Shar­lene Ram­per­sad

One re­li­gious leader has tak­en of­fence to state­ments made on so­cial me­dia by Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) front­lin­er, Mar­sha Walk­er.

Walk­er was the par­ty’s can­di­date for the Diego Mar­tin West con­stituen­cy in 2020 and served as an Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor from Jan­u­ary 2022 to Ju­ly 2022.

In a screen shot shared by Walk­er on her Face­book pro­file, an uniden­ti­fied per­son ac­cus­es her of “Hindu­pho­bia.”

Walk­er high­lights a com­ment she made on an­oth­er post, where she wrote, “I do not be­lieve in every re­li­gion lead­ing to God. I do be­lieve that Chris­tians ought not to par­take in Di­vali cel­e­bra­tions. Tol­er­ance and re­spect does not mean I can take part in it. Many of my col­leagues are cel­e­brat­ing Di­vali. I have open and hon­est con­ver­sa­tions about my view on Hin­duism. So yes, I can agree with the base of what she’s say­ing and still be ashamed of how she is go­ing about it.”

It was un­clear when her orig­i­nal com­ment was made but on Thurs­day, she post­ed the screen shot with the cap­tion, “Hin­dus be­lieve that all paths lead to heav­en. This is their right.

“Chris­tians have an ex­act op­po­site be­lief—there is on­ly one path to heav­en. This is our right. True tol­er­ance and re­spect, is ap­pre­ci­at­ing that every­one is al­lowed to have dif­fer­ent views and let­ting them have it in peace. No one should ever be per­se­cut­ed for ex­press­ing their be­liefs. And it is dis­gust­ing that PNM would try to use my re­li­gious views to cre­ate di­vi­sion. Why is re­li­gion even an is­sue in pol­i­tics is be­yond me. smh yes.”

Her state­ments prompt­ed a call for her re­moval from the UNC by the Spir­i­tu­al head of the Satya Anand Ashram in Aranguez, Pun­dit Satyanand Ma­haraj.

Ma­haraj said Walk­er’s “un­for­tu­nate ut­ter­ances” on so­cial me­dia had reached him.

In a let­ter to UNC po­lit­i­cal leader, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, Ma­haraj said, “Ms Walk­er has cho­sen to wear her re­li­gious bias as a proud badge as she touts her be­lief in her re­li­gion. How­ev­er, I would like to point out that Ms Walk­er is the ben­e­fi­cia­ry of the same Hin­du peo­ple she will not at­tend tem­ple with, not even out of ma­ture re­li­gious har­mo­ny.”

Ma­haraj said it re­mains a fact that the base of the UNC is “In­di­an” and the large ma­jor­i­ty of those are Hin­dus.

“Even as you the leader of the par­ty was at­tend­ing a Hin­du ser­vice at the Dat­ta­treya Yo­ga Cen­tre, with world-fa­mous Hin­du Gu­ru, Swa­mi Gana­p­ati, Ms Walk­er took to so­cial me­dia to de­nounce Hin­duism,” Ma­haraj wrote.

He said the UNC was a par­ty not­ed for its re­li­gious and eth­nic di­ver­si­ty and de­scribed the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion as sad and sick­en­ing.

“Hin­dus are of­ten treat­ed with scant re­spect by many in this coun­try from putting the sa­cred Ganesh on food box­es to us­ing Hin­du Iconol­o­gy to sell car­ni­val cos­tumes and the list of of­fences goes on,” he wrote.

Ma­haraj said while Walk­er was en­ti­tled to her re­li­gious “bias”, he be­lieves her be­liefs should ex­clude her from any of­fice that rep­re­sents the di­verse peo­ple of T&T.

“Sim­ply put she can not be trust­ed to rep­re­sent all of the peo­ple, where she ex­press­es such clear bias. I am left ask­ing my­self what does Ms Walk­er bring to the UNC that al­lows her to put the UNC in such an em­bar­rass­ing po­si­tion?” he asked.

Ma­haraj end­ed his let­ter by call­ing for Walk­er to be re­lieved of her par­ty ac­tiv­i­ties to al­low her to prac­tice her re­li­gion with­out hav­ing to in­ter­act with Hin­dus.