India Post News Service
CHICAGO: The National Assembly of The Parliament of Guyana has turned down requests to have a Hindu opening prayer in an upcoming session.
Assembly Assistant Clerk Deslyn West, in an email to distinguished Hindu statesman Rajan Zed (who requested that he be scheduled to read the opening prayer in an upcoming session of the Assembly, and received the denial) observed, “we have a religion-neutral policy, and the Speaker is not in favor of departing from this norm”. West added: “we have a universal prayer that is read in the Parliament at every Sitting, and this was/is the norm for decades”. Currently, National Assembly Clerk Sherlock Isaacs reads this “universal prayer”.
RajanZed, President of Universal Society of Hinduism, received the denial; feels this is a case of unfairness, discrimination, and favoritism, and does not speak well of a democratic society. This so-called “universal prayer” appears to be tilted towards one religion and does not contain the elements of all religions observed in Guyana.
It is time for the Guyana National Assembly to move to multi-faith opening prayers. Since the Assembly represents every Guyanese irrespective of religion/denomination/non-belief, it would be quite befitting in this increasingly diverse country to do a rotation of prayers representing major religions and indigenous/folk spirituality and including slots for the thoughts of non-believers.
Hinduism, oldest and third largest religion of the world, has about 1.2 billion adherents and moksh (liberation) is its ultimate goal.
Parliament of Guyana was created in 1966 and is based in Georgetown. Assembly has 65 members and Mark Anthony Phillips is the Prime Minister of the Co-operative Republic of Guyana.
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