too narrow, and it was precisely in anticipation of such interpretive dissonance that I stated that I took Rawls to mean that in political discourse, ‘whether or not we take a religious or non-religious position, it must be backed up by proper logical and/or empirical reasoning.’ I doubt that the Swami would want to deny this position and if he does not he could understand my concern when he did not provide any support for his suggestion that ‘the Ministry of Educa-tion (MoE), the government of Guyana and the Guyanese Christian establishment may be conspiring against Hinduism’.
Unfortunately, the Swami now appears to want to buttress the above claim with another baseless innuendo. ‘As to the complicity of the Ministry of Educa-tion (MoE) in promoting Chris-tianity, one wonders if Dr. Jeffrey can tell us why he allowed Christian-only prayers in public schools.’ Mr. Aksharananda, it is because for the five years that I was minister of education, I cannot remember this matter being raised with me as a serious issue. My understanding is that the MoE does not dictate that only Christian prayers be conducted and in many schools prayers are done in denominational groups. Since we are now celebrating Arrival Day, it is absurd to believe that the PPP of Pandit Reepu Daman Persaud, who was in the forefront of the struggle for an Indian Arrival Day, would have left such an issue untouched if it was considered vital to Hindu interests. Sometimes Swami, ‘complicity’ is in the mind of the beholder!
Although nowhere did I claim that the state should promote a particular religion, the Swami spent a great deal of time arguing for the separation of church and state. What I did say was that we should wait to see how the MoE interprets article 145(3) of the Constitution; whether ‘every child must be left to the mercy of its familial religious enclave’. To this statement he proceeded with quite a few ‘Is Dr. Jeffrey suggesting…’ questions, the answers to all of which are ‘no’. The Swami appears to be unable to get beyond a consideration of religion as liturgy to the bigger picture of viewing schools as educational institutions, and that to be sensibly educated students must know something about the history of religion, its role in society, religious methodologies, the differences between various religions, etc.
‘Baggini wrote to show that the fears of the religious lobby were ill-founded. Dr. Jeffrey, on the other hand, writes to caution us of the excess of secularism.’ The Swami does not seem to realise that these are two sides of the same coin. Baggini only needed to respond because real concerns, against which we should be cautioned, were expressed. As you should have noted, Swami, in 2010 the Pope, hardly a ‘fanatic’, also discerned an ‘aggressive form of secularism’ that he likened to the evils of Nazism, and claimed that ‘the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society’.
Swami, this constitutes my final response on this topic, but let me say that I have no doubt that you are well meaning but that for doctrinal reasons you appear in danger of supporting an ‘aggressive secularism’ that in open societies encourages ‘doctrinal isolation’ that could lead to the defeat of the very separation of church from state that you so desire. Let us hope that the MoE is sufficiently wise to follow the more inclusive course!
Yours faithfully,
Henry B Jeffrey
