Sat­narayan Ma­haraj

A del­e­ga­tion of four from the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha at­tend­ed a Hin­du Or­ga­ni­za­tion­al Con­fer­ence in New Del­hi, on No­vem­ber 21-23.

As Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the Ma­ha Sab­ha I was chair­man of Ses­sion 2: "Tem­ples and Hin­du Awak­en­ing," while the CEO of the Ma­ha Sab­ha's ra­dio and tele­vi­sion net­work, Jaagri­ti, Lokesh Ma­haraj, de­liv­ered a pa­per on mass com­mu­ni­ca­tion and the prop­a­ga­tion of Hin­duism.

Pres­i­dent of the Pun­dits' Parishad Bhadase See­ta­hal Ma­haraj pre­sent­ed a pa­per on Hin­du Schools in T&T. Here it is. This is Part 1 in a se­ries:

This pre­sen­ta­tion seeks to de­scribe the ex­cel­lent per­for­mance by Hin­du pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools in Trinidad in all facets of ed­u­ca­tion, growth, de­vel­op­ment and progress of the chil­dren who at­tend the schools. It will al­so iden­ti­fy the key fac­tors which are re­spon­si­ble for the over­all ex­cel­lent per­for­mance of all schools owned and ad­min­is­trat­ed by the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha In­cor­po­rat­ed of T&T.

This pre­sen­ta­tion will, for clar­i­ty, con­cise­ness and un­der­stand­ing, out­line, de­fine and de­vel­op the key is­sues that im­pact on the per­for­mance of Hin­du Schools in Trinidad. As a re­sult, the pre­sen­ta­tion will be struc­tured along the fol­low­ing di­vi­sions:

� Brief back­ground of Hin­du com­mu­ni­ty

� Po­lit­i­cal his­to­ry and cli­mate

� Ear­ly and suc­ces­sive or­gan­i­sa­tion­al lead­er­ship

� Strate­gic gov­er­nance

� School con­struc­tion plan­ning process

� Re­cruit­ment pol­i­cy and process

� Cur­ricu­lum

� School lead­er­ship, man­age­ment and in­te­grat­ed gov­er­nance

� Re­la­tion­ship with key stake­hold­ers

� Re­la­tion­ship with gov­ern­ments

� Re­la­tion­ship with oth­er de­nom­i­na­tion­al boards

� Ex­am­i­na­tions, test­ing and as­sess­ment

� Ex­am­i­na­tion per­for­mance

� The way for­ward

Brief back­ground ofHin­du com­mu­ni­ty

Trinidad is a part of the twin-is­land re­pub­lic that is named T&T. It has a land mass of 1,864 square miles and a cos­mopoli­tan pop­u­la­tion of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1.3 mil­lion peo­ple. It is a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic state and the Gov­ern­ment is usu­al­ly elect­ed for a five-year term. There have been ear­ly elec­tions on a few oc­ca­sions for a num­ber of rea­sons, but the gov­er­nance struc­ture has re­mained firm, strong and in­tact, ex­cept for two in­stances of so­cial up­heavals in 1970 and 1990; these up­heavals were quick­ly coun­tered.

Trinidad was pop­u­lat­ed with in­dige­nous peo­ples–the Caribs and Arawaks–be­fore the Spaniard Christo­pher Colum­bus ar­rived in 1498. There­after, gov­er­nance was tak­en over by the British, the last colo­nial ruler be­fore Trinidad gained in­de­pen­dence in 1962. This in part ac­counts for the di­verse cos­mopoli­tan pop­u­la­tion in Trinidad. The var­i­ous races and re­li­gions nor­mal­ly co­ex­ist in a peace­ful man­ner in spite of ex­pect­ed ten­sions large­ly based on re­li­gion, eco­nom­ics and pol­i­tics.

The ar­rival of East In­di­ans in Trinidad com­menced in 1845 when in­den­tured im­mi­grants, most­ly from Ut­tar Pradesh in In­dia, came to re­sus­ci­tate the dy­ing sug­ar plan­ta­tions as a di­rect con­se­quence of the abo­li­tion of slav­ery in 1838. Peo­ple from oth­er places were tried, but they did not pos­sess the req­ui­site abil­i­ty to ad­just and adapt to the in­dus­try re­quired of sug­ar cane cul­ti­va­tion.

From 1845 to 1917 in­den­tured im­mi­grants ar­rived con­tin­u­ous­ly from sev­er­al parts of In­dia to sus­tain the sug­ar plan­ta­tions. As a re­sult, the pop­u­la­tion of East In­di­ans cur­rent­ly com­pris­es ap­prox­i­mate­ly 42 per cent of the na­tion­al pop­u­la­tion.

The Hin­du pop­u­la­tion has re­mained quite steady at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 23 per cent of the na­tion­al pop­u­la­tion over the last 19 years. To­day peo­ple from In­dia con­scious­ly de­cide to make Trinidad their per­ma­nent res­i­dence, and they are present in thou­sands as doc­tors, en­gi­neers, busi­ness own­ers etc. Ar­riv­ing in Trinidad with a wealth and lega­cy of re­li­gious and cul­tur­al mores, val­ues and prac­tices, even though from im­pov­er­ished con­di­tions, it was not easy and it still is not easy for the Hin­dus to dis­solve in­to the con­fig­u­ra­tion of a di­verse land­scape. As a con­se­quence of this, Hin­dus from the ear­ly years formed and de­pend­ed on in­for­mal struc­tures to pre­serve and prop­a­gate a known way of life.

The pan­chaay­at and oth­er sys­tems as­sist­ed in reg­u­lat­ing life as con­di­tions re­quired. It is and was no sur­prise there­fore that re­li­gious and po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tions and struc­tures were de­vel­oped. Against this back­ground, Hin­dus have con­firmed them­selves as an in­trin­sic as­pect of po­lit­i­cal life and have pro­duced two Hin­du Prime Min­is­ters–the Ho­n­ourable Bas­deo Pan­day in 1995 and the present Prime Min­is­ter, the Ho­n­ourable Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, in 2010.

The Hin­du com­mu­ni­ty has al­so pro­duced sev­er­al promi­nent politi­cians as well as ex­perts and lead­ers in every imag­in­able field of en­deav­our. The cen­tral point is that Hin­dus ex­ist­ed in a hos­tile po­lit­i­cal en­vi­ron­ment and had to de­vise strate­gies and poli­cies to en­sure sur­vival in an ac­cept­able man­ner. One of the ear­ly un­der­pin­nings of life in an alien en­vi­ron­ment was the in­abil­i­ty to de­code the pre­vail­ing lan­guage, and the Hin­du com­mu­ni­ty was iso­lat­ed in the ear­ly years.

By the end of the pe­ri­od of in­den­ture­ship in 1917, some Hin­dus and East In­di­ans re­turned to In­dia while, for most, Trinidad was now the land of res­i­dence or birth. Many mar­riages and oth­er af­fil­i­a­tions were con­cre­tised and life had greater form, func­tion and mean­ing. In the ear­ly part of the 1900s, the Hin­dus con­sti­tut­ed a most­ly in­verse com­mu­ni­ty.

Part 2, next week: Ear­ly and suc­ceed­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion­al lead­er­ship.