Sat­narayan Ma­haraj

Dr David Frow­ley, a for­mer Chris­t­ian the­olo­gian from the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, has emerged as a great Hin­du devo­tee. He is re­spect­ed through­out the Hin­du world.

Dr Frow­ley spends most of his time at dif­fer­ent shrines and ashrams in In­dia, and we are for­tu­nate to have had him vis­it T&T as a guest a few years ago.

In his es­say, The Chal­lenge of the In­for­ma­tion Age, Dr Frow­ley writes: "There­fore the ques­tion aris­es par­tic­u­lar­ly in the con­text of In­dia: where are Hin­dus in this in­for­ma­tion war?

The an­swer is that, with a few no­table ex­cep­tions, Hin­dus gen­er­al­ly are on­ly fee­bly present, apolo­getic or half-heart­ed in their self-pre­sen­ta­tion in the in­for­ma­tion field.

"The im­age of Hin­duism that pre­vails in the in­for­ma­tion age is cre­at­ed by non-Hin­dus and an­ti-Hin­du forces, not on­ly by in­ten­tion but al­so by de­fault be­cause Hin­dus them­selves sel­dom chal­lenge wrong views or pro­vide an al­ter­na­tive.

In this way Hin­duism is be­ing erod­ed, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the minds of young Hin­dus, who sel­dom find their re­li­gion rep­re­sent­ed, or to find it den­i­grat­ed in the me­dia world around them that is rapid­ly be­com­ing their re­al­i­ty. Over the years, the Ma­ha Sab­ha has been em­brac­ing new in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy to in­form the pop­u­la­tion of the many Hin­du prac­tices.

One im­por­tant prac­tice takes place on Mon­day, No­vem­ber 14, at var­i­ous beach­es across Trinidad. This event is called Kar­tik Snaan (sa­cred bath), which marks the cul­mi­na­tion of al­most 12 months of re­li­gious ob­ser­vances with the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed Di­vali cel­e­bra­tions as a high point.

Hin­dus be­lieve that this present cy­cle of cre­ation which start­ed over a mil­lion years ago, the Supreme Lord (God) made de­scent on earth from time to time. It is the be­lief that God has made nine de­scents and the tenth, Kal­ki (space man­i­fes­ta­tion) will make ap­pear­ance to her­ald the end of this cy­cle of cre­ation.

The first man­i­fes­ta­tion ap­peared in the ocean, where life is con­sid­ered to have start­ed. And this first man­i­fes­ta­tion was called the Matysa Avatar or the Fish man­i­fes­ta­tion. Be­cause of this, Hin­dus re­vere the oceans and oth­er wa­ter­ing places where life be­gan.

Kar­tik is re­al­ly the name of a month which falls around Oc­to­ber-No­vem­ber. The en­tire month is aus­pi­cious for pu­jas and cer­e­mo­ni­al bath, but the fi­nal day of the month which this year falls on No­vem­ber 14 is re­gard­ed as the most aus­pi­cious. Hin­dus, to­geth­er with their pun­dits, will trav­el to var­i­ous wa­ter­ing sites for a day of prayers and bath.

The Hin­du an­cients be­lieved that wor­ship and fast­ing dur­ing this month reap aus­pi­cious fruits that are equiv­a­lent to many pil­grim­ages. And the im­por­tance of the month is men­tioned in many an­cient scrip­tures such as the: Skand Pu­rana, Narad Pu­rana and the Pad­ma Pu­rana.

It is the be­lief of the devo­tee that this rit­u­al bath, tak­en dur­ing the month of Kar­tik, is sim­i­lar to a thou­sand dips in the sa­cred Ganges Riv­er or a hun­dred baths dur­ing oth­er months. It is pre­scribed that those who can­not trav­el to have baths in the rivers, lakes or sea­side, should take baths in their homes and per­form pu­ja in their house.

It is al­so ad­vised that dur­ing this en­tire month of Kar­tik, we light lamps (deyas) at our homes and in our vil­lage tem­ples.The pre­scribed pu­ja af­ter bath must be ded­i­cat­ed to Rad­ha and Kr­ish­na, while at the same time wor­ship­ping the Tul­si plant.

The de­vout Hin­du al­so be­lieves that in the month of Kar­tik, the rays of the sun and the moon ex­ert a ben­e­fi­cial ef­fect on Man.

These rays pro­vide a con­struc­tive en­er­gy to the mind and the brain of the devo­tee. At our own Man­zanil­la Beach Cen­tre, thou­sands of Hin­dus will gath­er to per­form con­gre­ga­tion­al wor­ship be­fore tak­ing a bath in the At­lantic Ocean.

Each group will have its own tent and oth­er fa­cil­i­ties, in­clud­ing their own vil­lage pun­dit, who con­ducts the pu­ja cer­e­mo­ny on a Be­di (al­tar), cre­at­ed out of the sand on the seashore.

At the cul­mi­na­tion of pu­ja, meals will be shared and the process of meet­ing and greet­ing fel­low wor­ship­pers from across the coun­try will fol­low. This will en­able devo­tees to stay on the beach late in­to the af­ter­noon. Not on­ly will Man­zanil­la Beach be high­ly or­gan­ised for the day, but in cen­tral Trinidad, at what is called the Flow­er­pot Beach at Clax­ton Bay, will re­ceive sup­port from our se­nior ex­ec­u­tives in the area, Pun­dit Gan­path Ma­haraj and Pun­dit Rishi Ma­haraj.

At Guapo Beach Re­sort in Point Fortin, thou­sands of our devo­tees from the south­ern area will make their an­nu­al pil­grim­age un­der the spir­i­tu­al guid­ance of our Dhar­mar­charya (spir­i­tu­al head), Pun­dit Utham Ma­haraj, of the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha.

Our group­ing in the south-east penin­su­la will be led by Chanka Teelucks­ingh who al­so su­per­vis­es the ac­tiv­i­ties at Man­mo­hans­ingh Park, Bonasse Vil­lage, Ce­dros. Sev­en Hin­du tem­ples will at­tend and joint­ly per­form the ap­pro­pri­ate rit­u­als.

We have re­quest­ed of the Min­is­ter of Tourism, Sham­fa Cud­joe, that life­guards and am­bu­lance ser­vices be pro­vid­ed at all the venues. This is to en­sure that our thou­sands of Hin­du devo­tees, to­geth­er with their chil­dren have the sup­port of pro­fes­sion­al life­savers in the case of an emer­gency.