Thank you, Madam Chairman and members of the committee, for allowing me to express my views as a Hindu.
Racial discrimination and religious intolerance are inherent among all human beings. We all have discrimination. If we feel that by coming here and pretending that we are going to solve it.... We all have it. What I'm trying to say is that we must try to see how best we can work together to understand one another, see the good values of each other, and see that there is only one order. I am not calling it God; it's an order. There's an order in the universe that causes the sun to rise up in the east and go down in the west. You can call it various names. If we see that order, understand that order, we will be living happily. If we keep saying my religion is better than your religion.... All wars have been fought over religion.
In regard to our context here today, as I said, the world is not a perfect place. As an ideal, the pursuit of perfection should not be discouraged, but for practical reasons and in the context of human behaviour, such pursuits must remain in the realms of idealism. Therefore, a major plank of my presentation is that you must not forget that Canada has already advanced very far in the acknowledgement of ethnic and religious diversity and the pursuit of systemic and individual tolerance of such diversities.
Failure to overtly acknowledge the progress made in this context and to push too hard or too quickly for further accommodation risks a boomerang and the deleterious effects of push-back. Already one can see the signs of the latter among our neighbours to the south and our friends across Europe. There will always be fringe elements that will insensitively ignore the iconic Canadian progress in ethnic and religious tolerance, and while failing to be appreciative of their good fortune of being in Canada, will unduly exaggerate imagined or small incidents of intolerance as if they were back in the countries from which they have fled. This is very important.
Attitudinal and behavioural changes cannot be rushed. They stand better chances of success if they are pursued sensitively through education, discussion, and persuasion as opposed to frontal or aggressive systemic or legislative means.
If you go to where our temple is, you see that we try to involve the community. We have the Wall of Peace. If you look at the picture on the screen, besides the horrors on the top part, on the bottom you'll see Mandela. I won't say much about Aung San Suu Kyi today. We have Jesus Christ and the Om symbol from Buddhism. Down at the bottom we have Islam, Judaism, and so forth.
What I'm trying to say is that here is a place where we say that all religions are good. If you're a Muslim, be a good Muslim. If you're a Christian, be a good Christian. Live your life the way you are dictated. To do this, we should involve the community. I am a member, and the Government of Canada representative, on the Global Centre for Pluralism, of which His Highness the Aga Khan is the chairman. This is one of the tenets we are working together on. Most of you know this because of the beautiful museum that has been built here, and the one in Toronto, where he embraces this exact thing.
In terms of my personal experience when I came to Canada, I was offered a job at the University of Toronto as a vascular surgeon. I went to the professor and chair of the department. He asked me, “Did you do your residency here?” I said, “No, I was trained in England. I studied in Jamaica.” This was 30 or 40 years ago; I'm not aging myself.
“He said, “Do you know what? This job is reserved for our boys.” I took it. They told me to write against it; I said no. Then I went to McMaster. I became a professor of cardiovascular surgery there, and I had no discrimination whatsoever.
If you can do your work well, if you are not afraid of anyone, and you can project your image properly.... I'm not saying there is no discrimination. I don't want to be too racial here, but if a policeman stops a nice blonde girl and she smiles at him, most likely he will not give a ticket. All of us notice, but we will not say. If he sees a black guy, you know he'll give him a ticket. Not only that, he might bring him down to the station. All of us notice, but because we are politicians, we have to do what we have to do. These discriminations exist. It's not only Islamophobia; it's lots of phobias. Blackphobia, indigenous people—they're all suffering from the same thing, and it's because we do not reach out to the communities.
What we did was we decided we were going to do a peace garden.
In the peace garden, we have the statue of Mahatma Gandhi. Do you see this monument? This is a monument that we have erected to fallen Canadian soldiers. We bring all of Richmond Hill, all the people around there, and we show them what our ethnicity is and what our culture is. We have the statue of Gandhi, the largest statue of Gandhi in Canada, and we tell them, “This is the way of peace.” I think the way is to try to let people understand what our....
Madam Chairwoman, you'll have to give me extra time, because this thing is not working.
Anyway, we have a peace park, and in the peace park, we tell people to come and see what peace is about. We tell them to come there, learn about peace, and learn about meditation.
The basic tenets of Hinduism, which I belong to, is that you see God in all beings, not only humans, and this is why Hindus are typically vegetarians. Can you imagine all those people who are fighting against the killing of tigers? They're all vegetarians. Here you are; if you are a Christian, be a good Christian. I do not think any religion, such as Islam, promotes violence or intolerance. Therefore, if we all seriously follow our religion and culture, there should be no discrimination in thought or action.
Madam Chairwoman, in conclusion, I would like to say that although I suffered discrimination at the beginning, at this moment in Canada I do not see any discrimination at my level, or in Hinduism. There is no such thing as “Hinduphobia”. Can you imagine? When people speak about religion, they speak about Christianity, or they speak about Judaism, which is about one-thousandth of the number of Hindus, or they speak about Islam, which is a big population, but nobody talks about Hinduism. Do you ever hear Hindus object to it? We say, “Oh well, forget about them. If they don't want to speak about Hindus, then don't speak about us. We are not going to be bothered about that.” We want to assimilate people. We want to teach people together. To that effect, on November 4, we are having a Hindu day to let people come to see what Hinduism is. We invite the community; we invite members of Parliament.
One thing is that our politicians should not pander to sects of people for votes. I think one of the speakers spoke about that much earlier. We do that, and when we do that, we cause lots of intolerance for the people who are from here. If our politicians can work properly and understand that when they come and pander to one religious group, other religious groups get intolerant about this.... That's a very serious fact.
I would like to conclude, Madam Chairwoman and the rest of the committee. Thank you for having me.
I think we should let people understand their religion. We cannot come from a different country and try to enforce all our rules and regulations here. If you come to Canada, you must live like Canadians. I'm not saying we should not know our culture. Of course we should know our culture. We must know our culture and we must know our religion, but we belong to Canada. Observe the Canadian rules, do what Canadian law says, and bring people together. By bringing people together, by having more ecumenical services, by having services between all the religious groups together, which we do at our temple, we help to cement people together.
Thank you very much.