Welcoming the hate speech with love in OilGuyana

 

Hate

The young professional on the phone is frustrated. The young professional is experiencing a vindictive campaign while in the employ of a Government agency. 

A campaign of hate which is meant to destroy the young professional's integrity and livelihood. A campaign of hate which will not bring the same attention as  the most recent hate speech in oil rich Guyana.  The young professional condemned that hate speech while experiencing the hatred.

Hate speech in which WPA leaders used their right to freedom of expression to express their thoughts as to how Africans in the police and army with legitimate guns in Guyana could overturn what they see as the PPP oppression nurtured by Indians.

The young professional identifies Indian (or Indo-Guyanese), one of whom the WPA leadership might have been thinking about who nurtures the PPP oppression. The young professional though, has no legitimate access to guns. and the WPA leadership (and PNC leadership too?) has not expressed any thoughts so far as to how people who they do not identify as African can join in their oily struggles against oppression.

The WPA , like the PNC and the PPP seem to have gone far from their 'founder leaders' in terms of expressions in the oil rich Guyana. (Well maybe not as there are stories that Walter Rodney might have been building arms against Forbes Burnham and that oppression)

And so the President and his supporters are calling on everybody to condemn the hate speech. In the same spirit of 'condemnation', the President condemned citizens who are calling for transparency in the oil sector after the EITI suspended Guyana.

Two of those citizens responded with love, inspiring compassion for the ignorance of the President and giving space for the President to transform the condemnation to correction.

Love 

Many Hindus express that Phagwah is a season of love. I had to keep 'love' in mind as I  listened to some of the other folks who the WPA leadership want the guns turned against. The folks love their President and the friends. And had no time for any of who they saw as 'opposition'. 

Listening with love was important because is only then you know how the hatred exists in Guyana . The PNC's efforts to rig the March 2020 elections have made things easier for the PPP to do what they want.

The men in the political parties and their contempt for women is the best indicator of how the hatred of women operates in Guyana even as there are platitudes about 'respecting women'. While not deemed 'hatred', the violence in the communities and in family settings, in schools, on the roads in the traffic, in the violation of the Environment, in the lack of accountability which destroy livelihoods continue without the energy of condemnation of 'hate speech' . Or without any efforts to fix them.

There is a powerlessness though, in that there is no space really to move beyond the 'Let us destroy those who don't vote like us' narrative, Mashramani, Phagwah and oil aside to figuring out how to recognise and destroy injustice. Rather than destroy each other.

Another hate speech was the Mayor  of Georgetown expressing a view about Muslim/Hindu relations in the power brokers in Guyana. Many Hindus though are talking about how they see a rise in the prominence of Arabic Islam in Guyana even as they express their love of their President, but 'don't speak out because of fears of victimisation'. 

So there is no space again to discuss this, to talk about this as should happen when people talk how they thinking and feeling. Since the WPA's indulging their freedom to express hatred, there have been other expressions  - licensed gun killing a police, relative chopping, violence on the road, and three or four citizens including a teenager attacking a young teacher. 

History shows how hate speech can easily turn into hate actions , and hate thoughts turn into hate actions. 

Guyana's history does not really show how love speech turns into love actions. Many of us benefit from the potential to resort to violence.

Love actions

The Hindus who vote for the PPP might have heard sentiments like this one. It is an awkward one in which well, unlike say other religious faiths which express who is Satanic and evil and who is not, the Vedic philosophy does say that we all is one, PPP, PNC..WPA.. those with guns and those without guns, ;the young professional and the people who are on their campaign to destroy the reputation of the young professional.

(Thanks Pandit Deodat Persaud for sharing)

"

Īśa Upaniṣad 6

यस्तु सर्वाणि भूतान्यात्मन्येवानुपश्यति ।

सर्वभूतेषु चात्मानं ततो न विजुगुप्सते ॥ ६ ॥

yastu sarvāṇi bhūtānyātmanyevānupaśyati |

sarvabhūteṣu cātmānaṃ tato na vijugupsate || 

 

One who sees all beings in the atman and the atman in all beings does not hate."

The all beings extends to the natural environment  though that is another story.

 

So after condemnation, then what? What about the people who were at the meeting?

The rank and file soldier and police (and citizens who are PPP and PNC always complain about police )  who might have heard? 

 

How do they become involved in helping the young professional get a just response to the campaign of hatred in this workplace? 

 

There were reported comments by WPA leadership about  our coolie ancestors coming from dirty areas and so on.. these views we use in our daily mutterings about 'each other' that Africa and India are poor, violent dysfunctional spaces so that we are all inherently deh bad no matter how much we play and dance with each other.  

 

Regardless of the places of our ancestry, there is violence embedded in our DNA so regardless of Africa or India, it is easier to imagine some kind of violence towards the 'other' who are part of the 'atman' .

 

So even though PNC and PPP are one in the atman, there is no manifestation of a meeting ground or space.

 

( Heck , there used to be pics of PNC and PPP folks playing phagwah in random places but not any more.)

 

Every expression of hate speech in OilGuyana is an opportunity to transform that hatred and fix the underlying problems.   To work on our attitudes to violence and to realise  that ethnic violence is not worse than any of the other forms of violence experienced in Guyana, and that one cannot be fixed without fixing the others.