{"id":1943,"date":"2002-05-01T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2002-05-01T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2002\/05\/01\/2002-05-01-trinidad-scholar-comments-on-gujarat\/"},"modified":"2002-05-01T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2002-05-01T12:00:00","slug":"2002-05-01-trinidad-scholar-comments-on-gujarat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2002\/05\/01\/2002-05-01-trinidad-scholar-comments-on-gujarat\/","title":{"rendered":"Trinidad Scholar Comments on Gujarat"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><A HREF=\"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/hpi_sources\/5-1-02rambachan.html\">GO TO SOURCE<\/A><\/P><br \/>\n<P><\/p>\n<p>TRINIDAD, May 1, 2002: Anantanand Rambachan, professor of religion at St. Olaf College in Minnesota, USA, and a native of Trinidad, wrote in the Trinidad Express recently, &#8220;The current violence between Hindus and Muslims in India must stir pain, sadness and outrage among the followers of Hinduism everywhere and be unequivocally denounced.&#8221; Another part of his article reads, &#8220;Although pained memories of victimhood can stretch long into the past, how far are we willing to reach back into time to resuscitate ancient battles and victimize the innocent?&#8221; His article brought a sharp and often personal retort from Parsuram Maharaj of the Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha. Parsuram wrote, &#8220;The Hindu and Muslim communities in Trinidad and Tobago since the time of indentureship have existed side by side in a harmonious manner that can serve as an example to religious tolerance to other parts of the world. &#8230; Rambachan also fails to recall that the most important Hindu scriptural texts are delivered with violence as a backdrop. &#8230; Hindu incarnations of God always spoke of peace but they were always armed to back it up if the need arose.&#8221; Sat Maharaj, Secretary of the Maha Sabha also wrote a response. &#8220;Rambachan continues perpetuation of the myth of the weak and docile Hindus.&#8221; Rambachan responded to both comments in a further article, &#8220;Violence and Hindu Identity.&#8221; He said, in part, &#8220;What is truly disturbing on this particular issue, however, is the manner in which a text like the Bhagavad Gita is routinely and uncritically cited to legitimize and justify the violence which was unleashed in Gujarat.&#8221; The original articles and responses are available in full at &#8220;source&#8221; above.<br \/>\n<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>GO TO SOURCE TRINIDAD, May 1, 2002: Anantanand Rambachan, professor of religion at St. Olaf College in Minnesota, USA, and,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1943"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1943\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}