Between Gandhi and Krishna

By INDIRA MAHARAJ

TWO controlling images of my life have been that of Gandhi, Gita in hand, upholding ahimsa, non-violence, in the midst of carnage and saying "Hey Ram" even as he fell to the ground from bullet from his killer. The other image, one that is equally powerful, is that of Lord Krishna on the battlefield, urging Arjuna on the moral necessity of war (as expounded in the Gita), for the restoration of an ethical order, dharma, in the Mahabaharata.

In my life and I dare say in many peoples' lives, in challenging daily situations, we oscillate between the two options. While many may hold Gandhian non-violence and satyagraha to be supreme, and while we may strive towards being a Gandhi, we have neither the courage nor the strength that the path requires, so we hold that the Gandhis are the exceptions, rather than the rule, and we deviate with justification. And while many may believe that violence is a moral necessity, at the end, they don't visualise themselves with the moral authority of Lord Krishna, God himself.

The images, graphic or imagined from accounts read from the newspapers, of the hangings of Dole Chadee and his cohorts, strengthened my oscillations between the two.

The photos of nine men, eight of them young, haunted me. I was convinced of the senselessness in the policy of an eye for an eye. And it was further strengthened by one of my favourite lines from the movie Gandhi, "An eye for an eye makes the world blind".

My youthful aversion to Shylock in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, demanding his pound of flesh, also flashed through my mind. Then Portia's profound and the poetically rendered speech for the need for that "gentle quality of mercy" remained uppermost. And I thought, "Why deprive these men of the fruition of life because of some immature, ill-advised deed which occurred because of an error of judgment?"

And my noble intent remained until I read a summary of the events given by the Queen's Counsel at the trial. Images of Joey Ramiah, the killer right-hand man of Chadee, linked with so many other murders but not convicted for lack of evidence, giving the order to shoot all mercilessly, replaced gentle Portia.

I then became convinced that they deserved to die. Sorry Gandhi. There is no hope for this man. He can never be transformed into anything worthwhile. The world is better with him in the hereafter. Lord Krishna is right.

That was until I saw a cute, baby-faced, and emaciated 96 pounds body of Joey Ramiah. My heart died. Poor man! How terrified he must be at the prospect at being gripped by the cold hands of death? He must have found great comfort in the thought of being saved by the blood of Christ, his new and welcome saviour, rather than the more logical but less emotionally attractive, Hindu concept of karma which states that for very action there is an equal reaction. You reap what you sow, if not in this life, then in another. You cannot escape the law of retribution.

And then I thought that probably society has to take blame. Ramiah's dream of owning a mansion and a Benz and later his life of crime which provided it all, is the outcome of a society which speaks of spiritual ideals but is at core materialistic. Gandhi reappeared even bigger than before.

But his image faded away into almost nothingness when the huge picture of living victims of the tragic affair, 18-year-old Osmond and 13-year-old Hematee Baboolal, on the front page of one of the dailies, gripped my consciousness.

What struck me were the eyes of these two children, huddled together in a picture of lights and shadows. I read of the trauma of Osmond who left after the tragedy. A child deprived of parents and who may never even have a normal life, a child forced into manhood. Then, Hematee, staying by relatives, who seems to be all right, but is she ever really going to be?

Lord Krishna emerged. And then I joined the pro-penalty supporters. Yes, they deserved to die. How could they have murdered without compunction? How could they have had no compassion? How can they have had sheer contempt for the reverence of human life? Let them feel what they have given to others. They probably needed the immediacy of death to feel and come to terms with their own mortality, with their own guilt, to feel the pain of others. After all suffering is the greatest teacher. There has to be punishment and retribution.

At the end of it all, I saw coffins of the executed men and their families sobbing and clinging to the wire fence to get a glimpse of their coffins.

My stomach churned. You know what? Probably it wasn't necessary to kill them. Probably they could have hanged. There is always hope. The conflict began again.

I recognised the limitations of my humanity; I wish I were omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient. But in the meantime, images of Gandhi with his Gita and Lord Krishna exhorting Arjuna to wage the moral war pursue me.

Sat turning back his karma

By M F RAHMAN

IT is with continuing astonishment that I read the press releases of the Maha Sabha supporting the recent proposals of its leader on behalf of surviving members of immigrant workers who refused to comply with the laws of the then colonial government to register their spousal arrangements in compliance with existing regulations. Presumably their forefathers saw fit to register the births and deaths of the children and adults of the day, and lineage can yet be established. Since in the absence of this, exhumations may become necessary to determine paternity, and some interesting counter claims may result if the present licentiousness of certain segments of our society mirrors our predecessors' behaviour.

But all of these interesting possibilities aside, what contributes to astonishment is manifold. First of all, I would like to acclaim publicly the immediate response of our Prime Minister who sees in all of this "foolishness" at the most charitable. And the clarity of our sister Indira Maharaj as opposed to the misguided parochialism of Rajnie Ramlakhan, Parsuram Maharaj and Kamal Persad, is truly to be applauded. I am indebted to Indira for the important information that Mr Sat Maharaj does not speak for all Hindus by any means.

This means that Hinduism need not hide its head in shame as it rightfully should, after the amazing claim of the SDMS leader. This inveterate protagonist against all claims and charges African, who hates the true ideas of Prof. Ali Mazrui with a passion and has ever berated Africans for their perceived indolence and complaining of past injustices, and after forever boasting of his own people's pride in hurdling lesser trials which he inevitably saw as far greater, now magnanimously wishes to admit that Africans have some basis of claim. (How decimation of families and total dehumanisation under slavery could ever have been easier than paid immigration, family preservation and terminal benefits which at long last is being admitted as including land grants hitherto vociferously denied is patently absurd.) This admission can only be self-serving.


Sat is now seeking to make a claim for the very difficulties to which he attributes his people's wonderful success. But that yet, while sweet irony, is not the ground for SDMS shame. And even his volte face with claims African, shameful as his past charges had been, is at the very least, a good to come out of his aspirations to communal billionaire status. Perhaps Trump's recent visit has spurred the SDMS leader to see virtue in billions beyond the allure of faith.

For it is here that the goodly SDMS leader departs from his Hindu sanity, accompanied by his band of loyal supporters: According to universal Hindu philosophy, whatever we receive in the present life is a direct result of the previous life we lived. This is one's karma decided by one's life actions and morality in his previous existence.

Thus, whatever privations the Hindu of yesteryear or even today experiences, he has earned for himself and he can blame no one. This is why Mr Maharaj has so little comfort to give Africans who in his faith are merely reaping that which they sowed in their previous lives. And it is his disregard for this belief and his dedication to give every citizen his just due which separates Mr Basdeo Panday from the parochialism of his faith and makes him a universalist and humanitarian rising as it were, above his inculcated and indoctrinated bias.

But, by laying claim for restitution, Mr Maharaj denies his belief and acceptance in karma and seeks to set aside his earnings of a previous life by a worldly device. If he succeeds, what does he expect to reap for his efforts to thwart his destiny which he earned and which he now seeks to deny?

One fully expects to hear from his defenders some convoluted rationale as the scent of money infiltrates their very souls. At any rate, if this claim will bring tolerance for our African brethren even thorough hypocrisy, I wish them hope of success as long as the fraternity lasts. How the faith will ever survive the apostasy remains to be seen.

AG and his brother's keeper

By MARCEL BERLINS

SO Trinidad and Tobago has started hanging again, and the person most responsible for ensuring that capital punishment has become a reality once more is the country's Attorney general, Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj. I wrote a book about him once, which became a bestseller in Trinidad, the only time I have troubled the book charts.

His claim to fame-and to having me chronicle his adventures-was that, in 1976, he became the first barrister in the English-speaking world since 1607 to go to jail for contempt of court for something said while actually arguing a case in court. That something was accusing the trial judge, with some reason, of unjudicial conduct, to which the judge promptly responded by sentencing him to seven days' imprisonment. The case became a national sensation; hence the interest in my book.

Eventually, the judges of the Privy Council in London, to Maharaj's great delight, decided that the judge's action against him was unlawful-the very same privy council that for many years found various ways of saving the lives of men on Trinidad's death row, the same Privy Council that Maharaj now wants to discard as Trinidad and Tobago's final appeal court.

The ironies continue. At the time I knew him, Maharaj was one of the leaders of the Caribbean human rights movement, outspokenly and courageously against capital punishment. He showed me Port of Spain prison's miserable death row. His motive, then, was to tell me passionately why its residents should not be executed.

What a difference 23 years make. There is a further astonishing fact about Ramesh Maharaj. His own brother, Krishna Maharaj, is on death row in Florida for a murder that he probably didn't commit. Some of the English lawyers working (for free) to save his life have also been engaged in efforts to stop the Trinidad executions. It is looking slightly promising that Krishna Maharaj may be able to get his conviction reversed, but can there ever have been such a coincidence before: one brother signing a death warrant, another under one?

(Marcel Berlin's column was carried in the UK Guardian on June 8).

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