The late Pan­dit De­onar­ine Gajraj Ma­haraj was one of the many pan­dits who made a ster­ling con­tri­bu­tion to Hin­du dhar­ma in Trinidad and To­ba­go dur­ing the pe­ri­od 1950's-1980's. Deo Pan­dit as he was pop­u­lar­ly known was born at Mo­hess Road, Pe­nal and lived all his life in this vil­lage. His fa­ther, the late Gajraj Ma­haraj came as an in­den­tured im­mi­grant from Gu­jarat, In­dia in the late 1890's and was as­signed to the Phillip­ine Es­tate. The late Gajraj came from a pan­dit her­itage in Gu­jarat, In­dia, which prob­a­bly spanned hun­dreds of years. He be­longed to the up­per caste Ag­ni­hotri but adopt­ed the low­er caste name Ma­haraj in or­der to be re­cruit­ed. As an in­den­tured im­mi­grant. The Ag­ni­hotris were in­volved in fire-wor­ship and were con­sid­ered among the elite Brah­mins. The sur­name Ma­haraj was re­tained af­ter his term of in­den­ture­ship end­ed.

The late Gajraj got mar­ried to Loungee and this union pro­duced five chil­dren-Siew­narayan, Lak­sh­mi, Rook­min, Rawa­tee and De­onar­ine. Two of the off­springs, Siew­narayan and De­onar­ine be­came pan­dits. Young De­onar­ine had his pri­ma­ry ed­u­ca­tion at the Pe­nal Pres­by­ter­ian School up to Stan­dard five. He was de­nied fur­ther ed­u­ca­tion since he re­fused to con­vert to Pres­by­te­ri­an­ism. Lat­er, he took up the pro­fes­sion as a tai­lor with the fa­mous Beck­les Tai­lor­ing Es­tab­lish­ment at San Fer­nan­do where he al­so worked af­ter he com­plet­ed his train­ing. De­onar­ine got mar­ried to Shan­ti (died 1992). She was the sis­ter of the late Shankar­charya Hari Per­sad (died 2008) of SWA­HA. One can well imag­ine a wed­ding pro­ces­sion in the ear­ly 1950's leav­ing Pe­nal on the way to Aranguez.

The mar­riage of De­onar­ine and Shan­ti pro­duced six off springs, five boys and one girl. Four of the off springs are at present prac­tic­ing pan­dits as well as two grand­sons. How did De­onar­ine en­ter the priest­hood? When Gajraj died many of his chelas co­erced De­onar­ine to prac­tice pan­di­tai. This meant leav­ing the lu­cra­tive tai­lor­ing trade to be­come a full-time pan­dit. He even­tu­al­ly gave in to the nu­mer­ous re­quests to car­ry out his fa­ther's ser­vice to the com­mu­ni­ty. In or­der to do this he had to pur­sue fur­ther train­ing in the Sanatan Dhar­ma. He re­ceived pri­vate tu­ition from the Late Pan­dits Jankie Per­sad Shar­ma and Bal Gan­gad­har and one Hansa who was a sur­viv­ing In­di­an im­mi­grant.

De­onar­ine be­came ex­treme­ly versed in the read­ing of the Sri­mad Bha­ga­vatam and was among the best ex­po­nents of this scrip­ture. It was in this field that he stood out among oth­er pan­dits. Gift­ed with a beau­ti­ful voice he ren­dered bha­jans which many still re­mem­ber to­day and can at­tribute to him. There bha­jans in­clud­ed, Bare Pyar se Mil­na Sab­se, Go­vard­han Pu­jan Rad­ha Chale, Bhag­wat Bhag­wan, Ki Hai Ar­ti, Mai to go­vard­han ki jaon­gi, Jana Hitkari Jai Jai Ram, Ay­o­d­ha mai aaj anand bhayi kaushilya me jan­me ram, and Vais­hanav Va­jan to. While De­onar­ine did not have mu­si­cal ac­com­pa­ni­ment he was still able to bring out the in­fec­tious melodies in his ren­di­tions.

De­spite not hav­ing high­er ed­u­ca­tion De­onar­ine had a nat­ur­al flair for dra­ma, which was dis­played in his nar­ra­tion of the Bha­ga­vat Pu­ran. De­onar­ine was able to merge the styles of Jankie Ba­ba and Gan­gad­har Ba­ba. He was de­scribed as a clone of these two out­stand­ing pan­dits. Deo Pan­dit was al­ways im­pec­ca­bly dressed when he had to per­form at yag­nas. He used to sew his kur­tas him­self. Nu­mer­ous in­vi­ta­tions were ex­tend­ed to him to read yag­nas in Guyana and Suri­nam, How­ev­er, he nev­er made any of these trips. De­onar­ine be­came a pan­dit who was very much in de­mand and had thou­sands of chelas all over the coun­try. He used to write the names and ad­dress­es of all his God's chil­dren in old di­aries, these di­aries still sur­vive.

As a pan­dit he used to wear his dhoti, put on a pair of trousers over his dhoti and ride his bi­cy­cle to his des­ti­na­tion to con­duct pu­jas, Seed­has or of­fer­ings to the priest, dur­ing this pe­ri­od of­fer­ings in­clud­ed a large pump­kin. One can imag­ine the tremen­dous bal­anc­ing act to car­ry a pump­kin while rid­ing a bi­cy­cle. With the late Pat Mathu­ra of Ra­dio Trinidad as it was then known De­onar­ine did sev­er­al Di­vali pro­grammes dur­ing the 1960's. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, at­tempts to lo­cate record­ings of these pro­grammes have not been pos­si­ble.

Some con­tem­po­rary pan­dits of De­onar­ine of this pe­ri­od in­clud­ed, Chow­bay, Siew Moorat, Bas­deo Pyare­lal, Nir­mal, Teeluck­d­har­ry, Paras­ram, Kashi Per­sad Mishra, Param Nar­ine, Seer­eram Jadoo­nanan Mis­ra and Dharam. These pan­dits had a won­der­ful ca­ma­raderie and saw their func­tion as serv­ing the com­mu­ni­ty. Deo Pan­dit be­came a gu­ru to many per­sons. Sev­er­al stu­dents at Uni­ver­si­ties both lo­cal and for­eign would vis­it him for guid­ance in their stud­ies. He was al­so the fam­i­ly pan­dit to sev­er­al promi­nent fam­i­lies in­clud­ing the Garib­dass and many Afro-Trinida­di­ans. Apart from the pan­di­tai pro­fes­sion Deo Pan­dit al­so per­formed sev­er­al so­cio-cul­tur­al func­tions in the com­mu­ni­ty. He was the first per­son to run a Hin­di class at the Mo­hess Road Hin­du School with ex­treme suc­cess. Even Pro­fes­sor H S Adesh (Bharatya Vidya Sansthan) in 1966 was full of praise for Deo Pan­dit.

Deo Pan­dit, though not very versed in the Eng­lish lan­guage be­came a fre­quent let­ter writer to the news­pa­pers com­ment­ing on is­sues of the day which af­fect­ed the Hin­du Com­mu­ni­ty. Pan­dit De­onar­ine Gajraj Ma­haraj died in 1990 af­ter a pro­longed ill­ness but he left be­hind a last­ing lega­cy of ser­vice to the Hin­du Com­mu­ni­ty. His sons and grand­sons car­ry out this tra­di­tion which spans over six hun­dred years. Deo Pan­dit knew the val­ue of his­to­ry and main­tained con­tacts with his rel­a­tives in Gu­jarat. Pan­dit Dayanand Ma­haraj, son of the late Deo Pan­dit is in the process of pro­duc­ing a CD with some of the bha­jans made pop­u­lar by his fa­ther. For his con­tri­bu­tion to Hin­du Dhar­ma and com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice on this oc­ca­sion of Di­vali 2011 we re­mem­ber Pan­dit De­onar­ine Gajraj Ma­haraj.