Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad has sug­gest­ed that cit­i­zens can dis­agree on is­sues with­out hat­ing each oth­er. 

Seep­er­sad made the sug­ges­tion last week while de­liv­er­ing an ad­dress at the Ma­hat­ma Gand­hi In­sti­tute for Cul­tur­al Co­op­er­a­tion's com­mem­o­ra­tion of Gand­hi Jayan­ti in Champs Fleurs. 

"Peace is cre­at­ed when hu­man be­ings learn to con­front con­flict with­out de­stroy­ing one an­oth­er," Seep­er­sad said. 

In his speech, ti­tled "Gand­hi­an Jus­tice in a Di­vid­ed World", Seep­er­sad sought to ex­plain why the teach­ings of In­dia's found­ing fa­ther Ma­hat­ma Gand­hi are still rel­e­vant over 78 years af­ter his death and in a mul­ti­cul­tur­al so­ci­ety such as Trinidad and To­ba­go. 

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad said Gand­hi's prin­ci­ples were not lim­it­ed to non-vi­o­lent re­sis­tance. 

"Its philo­soph­i­cal foun­da­tions run deep­er and are based on four fun­da­men­tal pil­lars: satya — truth; ahim­sa — non-vi­o­lence; satya­gra­ha — the force gen­er­at­ed by fi­deli­ty to truth; and swaraj — self-rule, un­der­stood not mere­ly as po­lit­i­cal in­de­pen­dence, but as the dis­ci­pline nec­es­sary to gov­ern one­self," Seep­er­sad said. 

Stat­ing that truth and non-vi­o­lence were in­sep­a­ra­ble in Gand­hi's think­ing, Seep­er­sad said his phi­los­o­phy chal­lenged both the in­jus­tice be­ing re­sist­ed as well as the char­ac­ter of the re­sis­tance it­self. 

"We can­not sow ha­tred and rea­son­ably ex­pect to har­vest har­mo­ny; we can­not cul­ti­vate di­vi­sion and ex­pect co­he­sion to emerge, nor can we ha­bit­u­al­ly de­hu­man­ise one an­oth­er and then won­der why our com­mon hu­man­i­ty be­comes in­creas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult to dis­cern," he said. 

Ap­ply­ing Gand­hi's prin­ci­ples to this coun­try, Seep­er­sad said: "Per­haps it be­gins with a na­tion­al dis­ci­pline: to lis­ten be­fore re­spond­ing; test in­for­ma­tion be­fore for­ward­ing it; chal­lenge ideas with­out at­tack­ing iden­ti­ty; crit­i­cise an in­di­vid­ual with­out con­demn­ing a race for us to ac­knowl­edge that words have con­se­quences." 

Seep­er­sad sug­gest­ed cit­i­zens should seek to re­solve their his­tor­i­cal con­flicts so they would not be in­her­it­ed by the next gen­er­a­tion. 

"We owe the next gen­er­a­tion more than our achieve­ments; we owe them free­dom from the un­nec­es­sary in­her­i­tance of our prej­u­dices," Jus­tice Seep­er­sad said. 

"Imag­ine, then, a Trinidad and To­ba­go in which dis­agree­ment does not cre­ate en­e­mies; a cit­i­zen’s sur­name tells us noth­ing about the le­git­i­ma­cy of an opin­ion; our chil­dren learn that strength does not re­quire ag­gres­sion and no com­mu­ni­ty be­lieves an­oth­er must lose in or­der for it to pros­per. That coun­try is not be­yond us," he added. 

He said Gand­hi's phi­los­o­phy can al­so ap­ply to ju­ve­nile in­dis­ci­pline af­fect­ing the coun­try. 

Stat­ing that not all cas­es of delin­quent chil­dren could be at­trib­uted to poor par­ent­ing, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad said: "Chil­dren pos­sess agency and en­counter in­flu­ences be­yond the home, while many par­ents labour hero­ical­ly in dif­fi­cult cir­cum­stances."

While he called for com­pas­sion, he not­ed that such can­not elim­i­nate or ab­solve the need for parental re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. 

"The fam­i­ly can­not bear this bur­den alone. Schools, com­mu­ni­ties, faith or­gan­i­sa­tions, civ­il so­ci­ety and in­sti­tu­tions all have roles to play, be­cause the for­ma­tion of re­spon­si­ble cit­i­zens is a shared na­tion­al en­ter­prise," he said.