The world has be­gun to pre­pare for two im­por­tant events with­in the com­ing months: the year 2025 and, more im­por­tant­ly, the Christ­mas pe­ri­od. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion has al­ready be­gun. T&T has shift­ed gears in­to the fes­tiv­i­ties as­so­ci­at­ed with the birth of Je­sus Christ of Nazareth.

De­bates across the world con­tin­ue over the ac­tu­al birth date of the Sav­iour of Chris­tians souls. Some Chris­t­ian groups claim that Je­sus was born on a date that is quite dif­fer­ent from the Catholic ver­sion.

Ac­cord­ing to au­thors Mark L Prophet and Eliz­a­beth Clair Prophet in their book The Lost Teach­ings of Je­sus: “All re­li­gious tra­di­tions that we have re­ceived have re­port­ed truth to us. All re­li­gious tra­di­tions have been re­port­ed to us in er­ror. This is not nec­es­sar­i­ly the fault of any one seg­ment of Chris­tian­i­ty. Most of us were born in­to the re­li­gion of our par­ents. And we came in­to this world not know­ing ex­act­ly where we came from.”

The crit­ics of Chris­tian­i­ty, af­ter cen­turies of sup­pres­sion and even in­car­cer­a­tion, have found a world that pro­motes the con­cept of free­dom of the mind and the per­son. All civilised na­tions now have en­shrined in their con­sti­tu­tions free­dom of speech, free­dom of as­sem­bly, and free­dom of move­ment.

It is not sur­pris­ing, there­fore, that my own re­li­gion, Hin­duism, is freely ques­tioned and crit­i­cised. Chris­tian­i­ty and all its fes­ti­vals are be­ing analysed by his­to­ri­ans and ar­chae­ol­o­gists whose claim is to ar­rive at the truth.

An­cient man­u­scripts and pre-Chris­t­ian doc­u­ments pro­vide clues as to the re­al ori­gin of re­li­gious mas­ter­pieces like the ser­mon on the Mount and even the Lord’s Prayer.

Ac­cord­ing to pub­lic dis­cus­sions about truth in phi­los­o­phy and the­ol­o­gy, “Christ stood be­fore Pi­late and Pi­late asked the ques­tion ‘What is the truth?’ And we ask the same ques­tion to­day. We should un­der­stand that here on Earth, truth is rel­a­tive—there are half-truths, there are full truths, and there are rel­a­tive truths.

“Truth is pro­gres­sive by na­ture and can­not be qual­i­fied in­to a creed with im­puni­ty. When we put it in­to a creed, it be­comes the let­ter that kil­leth. We want the spir­it that giveth life be­cause we come forth from spir­it.”

The au­thor of the con­tro­ver­sial book ‘Je­sus Lived in In­dia,’ Hol­ger Ker­sten, con­curs when he writes, “when the most cen­tral and fun­da­men­tal teach­ings of a church are no longer ac­cept­ed as the pure truth even among that church’s own elite ad­min­is­tra­tors, the end of tra­di­tion­al Chris­tian­i­ty is un­de­ni­ably at hand. The mes­sage of the emp­ty pews is quite clear.”

As Hin­dus, we pro­claim, as Ma­hat­ma Gand­hi did, “Truth is God. And God is Truth.” Even as we recog­nise this in the prac­tice of re­li­gion, the tra­di­tions of our an­ces­tors play an im­por­tant role.

Many of the Hin­du scrip­tures could be re­gard­ed as tra­di­tion­al, which came down by word of mouth from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion.

Dhar­ma is the pur­suit of right­eous liv­ing and help­ing oth­ers to fol­low a sim­i­lar path. Artha is the ac­qui­si­tion of wealth and prop­er­ty by le­git­i­mate means for one’s own hap­pi­ness and the hap­pi­ness of oth­ers. Kar­ma is the en­joy­ment of life’s plea­sures, and Mok­sha is find­ing en­light­en­ment and sal­va­tion.

The Pu­ranas are a whole range of Hin­du scrip­tures known as Srutis, which are oral trans­mis­sions from the gu­ru (re­li­gious pre­cep­tor) to chela (the devo­tee). Since the in­ven­tion of writ­ing, how­ev­er, we re­fer to the writ­ten ver­sion as SM­RI­TI, or the writ­ten word.

So those who re­search for truth are du­ty-bound to con­sid­er tra­di­tion as part of the truth-find­ing process. On­ly then will the per­ceived and of­ten-ar­tic­u­lat­ed con­flict of sci­ence and re­li­gion dis­ap­pear.

In T&T, there is a hun­dred and eighty-year tra­di­tion where Hin­dus and oth­er non-Chris­tians ob­serve the tra­di­tion as­so­ci­at­ed with this great fes­ti­val.

Many of us con­sid­er the Christ­mas sea­son a most beau­ti­ful time of the year when we sing Christ­mas car­ols. I do come from the past and ap­pre­ci­ate the re­li­gious di­ver­si­ty that is my coun­try T&T.

The (IRO) In­ter-Re­li­gious Or­gan­i­sa­tion (IRO) is a ve­hi­cle that was found­ed to fos­ter greater re­li­gious un­der­stand­ing among the fol­low­ers of dif­fer­ent faiths. Sad­ly, they have re­mained dor­mant over the years, of­ten re­main­ing silent on crit­i­cal is­sues af­fect­ing T&T.

At the ed­u­ca­tion lev­el, the Ma­ha Sab­ha is a mem­ber of the As­so­ci­a­tion of De­nom­i­na­tion­al Boards. This or­gan­i­sa­tion man­ages all the church-owned schools in T&T.

On be­half of the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha and the Hin­du com­mu­ni­ty, I ex­press the hope that the many prob­lems that be­seech our beau­ti­ful coun­try will soon dis­ap­pear.