Kim­ber­ly Mack­han

Sec­re­tary gen­er­al of the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha Sat­narayan Ma­haraj says it is in­sult­ing for Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning to com­pare old re­li­gions like Hin­duism and Catholi­cism to the born-again Chris­t­ian faith. He al­so said Man­ning was mak­ing "a false com­par­i­son" when us­ing ex­am­ples of state lands giv­en to lo­cal de­nom­i­na­tion­al groups, such as the Ma­ha Sab­ha, to de­fend de­ci­sions to give state lands to Man­ning's spir­i­tu­al ad­vis­er Ju­liana De­von­ish. Dur­ing a brief ad­dress at yes­ter­day's an­nu­al chil­dren's Phag­wa cel­e­bra­tions at Tu­na­puna Hin­du School, Ma­haraj said it was in­sult­ing that Man­ning would com­pare age-old es­tab­lished re­li­gions such as Hin­duism to the one his spir­i­tu­al ad­vis­er was prac­tis­ing. He al­so raised con­cerns that Man­ning ap­peared to be non-par­ti­san, and showed a pref­er­en­tial treat­ment to the re­li­gious sect that De­von­ish was lead­ing. Ma­haraj called on Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who was seat­ed at the head ta­ble near the podi­um, to waste no time in re­mov­ing Man­ning from gov­ern­ment.

In a sub­se­quent in­ter­view with the Guardian, Ma­haraj called on Man­ning to dis­pel the sus­pi­cions and mys­ter­ies en­mesh­ing De­von­ish's church be­ing built on the Heights of Gua­napo. "I wish that Mr Man­ning would come clean," he said. "He is the po­lit­i­cal head of the Gov­ern­ment and he can­not take sides...He can­not come out open­ly like that and at­tack oth­er church­es." In a 53-minute state­ment in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives on Fri­day, Man­ning de­tailed monies the State grant­ed to church­es, tem­ples and mosques for the last ten years. He al­so list­ed re­li­gious de­nom­i­na­tions ben­e­fit­ing from state aid un­der the "ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal" grant, which was un­der the prime min­is­ter's port­fo­lio. "He (Man­ning) is mak­ing a false com­par­i­son, when he com­pares this mys­tery church to the Catholic Church that is thou­sands of years old or to the Ma­ha Sab­ha that prac­tices a re­li­gion that is thou­sands of years old," Ma­haraj said.

He al­so raised con­cerns about the Prime Min­is­ter's vis­it to the site of the church, which was called The Light of the Light House of the Lord Je­sus Christ. "Well it has to be (that he ap­pears to take a per­son­al in­ter­est in the church) be­cause he does not vis­it any­body else..He vis­its her," Ma­haraj said. He said Man­ning's ref­er­ence of state aid to the Hin­du Tem­ple in the Sea and the el­e­va­tion of the tallest stat­ue of a Hin­du god was a poor con­trast to De­von­ish's Light of the Light House of the Lord Je­sus Christ, be­cause both the tem­ple in the Sea and the stat­ue were in­for­ma­tion in the pub­lic do­main and their own­ers and pur­pos­es were nev­er se­cret, but the names of the peo­ple build­ing the con­tro­ver­sial Heights of Gua­napo church on state lands re­mained a se­cret.