Paras Ra­moutar

Re­cip­i­ent of Cha­co­nia Gold Medal in this year's Na­tion­al Awards, Pun­dit Har­dath Ma­haraj, of Cu­mu­to, feels the state of emer­gency is a pos­i­tive tool to re­duce crime and bring back san­i­ty in Trinidad and To­ba­go.In an in­ter­view at his Cu­mu­to home, Pun­dit Har­dath quot­ed from the Hin­du sa­cred book, the Bhag­vad Gi­ta, where Lord Kr­ish­na states when­ev­er there is a de­cline of right­eous­ness in the world he would come and re­store it.He said: "The state of emer­gency is one such tool to­wards the re-en­act­ment of peace, law and or­der in our bliss­ful land."I hope that every sec­tor of the na­tion­al cit­i­zen­ship will will­ing­ly sup­port the ex­ten­sion as it is not for one sec­tion of the pop­u­la­tion but for the peo­ple of T&T."This Cha­co­nia Gold Medal which I re­ceived on In­de­pen­dence Day is grat­i­fy­ing, not on­ly for me but for all the peo­ple of our land."

Pun­dit Har­dath, who cel­e­brat­ed his 80th birth­day last Ju­ly, said he would "con­tin­ue serv­ing the peo­ple, in what­ev­er way I can, notwith­stand­ing my age."He re­mains ag­ile, wit­ty and re­calls vers­es from the var­i­ous Hin­du texts with ease.He had high prais­es for two lead­ers, Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Win­ston Dook­er­an and Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar. He said both have the peo­ple and fu­ture of T&T, "not on­ly in their mor­tal hands but in their bliss­ful hearts."He added: "Mr Dook­er­an is a mas­ter in eco­nom­ics, an as­tute lis­ten­er and he knows when to act and he does it in the spir­it of util­i­tar­i­an­ism and sin­cere hu­man­i­tar­i­an­ism. "I am not about pol­i­tics, even though pol­i­tics is the very essence of so­ci­ety and ex­is­tence, but one can­not ig­nore the tan­gi­bles in it."All the re­li­gious books fo­cus on lead­er­ship and the so­ci­ol­o­gy of life, hu­man ex­is­tence and so­ci­ety."The late Arch­bish­op An­tho­ny Pan­tin was his class­mate at St Mary's Col­lege and even though they prac­tised dif­fer­ent re­li­gions they were close friends, each vis­it­ing the oth­er up to the time of Pan­tin's death.Pun­dit Har­dath's old­er broth­er, the late Pun­dit Kr­ish­na Ma­haraj, of Ca­roni, who was the Dhamar­charya of the San­tan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha (SDMS), was award­ed the Or­der of Trinidad and To­ba­go posthu­mous­ly last year. Pun­dit Har­dath's fore­fa­thers came from Ut­tar Pradesh in the mid-19th cen­tu­ry to work on the sug­ar plan­ta­tions.