Paras Ra­moutar

In Ve­da Nath Mo­hab­ir's book, Un­der At­tack: The Caribbean In­di­an, he sets out to cor­rect what he views as a mon­tage of mis­in­for­ma­tion, bi­ased and un­fair crit­i­cisms lev­eled against the East In­di­an Di­as­po­ra in the Caribbean in a the­sis by Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies pro­fes­sor, Dr Kean Gib­son. Mo­hab­ir claims Gib­son has vil­i­fied Caribbean Hin­dus, and in his book, sets out to demon­strate that the the­sis is, "bad­ly flawed." Mo­hab­ir said he sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly analysed more than 20 of Gib­son's as­ser­tions and found them woe­ful­ly de­fi­cient in ad­e­quate re­search, un­der­stand­ing of Hin­duism and log­ic, and full of "guess­es­ti­mates in lieu of Cen­sus sta­tis­tics." Mo­hab­ir states that Prof Gib­son has un­schol­ar­ly dis­par­aged the re­li­gious and spir­i­tu­al tra­di­tions of about one bil­lion peo­ple, pop­u­lar­ly known as Hin­duism, by im­put­ing scrip­ture-dri­ven in­hu­man and un­con­scionable be­liefs and prac­tices as their modus viven­di. "While her pre­dom­i­nant tar­get for cul­tur­al scorn is Hin­dus, she has ex­pand­ed the pil­lo­ried con­stituen­cy to East In­di­ans of all walks of life in Guyana; and has egre­gious­ly de­based them by as­sign­ing them the la­bel of white racists, con­form­ing to what she calls coloured-cod­ed West­ern racism, to the point of plac­ing them at im­mi­nent risk of in­ter-racial vic­tim­i­sa­tion, reprisal and vi­o­lence.

"There is al­ready cir­cum­stan­tial and cor­rel­a­tive ev­i­dence that sig­nif­i­cant loss of In­di­an lives in Guyana, and at least one case of fa­tal shoot­ing and wound­ing in Bar­ba­dos, are in­sti­gat­ed by the likes of Gib­son's in­cen­di­ary the­sis," Mo­hab­ir writes. Un­der At­tack! The Caribbean In­di­an is a piece of aca­d­e­m­ic work for all lev­els of the Caribbean so­ci­ety. It con­tains fea­tures that delve in­to some of the Hin­dus' most sa­cred lit­er­a­ture, such as the Bhag­vad Gi­ta, the Ma­hab­hara­ta,and the Pu­ranas. In his ar­gu­ments made in his re­but­tals on is­sues such as dhar­ma and the caste sys­tem, Mo­hab­ir shows that he is well-versed in Hin­du phi­los­o­phy. He sig­nals his com­pe­tence in Hin­duism in his Overview of Hin­duism; Tol­er­ance, the God­head, Cos­mol­o­gy and Con­tend­ing sal­va­tion Ide­olo­gies. This pub­li­ca­tion can be used as re­source ma­te­r­i­al for fur­ther stud­ies, not on­ly by stu­dents of race re­la­tions, re­li­gion, com­mu­nal life and cus­toms, but al­so by politi­cians, so­cial thinkers and opin­ion lead­ers.