Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha sec­re­tary gen­er­al Sat Ma­haraj re­mained de­fi­ant yes­ter­day in the face of a furore over his con­tentious com­ments about the peo­ple of To­ba­go and a call from Mi­nor­i­ty Leader Wat­son Duke to apol­o­gise or face a hate cam­paign.

“I have in­ten­tions to re­spond to Wat­son Duke and the crit­ics, I will re­ply at a time of my own choos­ing and the medi­um of my own choos­ing,” Ma­haraj said when con­tact­ed for com­ment hours af­ter Duke called for an apol­o­gy.

Ma­haraj, how­ev­er, stood by his state­ment, say­ing it was the truth but said his re­sponse would come “af­ter the sea­son of good­will is over.”

Ma­haraj drew the ire of many af­ter he at­tacked To­bag­o­ni­ans dur­ing on his TV Ja­gri­iti pro­gramme on Mon­day.

“Noth­ing go­ing cor­rect in To­ba­go; they’re lazy. Six out of ten of them work­ing for the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly, get­ting mon­ey from Port-of-Spain. They don’t want to work, and when they get a job, they go half past nine and 10 o’clock they go for break­fast,” Ma­haraj said dur­ing the pro­gramme.

He al­so sug­gest­ed that oth­er able-bod­ied To­bag­o­ni­ans who were lazy pre­ferred to on­ly run crab and goat races and tar­get white women on beach­es whom they robbed and raped.

A clip of Ma­haraj’s com­ments was soon shared on so­cial me­dia, prompt­ing an­gered re­spons­es on those plat­forms.

Yes­ter­day, Duke called a press con­fer­ence at PSA head­quar­ters in Port-of-Spain where he con­demned Ma­haraj, say­ing the SDMS leader and his fol­low­ers should apol­o­gise or face a hate cam­paign from To­bag­o­ni­ans.

“I wan­na tell Sat, any­time I know, any­time as Mi­nor­i­ty Leader in the To­ba­go House Of As­sem­bly, I know that you are in To­ba­go, we will give you a se­ri­ous un­wel­come and we will make your stay in To­ba­go hell,” Duke said.

He added, “Some things you can leave silent, some things you have to lift your heel against. This is one.

“He is look­ing for rel­e­vance in a coun­try that is far be­com­ing too large and too ed­u­cat­ed for his riffraff and his old chat. He has to find rel­e­vance by at­tack­ing any and every­one. Do the ho­n­ourable thing and apol­o­gise or you will face a hate cam­paign against you and against your or­gan­i­sa­tion.”

Duke point­ed out that many To­bag­o­ni­ans work in Trinidad, par­tic­u­lar­ly those who had de­vel­oped skills which were not use­ful in the To­ba­go job mar­ket.

In a Face­book post, Spir­i­tu­al Head of the Satya Anand Ashram, Pun­dit Satyanand Ma­haraj, slammed Ma­haraj’s com­ments as ob­scene and dis­gust­ing. He said the SDMS gen­er­al sec­re­tary had de­scribed the To­ba­go com­mu­ni­ty in the most dero­ga­to­ry terms and the In­di­an and Hin­du com­mu­ni­ty must be of­fend­ed and con­demn his state­ments. He added that if Hin­dus do not speak out and up against Ma­haraj, Hin­duism would be ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed, adding the Ma­ha Sab­ha sec­re­tary gen­er­al should al­so re­tire.

Duke laud­ed Pun­dit Ma­haraj for his stance on the mat­ter and called for more in the Hin­du com­mu­ni­ty to fol­low suit.