www.trinidadexpress.com/ index.pl/article_opinion?id=160956640
TRINIDAD, June 5, 2006: (HPI note: following is excerpted from Anantanand Rambachan’s guest column in the Trinidad Express.) Justice Peter Jamadar’s recent judgment in the matter of the nation’s highest award is, for many reasons, deserving of commendation. It exemplifies the valued ability in a judge to impartially consider merits of an issue in which personal religious commitment and preference can be powerful motivating factors. Justice Jamadar’s pronouncement provides the firm legal ground for doing now what is right. What is legally correct is not always fair and just, but this is a fine example where the legal and moral can coincide.
Although the choice of the Trinity Cross as the nation’s highest award was not done with the intention of deliberately offending, we cannot ignore the fact that it is neither arbitrary nor historically accidental. It is rooted in a theology that assumes the primacy and supremacy of Christian claims that are understood to embody the fullness of truth and revelation.
In this view, Christianity is the fulfillment and culmination of all religious seeking. Other religious ways are represented as entirely false or, at best, only partially true. The corollary of the belief in Christianity’s theological superiority is the pre-eminence of its symbol, the cross, among the symbols of the world’s religions. The cross is equated, uncritically, with the best and the highest and, in a society infused with Christian presuppositions, became the symbol of our nation’s highest honour. This choice must also be seen in the historical context of the colonial legacy and the partnership between the state and Christian Church, where the state sought and received legitimacy by associating itself with the symbols and rituals of the Church and the Church, in turn, basked in its privileged political position vis a vis other religions. It is important to understand, therefore, that the Trinity Cross, as the nation’s highest award, is neither theologically nor politically neutral and this is at the heart of the justified discomfort that it stirs among people of other religions.