The Tribune

One does not have to be a monarchist or a fan of the late Prince Philip to admire the simplicity and beauty of the Order of Service at his brief funeral held at St. George’s Chapel on the Lower Ward at Windsor Castle.

The Castle Chapel, originally founded in the 14th century, was significantly enlarged in the 15th century. With its many pinnacles, the Chapel is “built in the late-medieval Perpendicular Gothic style.” Its bulwarks are ancient history and memory.

Admittedly, there was a degree of frippery not to the taste of many. Still, there was a clarity and solemnity to the service rooted in the rituals of the Church of England.

At the end of the service the Buglers of the Royal Marines sounded The Lament. Then, “After a period of silence the State Trumpeters of the Household Cavalry [sounded] the Last Post”, followed by the Buglers of the Royal Marines sounding the Last Post.

At that moment, whatever one’s feelings about the British Monarchy, most viewers felt for the soul of the dead and for the grieving widow and her family, a grief we have all experienced at the death of a loved one. We felt in some measure, mercy and empathy for another. The rituals engulfed us.

Rituals and symbols bear emotions, traditions and memories in ways in which words cannot compete and often fail. Silence during rituals bears even more because each of us individually and scores collectively, recollect, mourn or imagine in our unique manner during such quietude. We imbue the silence with our own narratives and memories.

A late beloved cleric often lamented that too many church services in The Bahamas were noisy, loud, devoid of a powerful silence needed to allow a certain indwelling of the spirit in more profound ways.

Rituals like the Liturgy of the Eucharist in various Christian traditions, invoke the ineffable and the numinous, moving one into the liminal, the boundaries between seen and unseen, body and soul, Heaven and Earth.

We are a boisterous culture, a wonderful part of our identity. But cultures which allow for little silence, often feel manic, empty, unsettled, unreflective, immature.

Writing of Gotham, the materialist heartbeat of America, Walt Whitman interrogated cultures driven by materialist noise:

“Silence? What can New York - noisy, roaring, rumbling, tumbling, bustling, story, turbulent New York - have to do with silence? Amid the universal clatter, the incessant din of business, the all swallowing vortex of the great money whirlpool - who has any, even distant, idea of the profound repose... of silence?”

More so, what becomes of a culture or a people stripped or ignorant of its ancestral roots, mythology, rituals and identity? It is like a child born ignorant of the names and identity and history of her parents, grandparents and ancestors.

EMPOWERING

A dear and wonderful friend, an ardent patriot, who loves Bahamian culture and who believes it is past time for the country to have a Bahamian head of state, delights in pomp and circumstance.

She revels in rituals of church and state, foreign and domestic. She enjoys these rituals because they penetrate her soul, provide meaning, grant joy and offer a sense of purpose and continuity. When we lose empowering rituals we lose elements of our identity, destroying ourselves and limiting our possibilities.

All cultures are a sort of pot luck, a miscegenated, creolized mixture of many influences and narrative threads, often in contradiction, the very forces of which are like volcanic eruptions and earthquakes forming new lands, features and contours.

By example, over the centuries, the United Kingdom has borrowed magisterially from the cultural patrimony of the global commons and its imperial conquests. This includes the British Monarchy, many of its traditions crafted and honed over centuries, readily plundering, copying and assimilating from cultures far and wide.

There is no pure British blood, American blood nor Bahamian blood, to which genetic testing will attest. The world is a commonwealth, in which the lands of global commons borrow, including classic and tested traditions that become a standard feature of human civilisation.

The Bahamas, like many other Caribbean cultures has assimilated the contributions of other cultures, forging something new out of what Caribbean Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott described as “fragments of epic memory”. This includes our system of government.

Parliamentary democracy has a rich history, with roots from Iceland, which developed one of the first such systems in the world. Various Native American tribes also developed a form of collegial and collaborative governance.

We trace our governmental system to the United Kingdom, which honed the traditions and conventions of parliamentary democracy over centuries.

The genius of the system recognizes certain features of human and group psychology including temptations to abuse power; the need to restrain the power of the head of government through various checks; and the importance of collegiality and consensus-building in a cabinet system of collective responsibility.

The Founders of a modern independent Bahamas recognised the virtues of such a system which we have adopted as our own. At independence we did not adopt a colonial constitution as some have loudly and ignorantly proclaimed. We adopted a modern constitution similar to other countries that are parliamentary democracies.

Undoubtedly we need constitutional reform. Those reforms and amendments will be decided by the Bahamian people and Parliament, not by a British government.

At the One Bahamas church service in 2010, former Governor General Sir Arthur Foulkes described some of the fragments of our identity:

“But many who were brought by force and many who came by their own free will stayed, put down their roots, and became the ancestors of a new people: the Bahamians…

“Over many years they came from Europe and Africa, and some from Asia; and they came by direct as well as by circuitous routes. Many of our forebears - diverse in race, colour, creed and ethnicity - came by way of the United States, South America and the other islands of the Caribbean.

“But today we are one people with a distinct identity among the nations of the world. We are Bahamians. We have come through many trials and tribulations but now we joyously celebrate the blessing of being able to live as one people, in peace and unity, and to call one of the most beautiful spots on the planet our home.”

There is a vital difference between adaptation and mimicry. At independence, Trinidad and Tobago, Dominica and many other former British colonies retained the genius and conventions of parliamentary democracy, while removing the British Monarch as head of state.

In addition to the United Kingdom, Queen Elizabeth II, presently serves as the Head of State for 15 countries, nine of which are in the Caribbean.

These countries are: Antigua and Barbuda, Australia, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Canada, Grenada, Jamaica, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Solomon Islands and Tuvalu.

Anachronism

Queen Elizabeth II is deeply respected by many. But the British Monarchy is an anachronism for sovereign, independent countries. One can borrow from other cultures without being mindless mimic men and women.

The British Royal Family deeply appreciate the centrality of identity and symbolism. Prince Philip reportedly appreciated how over the top were many of the traditions of a hidebound monarchy in a modern Britain.

Yet, he observed: “People still respond more easily to symbolism than to reason.” He also appreciated the need to preserve various rituals, traditions and symbols as well as to make vital changes for the continuity and modernisation of all institutions.

Queen Victoria’s German husband Prince Albert gave the name of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to the then Royal Family. In 1917, King George V, worried about the monarchy’s survival because of war with Germany and deeply anti-German sentiment in Britain, understood the Royal Family needed a new name.

As reported by a British magazine: “The man tasked with the job was Lord Stamfordham, the king’s trusted private secretary. He trawled through history books but struggled to find a name untouched by the monarchy’s own bloody history - passing over Tudor, Stuart and Plantagenet - before finally being struck by inspiration while working in Windsor Castle.” After her accession in 1952, the Queen confirmed the Royal Family name of Windsor.

As a young student in university, this columnist was discussing public rituals with a professor. The professor advised: “Before you seek to replace or change a civic or other ritual or process, first know its history and seek to understand the values a ritual upholds.”

He went on to say: “When you too quickly uproot a ritual, process or system, you may also harm values you hold dear and which society needs.”

Approaching 50 years of independence, The Bahamas should celebrate its heritage, preserving what is essential, including various rituals of democracy, which invoke and reinforce our national identity and freedom struggles.

Concurrently, we must also reform and modernise as a 21st century democracy. As a free, independent country, The Bahamas should have its own head of state, which is essential for our political maturity and identity as a sovereign nation.

The head of state serves a functional and critical role in our parliamentary democracy. Our head of state must be a symbol of national unity and identity. This head of state should be Bahamian, not the British Monarch, to whom we are still “subjects”.

When he was sworn in as Governor General, Sir Arthur, a champion of majority rule and sovereignty declared: “We are today observing important ceremonies and rituals of our constitutional government, our parliamentary democracy and the rule of law.

“Rituals and ceremonies are designed to protect values, to speak to us in ways that are sometimes more effective than words, and to celebrate our good fortune as inheritors of this rich Bahamian patrimony.

“The ceremonies and rituals surrounding the swearing-in of a new Governor General and the opening of a new session of Parliament speak to us about our democracy, about the right to be governed by our own elected representatives.

“They speak to us about the continuity of our institutions, about our parliamentary democracy, about its peaceful evolution over nearly 300 years, and about our commitment to strive for its future perfection.”

In the not too distant future, we will celebrate the swearing-in of a Bahamian as President and head of state, preserving our democracy while revitalising our heritage in keeping for successive generations.