Sat­narayan Ma­haraj

Part 1 of this sur­vey, by pres­i­dent of the Pun­dits' Parishad Bhadase See­ta­hal Ma­haraj, served as a pre­am­ble to fa­cil­i­tat­ing an un­der­stand­ing of the con­text of Hin­dus in Trinidad.

There was no sin­gle en­ti­ty di­rect­ing and fo­cus­ing the Hin­du pop­u­la­tion at an or­gan­i­sa­tion­al lev­el, and there was an ab­sence al­so of a sin­gle leader.There were sev­er­al splin­tered groups and dis­si­pat­ed and in­con­sis­tent lead­er­ship. Nev­er­the­less, there were strong Hin­du per­son­al­i­ties; many of them were both aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly well qual­i­fied and knowl­edge­able about Hin­duism.

With­in this par­a­digm, and in spite of dif­fer­ences, 1952 be­came the wa­ter­shed year for Hin­dus in Trinidad with the for­ma­tion of the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha Inc by Act 41 of Par­lia­ment, 1952. Dif­fer­ing and vary­ing per­son­al­i­ties con­verged to cre­ate this dy­nam­ic or­gan­i­sa­tion, which has been the Hin­du pil­lar and bul­wark out­side of In­dia.

The ear­ly lead­er­ship was in­vest­ed in a gi­ant of a man, phys­i­cal­ly and oth­er­wise, named Bhadase Sagan Maraj, as the first Pres­i­dent Gen­er­al of the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha. He was a self-made mil­lion­aire busi­ness­man (as far back as the 1950s) whose de­fence of the prop­a­ga­tion of Hin­dus is leg­endary.

Un­der his as­tute lead­er­ship and sup­port from oth­er im­por­tant peo­ple like Simb­hoonath Capildeo and Ram­per­sad Bhoolai, the SDMS em­barked on the most im­por­tant ini­tia­tive since the com­mence­ment of in­den­ture­ship–the con­struc­tion of schools to ed­u­cate the Hin­du com­mu­ni­ty.

At that time, Hin­du par­ents were re­luc­tant to send their chil­dren, es­pe­cial­ly girls, to the most­ly Chris­t­ian schools, where pres­sure to con­vert was the norm. To counter this sit­u­a­tion, rudi­men­ta­ry struc­tures were erect­ed on lands do­nat­ed by Hin­du bene­fac­tors to en­sure the ed­u­ca­tion of Hin­dus. The pas­sage of time has wit­nessed a re­mark­able trans­for­ma­tion of these schools from rudi­men­ta­ry sta­tus to that of mod­ern ed­u­ca­tion cam­pus­es.

From the in­cep­tion of a school as a few pieces of wood and gal­vanise, the trans­for­ma­tion is now al­most com­plete. Trinidad his­to­ry con­firms that a for­mer Prime Min­is­ter, in ex­press­ing con­tempt for the Hin­du com­mu­ni­ty, once deroga­to­ri­ly de­scribed the SDMS schools as "cow­sheds." Lit­tle did he know the bless­ings con­tained in the word "cow­shed," or Gosha­la.

These schools trans­formed the think­ing of the Hin­du com­mu­ni­ty with re­gard to ed­u­ca­tion. The con­struc­tion of these schools af­ford­ed op­por­tu­ni­ties to chil­dren in the most rur­al and il­lit­er­ate com­mu­ni­ties to ad­vance an ed­u­ca­tion, and ac­cess study and work op­por­tu­ni­ties pre­vi­ous­ly de­nied.

Lo­ca­tions such as Su­chit Trace, Ra­mai Trace, Tul­sa Trace etc, ac­cu­rate­ly il­lus­trate how ed­u­ca­tion was brought to peo­ple in very de­prived com­mu­ni­ties. From an al­most pure­ly agrar­i­an com­mu­ni­ty, the changes have re­sult­ed, over the years, in the pres­ence of peo­ple in every pro­fes­sion and ca­reer.

It is very sig­nif­i­cant to note that the ba­ton of the ear­ly lead­er­ship was passed on to the present Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the SDMS, Shri Sat­narayan Ma­haraj, al­most 40 years ago, and what a phe­nom­e­nal pres­ence he has been.

With his sear­ing vi­sion, ini­tia­tive, in­no­va­tion, fo­cus, dri­ve, de­ter­mi­na­tion and pas­sion, he has pro­pelled the Hin­du com­mu­ni­ty in gar­gan­tu­an mea­sure. Un­der his di­rec­tion, lead­er­ship and guid­ance, the Hin­du schools have be­come the over­all leader in the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem in T&T. There is no oth­er re­li­gious body that can ����ri­val the to­tal achieve­ments at the com­bined pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary school lev­els.

Gen­er­al­ly, most re­li­gious ��bod­ies with schools per­form well at the sec­ondary school lev­el, but not at pri­ma­ry lev­el. Shi Sat­narayan Ma­haraj has en­sured that the ear­ly cow­sheds are now qual­i­ty cam­pus­es ca­pa­ble of de­liv­er­ing a wide and com­plex cur­ricu­lum ef­fi­cient­ly and ef­fec­tive­ly. At the cost of al­most US$7 mil­lion for a pri­ma­ry school and US$30 mil­lion for a sec­ondary school, the SDMS ed­u­ca­tion thrust is well en­gaged for at least an­oth­er 100 years.

The SDMS con­struct­ed 43 pri­ma­ry schools dur­ing the pe­ri­od 1952-1956, and con­tin­u­ous­ly up­grad­ed the phys­i­cal and en­vi­ron­men­tal in­fra­struc­ture over the next 50 years.How­ev­er, out of ap­par­ent re­li­gious and po­lit­i­cal spite, the SDMS was de­nied the op­por­tu­ni­ty to con­struct an­oth­er school dur­ing the pe­ri­od of 1956-1995. For al­most 40 years, a com­mu­ni­ty was de­prived of ed­u­ca­tion ex­pan­sion.

How­ev­er, dur­ing the lull, the SDMS did not push ed­u­ca­tion ex­pan­sion in­to the back­ground. Plans were con­stant­ly be­ing for­mu­lat­ed, based on pro­jec­tions on al­tered po­lit­i­cal con­di­tions. A school net­work plan based on up­grades, new schools, and a sys­tem­at­ic ex­pan­sion process was steadi­ly re­viewed.

As a con­se­quence, when the first Hin­du Prime Min­is­ter was in­stalled in 1995, the SDMS was ready and pre­pared to ac­cel­er­ate its ed­u­ca­tion ex­pan­sion thrust in a more favourable and agree­able sit­u­a­tion.

With great alacrity, the SDMS sought and ob­tained, from a more will­ing Prime Min­is­ter, per­mis­sion to con­struct an ad­di­tion­al four sec­ondary schools to com­ple­ment its on­ly high per­form­ing girls' high school–the Lak­sh­mi Girls Hin­du Col­lege. This was a sig­nal and land­mark break­through which al­lowed the SDMS to con­struct two sec­ondary schools in the cen­tral part of the coun­try and two in the south­ern part–both pock­ets of Hin­du den­si­ty.

For the first time Hin­dus had the op­tion of at­tend­ing Hin­du sec­ondary schools in these ar­eas. Here was a clear ex­am­ple of strate­gic gov­er­nance where prepa­ra­tion met op­por­tu­ni­ty to cre­ate suc­cess!

Part 3, next week: Strate­gic Gov­er­nance.