Most In­di­an em­i­grants were con­sid­ered il­lit­er­ate, al­though many could read and write their own In­di­an lan­guage. Un­til about 1900, the Hin­dus did not have for­mal­ly trained pun­dits. In the be­gin­ning, they did not have suf­fi­cient mon­ey to build their mandirs and lim­it­ed copies of a few scrip­tures like Tul­si­das Ra­mayana.

Thus, the so­cial fab­ric of the Hin­dus was torn to shreds. It is re­al­ly a mir­a­cle that out of the torn ends of the so­cial in­sti­tu­tions, we have been able to weave a new Hin­du so­cial fab­ric.

Cre­at­ed by an act of Par­lia­ment in 1952, the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha has al­ways been the or­gan­i­sa­tion with the great­est fol­low­ing among the Hin­dus in Trinidad and To­ba­go. It has al­ways prop­a­gat­ed the tenets of Hin­duism in its tra­di­tion­al forms.

The in­flu­ence of this body on the na­tion­al life of T&T comes about through its or­gan­i­sa­tion­al struc­tures across the na­tion and its in­flu­ence among Hin­dus.

The Ma­ha Sab­ha was trans­formed in­to a mod­ern Hin­du or­gan­i­sa­tion, main­tain­ing com­put­erised records of tem­ples, schools and teach­ers, and in­sti­tu­tions at­tached to it, and ac­quir­ing re­al es­tate ex­pand­ing its base.

Our in­sti­tu­tions com­prise 43 pri­ma­ry schools, five col­leges, 12 ear­ly child­hood cen­tres and 154 mandirs across Trinidad. These in­sti­tu­tions are ad­min­is­tered by a teach­ing staff of 1,200 and 225 pan­dits’ to ser­vice the re­li­gious needs of these in­sti­tu­tions and the Hin­du pop­u­la­tion.

The Ma­ha Sab­ha, not will­ing to ac­cept the con­tin­ued mar­gin­al­i­sa­tion of In­di­an pres­ence in T&T, de­cid­ed to open its own In­di­an Mu­se­um in May 2006, re­cent­ly cel­e­brat­ing its 20th an­niver­sary.

We viewed this as im­por­tant, so that our fu­ture gen­er­a­tions of both In­di­ans and non-In­di­ans alike know about the con­tri­bu­tions of In­di­an im­mi­grants to the na­tion. The mod­ern age has made ob­so­lete many tools, uten­sils, etc, that our chil­dren should learn about. This is a lega­cy for all our cit­i­zens.

T&T is a mul­ti-cul­tur­al so­ci­ety con­sist­ing of African, In­di­ans, Chi­nese, Syr­i­ans, Lebanese, Cau­casians and per­sons of mixed race. The coun­try is al­so home to the ma­jor re­li­gions: Chris­tian­i­ty, Hin­duism, Is­lam and nu­mer­ous African re­li­gions. Fun­da­men­tal to the man­age­ment of plur­al so­ci­eties is the es­tab­lish­ment of in­sti­tu­tions to pre­serve the iden­ti­ty of in­di­vid­ual groups.

In­sti­tu­tions like the mu­se­um, the Pan­dits’ School of Hin­duism and re­lat­ed think tanks are es­sen­tial to en­sur­ing the preser­va­tion of the cul­ture and his­to­ry of a group of peo­ple against the back­drop of a na­tion­al iden­ti­ty.

A mu­se­um is an in­sti­tu­tion which im­parts knowl­edge of the past to those liv­ing in the present by the care­ful iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the find­ings of ar­chae­ol­o­gists and his­to­ri­ans. Mu­se­ums serve as repos­i­to­ries for the col­lec­tion, ex­hi­bi­tion and study of ob­jects of artis­tic, sci­en­tif­ic, his­tor­i­cal and ed­u­ca­tion­al in­ter­est.

We live in a shrink­ing world, and what takes place in one part of the world in­stan­ta­neous­ly af­fects the rest of it The ad­vances in com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nol­o­gy have been dra­mat­ic. This per­mits over­pow­er­ing cul­tur­al in­flu­ence, which is alien to Hin­duism. This is our newest chal­lenge.

Ra­dio and Tele­vi­sion Jaagri­ti form part of the Ma­ha Sab­ha fam­i­ly and, as such, are guid­ed by the re­li­gious phi­los­o­phy of the or­tho­dox Sanatan Dhar­ma.

We in T&T are part of the glob­al Hin­du di­as­po­ra whose ideas, ethics, phi­los­o­phy and sci­en­tif­ic skills are shap­ing the mod­erni­sa­tion of the world for the greater pur­suit of hu­man rights, jus­tice and the wel­fare of mankind.

We es­tab­lished a Hin­du ra­dio sta­tion that reach­es every cit­i­zen in our coun­try. We al­so have a large over­seas lis­ten­er­ship, es­pe­cial­ly in North Amer­i­ca, Eu­rope and the world at large.

The his­to­ry of our ra­dio sta­tion is one born out of le­gal ac­tions against dis­crim­i­na­tion by the state au­thor­i­ties.

On Ju­ly 4th, 2006, the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha was vic­to­ri­ous in its ap­peal to the Privy Coun­cil against the Gov­ern­ment, be­cause of its con­sis­tent re­fusal to award the or­gan­i­sa­tion a ra­dio li­cence. In a land­mark judg­ment, Lord Mance said ‘in light of the ex­cep­tion­al cir­cum­stances’ of the dis­crim­i­na­tion, the Privy Coun­cil would or­der At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie to do all that is nec­es­sary to en­sure a li­cence was is­sued forth­with. The State was al­so or­dered to pay the Ma­ha Sab­ha’s le­gal costs.

Our sta­tion, Ra­dio Jaagri­ti 102.7 FM, was found­ed. By Jan­u­ary 2008, we es­tab­lished a tele­vi­sion chan­nel—TV Jaagri­ti.

The last re­port of the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice of T&T showed that the Hin­du pop­u­la­tion com­prised 23.4 per cent of the na­tion­al pop­u­la­tion. His­tor­i­cal­ly, the Hin­du pop­u­la­tion con­tin­ues to ac­count for near­ly a quar­ter of the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion. Yet, de­spite this nu­mer­i­cal size, the Hin­du pop­u­la­tion’s re­li­gious needs are vir­tu­al­ly ig­nored by the na­tion­al me­dia.