The long wait is over! Af­ter eight years of sac­ri­fice, pa­tience and hope, the doors of Swa­ha Hin­du Col­lege, San­gre Grande, were fi­nal­ly flung open to stu­dents and staff. At a most im­pres­sive cer­e­mo­ny held on No­vem­ber 17, in the school's court­yard, Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Es­ther Le Gen­dre un­veiled a plaque that marked the com­ple­tion of con­struc­tion by the Ed­u­ca­tion Fa­cil­i­ties Com­pa­ny Ltd (EF­CL), and hand­ed over the keys to the build­ing and user man­u­al to the school's prin­ci­pal, Pt Bal­ram Per­sad. The en­tire school pop­u­la­tion was in at­ten­dance to greet the many dig­ni­taries who at­tend­ed the pro­ceed­ings. Among them were Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary of the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion An­gel­la Jack; CEO of Ed­u­ca­tion Fa­cil­i­ties Com­pa­ny Ltd Paul Tay­lor; Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la Har­ry Par­tap; and His Ho­li­ness Para­macharya Pun­dit Hard­eo Per­sad, the Spir­i­tu­al Head of Swa­ha, the de­nom­i­na­tion­al board un­der whose purview the school func­tions.

Le Gen­dre ex­pressed great pride, on be­half of the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, in hand­ing over the col­lege. She re­it­er­at­ed the Gov­ern­ment's po­si­tion of main­tain­ing re­la­tion­ships with de­nom­i­na­tion­al boards, of sup­port­ing these schools in var­i­ous ways and of cel­e­brat­ing such part­ner­ships. The re­sult, she said, is im­proved stu­dent per­for­mance. In her ad­dress, she thanked the prin­ci­pal for his pa­tience over the years and ap­pealed to the staff and stu­dents to main­tain the fa­cil­i­ties at the school. Para­macharya, in his ad­dress, com­mend­ed EF­CL and the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion for pro­vid­ing the fa­cil­i­ties for the stu­dents of the area. As he traced the his­to­ry of the school's con­struc­tion, he ex­pressed grat­i­tude to the for­mer Min­is­ters of Ed­u­ca­tion, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Hazel Man­ning, as well as Le Gen­dre, all women, and all of whom played key roles in the school's de­vel­op­ment. This, he said, was quite sig­nif­i­cant, as Swa­ha it­self stands for "moth­er."

He al­so em­pha­sised the ne­ces­si­ty of ed­u­ca­tion for all since it en­dows man with the pow­er to suc­ceed. "Knowl­edge is pow­er," he re­mind­ed all, "and an un­e­d­u­cat­ed per­son finds it ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult to fit com­fort­ably in­to so­ci­ety. "Pro­vid­ing in­sti­tu­tions such as the Swa­ha Hin­du Col­lege is one way that the or­gan­i­sa­tion is ful­fill­ing its man­date of recog­nis­ing the four-fold na­ture of man and mak­ing its in­put in de­vel­op­ing and serv­ing so­ci­ety." Di­rec­tor of EF­CL Lor­can Camps ap­plaud­ed Swa­ha for its vi­sion of es­tab­lish­ing ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions. He ex­pressed great pride in be­ing part of a project that pro­motes med­i­ta­tion, veg­e­tar­i­an­ism and high stan­dards of dis­ci­pline, all of which are prac­tised at the school. He urged staff and stu­dents to make max­i­mum use of the fa­cil­i­ties pro­vid­ed to them at the in­sti­tu­tion.

Per­sad thanked the vi­sion­ar­ies, his par­ents Shankaracharya Pt Hari Per­sad and Mata­ji Chan­drawatie Per­sad, as well as all oth­ers who were di­rect­ly in­volved in the school's build­ing from its in­cep­tion. He heaped prais­es on the Min­istry and EF­CL for the pro­vi­sion of fa­cil­i­ties at the school, and ex­pressed the hope that con­tin­u­ing up­grades will be done. Just be­fore the of­fi­cial cut­ting of the rib­bon, un­veil­ing of the plaque and the hand­ing-over of the keys, guests were treat­ed to a most im­pres­sive en­sem­ble of mu­sic and dance by stu­dents of the school. Af­ter a scin­til­lat­ing dance item, stu­dents brought down the house with an ex­quis­ite ren­di­tion of lo­cal­ly-com­posed songs, blend­ing smooth­ly the steel-pan, the har­mo­ni­um and dho­lak. A most pos­i­tive sign in­deed, for all stake­hold­ers of Swa­ha Hin­du Col­lege, a school whose em­pha­sis is on dis­ci­pline, aca­d­e­m­ic ex­cel­lence, fam­i­ly val­ues, char­ac­ter de­vel­op­ment, sports and pa­tri­o­tism.