Con­clu­sion

A unique fea­ture of the school build­ing pro­gramme was the man­ner in which some of the schools came to be erect­ed. When vil­lagers in­di­cat­ed to Bhadase Sagan Maraj that they want­ed a school in their area, he sim­ply re­quest­ed them to iden­ti­fy the land. If the land be­longed to some­one, Bhadase ne­go­ti­at­ed with the land own­er to do­nate or pur­chase the plot of land. The vil­lagers then pro­ceed­ed to raise the funds and this was sup­ple­ment­ed by build­ing ma­te­ri­als and funds which Bhadase do­nat­ed.

Giv­en the press­ing and strained cir­cum­stances, these were of ne­ces­si­ty sim­ple struc­tures, which lat­er be­came the ob­jects of ridicule for Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) leader Dr Er­ic Williams. He scathing­ly brand­ed them as “cow­sheds.” Bhadase’s re­sponse was that, “It is bet­ter to give a child an ed­u­ca­tion in a cow­shed than none at all.”

The school build­ing pro­gramme came to an abrupt end with the PNM vic­to­ry at the polls in 1956. The par­ty, hav­ing formed the gov­ern­ment, placed an im­me­di­ate freeze on the school ex­pan­sion pro­gramme of the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha (SDMS).

The mag­ni­tude of Bhadase’s achieve­ments in this field can be eas­i­ly recog­nised when one con­sid­ers that be­tween 1956 and 1995, not a sin­gle school was con­struct­ed by the board be­cause of the freeze on the es­tab­lish­ment of new schools im­posed on the SDMS by the gov­ern­ment.

In­cred­i­bly, then, with­in one gen­er­a­tion, Bhadase had been able to as­sist in the trans­for­ma­tion of a cane-cut­ting, grass-cut­ting, agri­cul­ture-ori­ent­ed com­mu­ni­ty in­to one of the most lit­er­ate com­mu­ni­ties in the na­tion.
Ed­u­ca­tion­al ad­vance­ment, the dream and am­bi­tion of young Hin­dus by the late 50s and 60s, be­came a re­al­i­ty. The days of trekking through cane fields, bare­foot­ed, jour­ney­ing to dif­fer­ent faith schools had passed.

Such a move­ment does not oc­cur overnight or with­out di­rec­tion, and Bhadase de­serves all ac­co­lades for this.

Apart from his in­volve­ment in the con­struc­tion of schools, Bhadase was al­so ac­tive­ly in­volved at this time in the con­struc­tion of tem­ples through­out the coun­try. He gave gen­er­ous sums of mon­ey, two or three thou­sand dol­lars in most in­stances, to as­sist in the build­ing of var­i­ous tem­ples. To­day, there are few tem­ples in the coun­try which can claim not to have ben­e­fit­ed from his gen­eros­i­ty.

A sig­nif­i­cant weak­ness, how­ev­er, was that he did not spend time to con­sol­i­date the re­al es­tate of the SDMS and con­se­quent­ly, many SDMS tem­ples re­mained in pri­vate hands.
Two le­gal minds helped to con­sol­i­date some of the es­tate of the SDMS, Simb­hoonath Capildeo and Se­lochan Dols­ingh.Bhadase gen­er­ous­ly gave as­sis­tance with­out in­sist­ing on the trans­fer of ti­tles, as, true to his char­ac­ter, he was pri­mar­i­ly con­cerned with the es­tab­lish­ment of the in­sti­tu­tions them­selves.

As a busi­ness­man, phil­an­thropist and so­cial work­er, Bhadase was fam­i­ly-com­mit­ted to the fullest util­i­sa­tion of what­ev­er re­sources and en­er­gy were avail­able. In the tem­ple-build­ing pro­gramme, he en­vis­aged cre­at­ing struc­tures which fu­ture gen­er­a­tions of Hin­dus in the coun­try will build up­on. In this con­text, he was a re­li­gious vi­sion­ary look­ing way ahead in­to the 21st cen­tu­ry.

The pun­dits who shared his views at the time got his to­tal sup­port in their prop­a­ga­tion of Hin­duism. He as­sist­ed them by or­gan­is­ing, mo­bil­is­ing re­sources and build­ing and cre­at­ing an­cil­lary struc­tures for them.

In the school build­ing pro­gramme it­self, Bhadase was firm in his be­lief that teach­ers in the Hin­du schools should be teach­ers of their re­li­gion as well. As a re­sult, dur­ing his tenure, con­fer­ences for Hin­du teach­ers were or­gan­ised and one sig­nif­i­cant out­come of these con­fer­ences was the pub­lish­ing of “My Prayer Book” for use in the schools.

Bhadase must al­so be cred­it­ed for the pop­u­lar­i­ty of the largest Hin­du cel­e­bra­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go; he was in­stru­men­tal in the gov­ern­ment de­clar­ing Di­vali a pub­lic hol­i­day in 1966.

Bhadase or­gan­ised the first-ever gath­er­ing of Hin­dus on the oc­ca­sion of Kar­tik Snaan in 1956 (over 20,000 peo­ple on Man­zanil­la Beach). A pic­ture of Bhadase and Simb­hoonath Capildeo per­form­ing pu­ja bare­backed on the beach high­light­ed the oc­ca­sion.

Bhadase was able to utilise the or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Ma­ha Sab­ha to se­cure sev­er­al gains for the Hin­du com­mu­ni­ty. He made Hin­dus re­alise that the dy­nam­ic body he had built could ef­fec­tive­ly ag­i­tate for them in sev­er­al ways. The Ma­ha Sab­ha could be used to ad­vance their re­li­gion, in­crease ed­u­ca­tion­al ad­vance­ment and pro­vide them with a cer­tain de­gree of po­lit­i­cal clout. Bhadase fought might­i­ly for these things and his suc­cess was every­where ev­i­dent, even to­day.