The Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha (SDMS) is re­nam­ing the Shi­va Boys’ Hin­du Col­lege to Bas­deo Pan­day Shi­va Boys’ Hin­du Col­lege in ho­n­our of the for­mer prime min­is­ter.

The de­ci­sion was tak­en at an ex­ec­u­tive coun­cil meet­ing on Wednes­day and an­nounced dur­ing the SDMS’ Spe­cial Trib­ute to Bas­deo Pan­day yes­ter­day. It was on­ly the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s sec­ond trib­ute of its kind with the first re­cip­i­ent be­ing for­mer SDMS Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al, Sat Ma­haraj who died in No­vem­ber 2019.

SDMS gen­er­al sec­re­tary Vi­jay Ma­haraj pro­posed the name change at the body’s ex­ec­u­tive coun­cil meet­ing. He said, “This is a last­ing trib­ute to the ded­i­ca­tion, to the strug­gle, for a bet­ter na­tion and the his­tor­i­cal role as the na­tion’s first In­di­an, Hin­du prime min­is­ter. The re­nam­ing is not just sym­bol­ic. It is not a sym­bol­ic ges­ture. It is an af­fir­ma­tion of our cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty, a cel­e­bra­tion of our shared her­itage and a recog­ni­tion of the con­tri­bu­tion of those who have shaped the des­tiny of our na­tion.”

The news came af­ter four stu­dents from the school nabbed schol­ar­ships fol­low­ing the 2023 Caribbean Ad­vanced Pro­fi­cien­cy Ex­am­i­na­tions last year.

“Let us em­brace this op­por­tu­ni­ty to in­spire fu­ture gen­er­a­tions, to in­stil in them the val­ues of jus­tice, equal­i­ty and cul­tur­al pride. To­geth­er, let us take this mo­men­tous step for­wards cre­at­ing a lega­cy that will echo through the cor­ri­dors of time,” Ma­haraj added.

The chair­man of trib­utes, Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly, said the or­gan­i­sa­tion has spo­ken to Mick­ela Pan­day, daugh­ter of the for­mer prime min­is­ter, on the re­nam­ing of the school in ho­n­our of her late fa­ther. While she said she had no ob­jec­tion, she said she would speak to her moth­er and sib­lings to get their views.

“We have giv­en the as­sur­ance that sub­ject to their word, we will pro­ceed with the cer­e­mo­ni­al as­pect of the re­nam­ing of the school and ac­com­pa­ny­ing memo­r­i­al,” the chair­man said.

The SDMS has al­so pro­posed to in­vite Mick­ela Pan­day and any oth­er fam­i­ly mem­bers to its Jaa­garan pro­gramme to speak about their fa­ther from what­ev­er per­spec­tive they so choose.

Ad­dress­ing the meet­ing, an emo­tion­al SDMS Dhar­ma­charya Dr Ram­per­sad Paras­ram, who was the found­ing chair­man of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress and worked with Pan­day to help form the par­ty, said, “For those of us who walked part of the jour­ney with him and who took part in build­ing in­sti­tu­tions to take for­ward the dream, we can at­test to the fact that there was nev­er a dull mo­ment. There were good and bad days, vic­to­ry and de­feat and fleet­ing mo­ments of de­spon­den­cy but there was no giv­ing up, re­gard­less.”

Dur­ing the SDMS’ ex­ec­u­tive meet­ing on Wednes­day, where the res­o­lu­tion was passed to re­name the Shi­va Boys’ Col­lege in ho­n­our of Pan­day, sec­re­tary gen­er­al Ma­haraj spoke per­son­al­ly of how he saw the for­mer prime min­is­ter.

“When the ink has dried on the records and the archives are for­mat­ted, we in the The Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha will feel proud that we were able to hail the life of this pow­er­ful war­rior and to reg­is­ter the sen­ti­ments which we have to­day. Per­mit me to say, on a per­son­al note, that I want the record to say that he was the best prime min­is­ter this coun­try ever had.”

—with re­port­ing by Gail Alexan­der