Prin­ci­pal of the Tu­na­puna Hin­du School Si­ta Ga­jad­hars­ingh-Nan­ga re­quest­ed a trans­fer to a gov­ern­ment pri­ma­ry school in the in­ter­est of her san­i­ty af­ter claim­ing she had been sub­ject­ed to nu­mer­ous acts of in­tim­i­da­tion and ha­rass­ment by the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha board and/or sev­er­al of its mem­bers. She claimed she was re­peat­ed­ly threat­ened and in­sult­ed and was un­der "se­vere men­tal pres­sure." This was ex­pressed in her June 17 let­ter to the Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion. The ten-page let­ter out­lined al­le­ga­tions against the Ma­ha Sab­ha board and its sec­re­tary gen­er­al Sat­narayan Ma­haraj. Her let­ter stat­ed she could no longer work with a board that treat­ed her in an in­hu­mane man­ner.

Ga­jad­hars­ingh-Nan­ga stat­ed: "It is with deep re­gret that I here­by ask for a re­lease from the Ma­ha Sab­ha board and a trans­fer to the gov­ern­ment teach­ing ser­vice." She said she was ex­pect­ed to ad­mit "il­le­gal" Guyanese chil­dren to the school; forced to cur­tail the teach­ing of agri­cul­tur­al sci­ence; giv­en $1,000 out of $500,000 spon­sored by Re­pub­lic Bank to host the Baal Vikas com­pe­ti­tion; told not to ad­mit African chil­dren; threat­ened re­peat­ed­ly by Ma­haraj that she would be locked out of the school; told to pre­pare false re­ports against a mem­ber of staff and forced to lie to the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of T&T and gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials that Ra­dio Jaagri­ti was part of the school and that broad­cast­ing class­es formed part of the cur­ricu­lum.

Ga­jad­hars­ingh-Nan­ga, the moth­er of two boys, is mar­ried to at­tor­ney Ravi Nan­ga and is "a prac­tis­ing Hin­du." She has been in the pro­fes­sion for more than 15 years. A source close to the em­bat­tled prin­ci­pal de­scribed her as a ded­i­cat­ed work­er who tried des­per­ate­ly to up­lift the stan­dards of the school. Ga­jad­hars­ingh-Nan­ga has not been to work since Mon­day's meet­ing with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, the T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) and the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha. The source said Ga­jad­hars­ingh-Nan­ga would not re­turn to the school un­til "cer­tain mat­ters are ironed out." Mon­day's agree­ment did not state when she was ex­pect­ed to re­turn. How­ev­er, it was an­tic­i­pat­ed she would have re­sumed du­ties on Tues­day.

The source said Ga­jad­hars­ingh-Nan­ga was seek­ing ad­vice from TTUTA and that she missed be­ing at school and do­ing her job. Her great­est con­cern at the mo­ment was her pupils who will be­gin their end of term tests soon, the source added. The source said al­though Ga­jad­hars­ingh-Nan­ga was go­ing through a dif­fi­cult pe­ri­od, she was strong and do­ing okay. She had been re­ceiv­ing "ex­cel­lent" sup­port from her fam­i­ly, friends and peo­ple she did not know, the source added "She miss­es her pupils," the source said. They need some kind of sta­bil­i­ty and she re­al­ly hopes they will per­form their best. When she put pen to pa­per and re­quest­ed a trans­fer be­cause she couldn't take it any­more, that is when all the prob­lems start­ed."

Amidst all the mud­sling­ing and at­tacks, the source said Ga­jad­hars­ingh-Nan­ga "loves be­ing a prin­ci­pal" and nev­er con­sid­ered her­self "bet­ter or above any­one." She stud­ied hard to move up the ranks, the rel­a­tive said. "Be­fore be­ing ap­point­ed prin­ci­pal two and a half years ago, she held the po­si­tion of vice-prin­ci­pal and be­fore that, she taught at the school," the rel­a­tive said. "Af­ter she com­plet­ed uni­ver­si­ty, she was post­ed there." Ga­jad­hars­ingh-Nan­ga won a schol­ar­ship while at the Teach­ers' Train­ing Col­lege and is the hold­er of two de­grees. "When she be­came the prin­ci­pal, she tried to put her foot down and make changes at the school but was chal­lenged by board mem­bers," the source said. "She was forced to con­form to the board's in­struc­tions but couldn't do it."