Paras Ra­moutar

Pro­fes­sor Brins­ley Sama­roo of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UTT), has called for the pub­li­ca­tion of a vol­ume of writ­ings re­flect­ing on the works of the late Ashram B Ma­haraj, who died two weeks ago at the age of 62 years. At a memo­r­i­al ser­vice (shrad­dhan­jali) or­gan­ised by the Hin­du Prachar Kendra and Rav­i­Ji at the Di­vali Na­gar on No­vem­ber 12, Prof Sama­roo said this vol­ume should al­so in­cor­po­rate some of Ma­haraj's writ­ings, and there­fore be in­ter­spersed with the thoughts and writ­ings of peo­ple with those who knew him. "This project would be­come mon­u­men­tal and ever­last­ing as when one re­views Ma­haraj's works, they fo­cus and rep­re­sent the re­al world. Whilst I was his lec­tur­er at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, he was al­so my tu­tor be­cause of his depth and un­der­stand­ing of life, I al­so be­came his stu­dent," Prof Sama­roo added. "Ashram Ma­haraj's sud­den death must not be the end of his mem­o­ry," he said.

Rav­i­Ji hailed the late au­thor as, "a per­son who was com­posed of sev­er­al ac­co­lades-writer, his­to­ri­an, teacher and mu­si­cian." Dool Hanooman Singh, a close friend and con­fi­dante, said Ma­haraj was a repos­i­to­ry of the work­ings of the In­di­an Di­as­po­ra, and his pass­ing has left an un­be­liev­able void. Ma­haraj au­thored sev­er­al books re­flec­tive of the In­di­an Di­as­po­ra, among them, In­do Trinida­di­an Folk Tales, Pan­dits in Trinidad, Kan­hai Vil­lage, HP Singh: The In­di­an Strug­gle, and Green Card Du­lahin. He held a bach­e­lor's de­gree in his­to­ry from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, and a mas­ter's de­gree in me­dieval In­di­an his­to­ry and stud­ies on the In­di­an di­as­po­ra from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Hy­der­abad, In­dia.

He had an ex­ten­sive archive of news­pa­per clip­pings and was con­sult­ed by re­searchers at home and abroad, as far as In­dia and Japan. Ma­haraj was an avid crick­eter and pho­tog­ra­ph­er, and his vo­lu­mi­nous as­sem­bly of pho­tos were tak­en at home and abroad at sev­er­al In­di­an Di­as­po­ra func­tions. He had a col­lec­tion of mu­sic in Hin­di, Tamil, Gu­jarati, Ben­gali, Ur­du, San­skrit and Pun­jabi from In­dia, and Suri­name, Guyana, Ja­maica, St Lu­cia, New York, Toron­to, Lon­don, Fi­ji and Mau­ri­tius. His mot­to was: "If it is to be done, I will do it."

"This project would be­come mon­u­men­tal and ever­last­ing as when one re­views Ma­haraj's works, they fo­cus and rep­re­sent the re­al world"