Dear Editor,

Last Friday one of Guyana's promising leaders was banished from a party he served for more than 25 years.

My mind raced: dark days are here with us again; can a person stand by his true beliefs in a party I trusted and voted for. I had fought against dictatorship in all forms- writing, protest, marches. I, like all others should, am prepared, for the love of truth, my children and country, to rise up against this form of dictatorship as our sacred duty, whenever truth and liberty are strangled by strange red rags.

This Tagore poem, an inspirational masterpiece, I have adapted and dedicated to Guyana's sons and daughters whose beliefs in truth, liberty, justice, equality, opportunity and good governance remain unwavering despite engulfing chaos.

A prayer for Guyana

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high

Where knowledge is free

Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls.

Where words come from the depth of truth

Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit

Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever- widening thought and actions

Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

Yours faithfully,

D. Chand