I can stand proud as a Hin­du woman to­day be­cause Mr Sat­narayan Ma­haraj paved the way for all Hin­dus through­out this twin-is­land Re­pub­lic, to ac­cept and em­brace who we are.

I heard Fitzger­ald Hinds say with ref­er­ence to the Cam­bridge An­a­lyt­i­ca claim, that cit­i­zens were be­ing spied on, that In­di­ans should be more con­cerned about these al­le­ga­tions be­cause we were born in­to tech­nol­o­gy while they are still learn­ing. This made no sense to me ei­ther way but was a con­fir­ma­tion of how In­di­ans are now per­ceived in this coun­try com­pared to decades ago when we were re­ferred to as il­le­git­i­mates who were be­ing ed­u­cat­ed in cow­sheds.

Dur­ing a pre­sen­ta­tion of his bi­og­ra­phy at the NGC Bo­cas Lit Fest South, in No­vem­ber 2014, Sat was asked by a mem­ber of the au­di­ence about his con­tri­bu­tion as Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al.

He re­spond­ed with can­did buoy­an­cy, that there was a time when young Hin­du girls were not al­lowed an ed­u­ca­tion, but to­day you can see these lit­tle In­di­an girls walk­ing through the cor­ri­dors of the hos­pi­tals with stetho­scopes hang­ing around their necks.

Our progress is a com­bi­na­tion of many fac­tors in­clud­ing strong fam­i­ly val­ues, cul­tur­al preser­va­tion and rais­ing our chil­dren to ap­pre­ci­ate what they have. It is even ev­i­dent in the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem based on re­sults, that de­nom­i­na­tion­al schools are more suc­cess­ful be­cause God and fam­i­ly are a vi­tal part of the cur­ricu­lum.

If you have read Sat’s bi­og­ra­phy, you’ll ap­pre­ci­ate the many strug­gles and glar­ing dis­crim­i­na­tion that he was forced to bear be­cause of his re­li­gious be­liefs and re­fusal to bow to pres­sure. This cer­tain­ly must have been sim­i­lar to that ex­pe­ri­enced by the late Dr Er­ic Williams, when he spoke of his ex­pe­ri­ence of racism in his au­to­bi­og­ra­phy and the im­pact of it in his trav­els.

The sad re­al­i­ty is that per­sons tend to re­peat what oth­ers say with­out read­ing or lis­ten­ing to the facts be­fore form­ing their own opin­ions. Not once did Sat ever im­pose his be­liefs on oth­ers the way cer­tain sects con­tin­ue to do.

In­stead, he en­cour­aged Hin­dus to pre­serve their own cul­ture, be­liefs, re­li­gious prac­tices and tra­di­tions, which is quite frankly what he was en­trust­ed to do as Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al of the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha. I al­so doubt, that any­one who has rant­ed against him can safe­ly say that he has nev­er des­e­crat­ed an­oth­er re­li­gion as op­posed to sim­ply de­fend­ing his own. In fact, he worked close­ly with the IRO to en­sure there was fair­ness and uni­ty across the coun­try.

It would be re­miss of me if I did not add my con­tri­bu­tion as we bid farewell to a great man who stood strong in his de­ter­mi­na­tion to ed­u­cate and up­lift the lives of his peo­ple while pre­serv­ing the world’s most an­cient sur­viv­ing re­li­gion.

All this with­out any po­lit­i­cal or per­son­al agen­das.

Now that he is gone, there are not many who can fill Sat’s well-worn san­dals; not even with a tight fit.

Vashti Bowlah