SASCHA WIL­SON

Trinidad-born Cana­di­an Ma­han­tji Dr Bal­li­ram Chadee has been spread­ing the mes­sage, ideals and work of Lord Hanu­man through­out the world for the past 15 years.

His spir­i­tu­al jour­ney, which took flight at the age of 40, in­spired him to es­tab­lish the first Hanu­man char­i­ty or­gan­i­sa­tion in Cana­da, the Hanu­man Mis­sion, where he has been able to reach and help thou­sands of peo­ple.

Born in Fyz­abad, Chadee al­so has the ho­n­our of be­ing the on­ly known Trinida­di­an who can legal­ly of­fi­ci­ate mar­riages in three coun­tries, Cana­da, T&T and Unit­ed States.

Sum­ming up in a few words his in­cred­u­lous jour­ney in the last 15 years which saw him heal­ing, pray­ing and help­ing thou­sands of peo­ple around the world, Chadee, 57, said, “Mirac­u­lous, un­be­liev­able, mind-blow­ing. The im­pos­si­ble be­com­ing pos­si­ble, chang­ing lives and do­ing what I nev­er thought I could nev­er do.” 

His spir­i­tu­al call­ing came when he was just a young boy, but it was over­shad­owed by his com­mit­ments in life, in­clud­ing his ed­u­ca­tion, work and fam­i­ly.

He mi­grat­ed to Cana­da at age 22 and re­turned to Trinidad on June 6, 1991, where he got mar­ried to his wife Mer­le.

They re­turned to Cana­da where they had their two chil­dren Aar­ti and Avesh. 

Chadee said, “The dri­ving call­ing force for Hanu­man­ji start­ed when I was a young kid, but it pro­pelled over the years and it in­ten­si­fied on the birth of my daugh­ter. As a re­sult of that, I em­barked on this spir­i­tu­al jour­ney in my late 20s and ear­ly 30s.”

Work­ing as a qual­i­ty in­sur­ance, project man­age­ment and com­pli­ance con­sul­tant, Chadee said he fi­nal­ly de­cid­ed that as a gift to him­self on his 40th birth­day on April 9, 2002 was to ac­cept the call­ing of Lord Hanu­man and serve him. “I ac­cept­ed to take on the role of the Lord to start his mis­sion called Hanu­man Mis­sion on my 40th birth­day,”  he said.

Chadee reg­is­tered the or­gan­i­sa­tion in 2002 and in 2005 it was of­fi­cial­ly launched be­fore an au­di­ence of 1,200 peo­ple and car­ried on ra­dio and tele­vi­sion. 

Chadee, who sub­se­quent­ly grad­u­at­ed with a mas­ters de­gree in Hin­duism and Hin­du Stud­ies coined the word Hanu­man­ism when he start­ed to do his out­reach work,  heal­ing, cur­ing and hu­man­i­tar­i­an work. 

He ex­plained the word means serv­ing Hanu­man with his ideals, val­ues and prin­ci­ples to serve hu­man­i­ty. “And so we have en­gaged in a lot of out­reach pro­grammes to every­body, race, re­li­gion,  colour and creed it did not mat­ter be­cause the prin­ci­ple of Hanu­man­ji was that he was a self­less ser­vant. He did every­thing with­out look­ing for re­wards and my man­date was to al­so to do every­thing with­out re­ward, with­out judg­ing any­one.

“On his 50th birth­day, af­ter he at­tained his PhD, Chadee where he was or­dained at Sankat Mochan Hanu­man tem­ple in In­dia. That is where he got the aus­pi­cious ti­tle Ma­han­tji. “As far as I know I am the first Trinida­di­an to have the ti­tle Ma­han­tji. Oth­ers in the Kabir panths faith car­ry just Ma­hant, which iden­ti­fies them as a priest, but Ma­han­tji is a ti­tle giv­en to re­li­gious and spir­i­tu­al ad­min­is­tra­tors who are blessed by Shree Hanu­man­ji to over­see his mis­sions.”

Chadee launched Hanu­man Mis­sion in Trinidad in 2015 at the tem­ple in the sea in Wa­ter­loo af­ter it was recog­nised by the gov­ern­ment of T&T.

The event was car­ried live across three ra­dio sta­tions in Cana­da, the Unit­ed States and Trinidad and the fea­ture ad­dress was done by then-at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan.

Eleven is the num­ber as­so­ci­at­ed with Hanu­man as he was the 11th man­i­fes­ta­tion of Lord Shi­va on earth. As a re­sult, he al­so do­nat­ed 11 wheel­chairs in­di­vid­u­als. Gift­ed with four lots of land in To­ba­go, Chadee’s vi­sion to build a re­li­gious re­treat and Hanu­man tem­ple to help cure peo­ple around the world.

He said, “On Ply­mouth Road, there is a small moun­tain about 165 feet above road lev­el, un­de­vel­oped. And we are hop­ing we can get help to build the tem­ple and re­treat and ed­u­ca­tion cen­tre and a place of wor­ship where we can heal peo­ple un­der the bless­ing, guid­ance and ten­ants from Hanu­man­ji. That is his man­date and that is my goal and I hope to achieve that be­fore my life ends.” 

One of his out­reach ini­tia­tives was the cir­cu­la­tion of 5,000 book­lets of the Hanu­man Chal­isa around the world. For the past 15 years, the group has been air­ing the Hanu­man Chal­isa (a de­vo­tion­al hymn to Hanu­man) has been air­ing on a tele­vi­sion sta­tion in Cana­da and the past four year on T&T’s Ra­dio Jagri­ti.

His group al­so co­or­di­nat­ed an in­ter­na­tion­al day of kind­ness to have one per­son in 11 coun­tries around the world to si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly feed, help, cloth, give mon­ey and a gift to 11 needy peo­ple.

For his birth­day in April, Chadee re­turned to In­dia where his group co­or­di­nat­ed, with the help of spon­sors, free eye surgery for 207 peo­ple at the Sankara Hos­pi­tal, Ban­ga­lore.

“We use Hanu­man pow­er, ideals, mes­sage and teach­ings to serve hu­man­i­ty and that is what I do,” said Chadee who pledged to con­tin­ue his ser­vice to Hanu­man and mankind as long as he has breath in his body.