Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

Re­li­gious bod­ies in Trinidad and To­ba­go agree with Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s call for cit­i­zens to pray for di­vine in­ter­ven­tion in the fight against crime. How­ev­er, they al­so be­lieve every cit­i­zen, start­ing with the CoP, needs to take the nec­es­sary ac­tion to erad­i­cate the crime scourge.

“There is noth­ing wrong in trust­ing in God and turn­ing to God... for strength and courage and wis­dom and guid­ance but it must nev­er be seen as a rea­son for us to aban­don our re­spec­tive re­spon­si­bil­i­ties - whether it be Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er, whether it be Prime Min­is­ter, or Dhar­ma­charaya or a par­ent or a teacher,” spir­i­tu­al head (Dhar­ma­charaya) of the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha (SDMS), Dr Ram­per­sad Paras­ram, told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.

His com­ments came in the wake of the CoP’s claim on Wednes­day, at a break­fast meet­ing host­ed by the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, that it would take more than an­ti-crime plans for the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice to erad­i­cate the cur­rent crime prob­lem.

“An evil has spread over the land and we must recog­nise, those of you who are spir­i­tu­al­ly in­clined, you must recog­nise that this is be­yond the phys­i­cal and un­less we seek the in­ter­ven­tion of that greater spir­it, what­ev­er we may call him, we know we have dif­fer­ent re­li­gions, so who will call him God, who will call him Al­lah, or Kr­ish­na, all of us, if not all of us, 99 per cent of us be­lieve in a su­pe­ri­or be­ing and we need to in­voke the help of that be­ing, if we need to re­al­ly bring Trinidad and To­ba­go back to that place where we want it to be,” Hare­wood-Christo­pher told the au­di­ence.

She added, “Be­cause the po­lice can come up with what­ev­er strat­e­gy, but un­less we en­list the help of God, we will be work­ing in vain.”

Yes­ter­day, Vic­ar Gen­er­al of the Arch­dio­cese of Port- of-Spain, Fr Mar­tin Sir­ju, al­so sug­gest­ed both prayer and an ef­fort at end­ing the prob­lem were need­ed, adding while faith­ful be­lieve we ought to re­ly on God and Him alone, “we can­not dis­count the fact that we must work and pray. It’s not ei­ther or, it’s an ‘and’.”

In a Catholic TT ar­ti­cle, he re­ferred to the tra­di­tion­al mot­to of the Bene­dic­tine monks: Ora et lab­o­ra (pray and work), re­mind­ing cit­i­zens that they all have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to do the “hard work,” as well as “co­op­er­ate” with God.

“So, we can’t shun the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and just make it seem mag­i­cal and throw arms up in the air for di­vine in­ter­ven­tion,” Fr Sir­ju said.

As a tes­ta­ment to the need for fur­ther ac­tion, the pres­i­dent of the In­ter-Re­li­gious Or­gan­i­sa­tion (IRO), Lloyd Sir­ju, said all spir­i­tu­al bod­ies have al­ways prayed for crime to end in T&T. He too be­lieves in­di­vid­u­als need to take up the fight, and in some in­stances, oth­er ways.

“I mean, I don’t want to say what Gov­ern­ment should do or what Gov­ern­ment shouldn’t do, but peo­ple need to be al­lowed to pro­tect them­selves,” he said.

The pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer of the An­ju­man Sun­nat ul Ja­maat As­so­ci­a­tion (AS­JA), Imam Raf­fa­ic Mo­hammed, agreed with the Com­mis­sion­er’s call but ques­tioned if the cur­rent so­ci­ety is God-fear­ing or spir­i­tu­al enough to ac­cept it.

“There is no spir­i­tu­al­i­ty in the peo­ple right now in the whole world. Peo­ple just me­chan­i­cal...the world is on­ly about mon­ey or world­ly things and they not con­cerned about pray­ing and get­ting them­selves com­mit­ted to God,” he said.

It’s al­so a con­cern for SDMS Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Vi­jay Ma­haraj, who al­so cit­ed be­hav­iours wit­nessed from some of the coun­try’s lead­ers.

“Yes, we have to turn to God but we are no longer a God-fear­ing peo­ple in my opin­ion,” he said.