The Hindu community is roiled by someone calling himself “Baby Skello”, who described in the most graphic and vulgar manner several sexual acts he committed on the Hindu Goddess Mother Lakshmi. Skello cannot pretend he is unaware of the reverence commanded by the Deity among Hindus, since she is the centre of worship at the very public annual national Diwali commemorations. The question is, why did he choose to release his blasphemous attack during the heightened tensions that have developed in the aftermath of that one glorious moment of complete national unity, precipitated by outrage over the police’s handling of Adrianna’s death?
As with all social tensions in Guyana, this took an ethnic orientation, since the major actors were of different ethnic backgrounds – the hotel owner is Indian Guyanese and the child is African Guyanese. As happens almost inevitably, like a Greek tragedy, the actions of the individuals are interpreted through ethnic lenses, and their behaviour “explained” through imputed group characteristics. Hence the earlier widespread slanderous allegations that poor Adrianna’s death was associated with the hotel owner’s Hindu practices to acquire wealth.
Skello gratuitously followed in this religious, rather than ethnic, vein because Hindus are considered the soft underbelly of Guyanese Indians, which include Muslims and Christians. Most Hindus have accepted Gandhi’s emphasis on non-violence in the 20th century by following one strand of Hindu philosophy – ahimsa or non-violence. Unfortunately, Gandhi did not stress, as does Hinduism writ large, that before you can choose non-violence (A-himsa) as an option for action, you must have the capacity to inflict violence (himsa), which you will then forego. Otherwise, you will merely be suffering what you must, as is the case presently.
But in reference to the option of violence, even Gandhi conceded: “I do believe that, where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence.” Every Hindu hero, including the Gods, for instance, are represented with weapons they used to great effect to fight injustice. They then chose to propose peace, but kept their weapons.
From what I have seen on the internet, Skello seems to represent much of what I have heard constitutes the phenomenon of the “Scrapehead” nihilistic mentality that is being encouraged by so many African leaders, notwithstanding its deleterious effects on the rest of the society. As such, he is merely utilizing the predilections nurtured by his environment to intensify the violence that has been deployed against Indian Guyanese since we were brought here 187 years ago.
The physical violence of the “leaden argument”, inflicted by the African-dominated Police Force in almost every decade from the 1870s to the 1940s, passed into the civilian African community with the choke-and-rob attacks of the 1960s; the kick-down-the-door banditry of the 1980s, which Eusi Kwayana conceded had a “flavour of genocide”; and the “African Freedom Fighters” of the 2000s, that the later also denounced.
Skello’s attack is a form of symbolic violence against Hindus that is as dangerous as physical violence, and for this reason, he must be confronted condignly. As I have explained ad nauseam, it is part of the more specific epistemic violence of“othering”, which started when we accepted wages even the freed enslaved Africans rejected after 1838.
Indians were marginalised because their beliefs, customs and practices, derided by the British and eagerly accepted by the Christianized Africans as pagan, heathen, dirty and outlandish, ostracised them from the majority “us”. In the modern era, with the African/Coloured group possessing far greater symbolic power than cultural supremacy, epistemic violence percolated into their popular culture. The Mighty Sparrow, the King of Calypso, earlier known for his salacious “Village Ram” and “Congo Man” in the 1960s, belted out “Sexy Marajin” in 1982, with its tag line “Ah want to jam you, jam you, jam you, jam tonight”. The Marajin, of course, is the wife of the Hindu pandit.
The ditty led to widespread protests in the Hindu community, but as with Lord Shorty’s Indranie of 1973, where a 60-year-old Indian woman pleads with the African calypsonian for “Lelo”, Hindus remain fair game for epistemic violence, which now takes a new intensity with Skello’s blasphemy.
In these conflicts between groups, where one had been “othered”, physical violence against the “out” group”(here Hindus) has been dehumanized to such a degree that even ethnic cleansing might be an option. Today it is Mother Lakshmi; tomorrow might be another Wismar. If Guyana is to go forward, these tendencies must be eradicated.
