Sat Ma­haraj

"What is called 'Hin­duism' in the present day could not be de­stroyed as no in­vad­er or for­eign­er or prac­tis­ing Hin­du could ex­plore Hin­duism in-depth. Its roots are em­bed­ded in mys­te­ri­ous sources. Its branch­es have in­vad­ed space. Hin­duism is all-per­va­sive, all-in­clu­sive and pen­e­trat­ing in­to the depths."

In a pub­li­ca­tion ti­tled "Hin­du Gods and God­dess­es," Swa­mi Har­shanan­da, a devo­tee of Ra­makr­ish­na, a famed Hin­du in­car­na­tion, be­gins his pub­li­ca­tion with this analy­sis of Hin­duism. The Swa­mi con­tin­ues: "The pe­cu­liar char­ac­ter­is­tic of Hin­duism is that it does not eas­i­ly lend it­self to be fit­ted in­to any rigid pat­tern or frame­work. Un­like the oth­er great re­li­gions of the world, it does not have one founder, one scrip­ture, or even one way of life. It is pre­cise­ly due to this rea­son that it is some­times dubbed, not as a re­li­gion but on­ly as a way or life or just a cul­ture.

"This eter­nal and an­cient spir­i­tu­al path is be­ing re­vealed to dif­fer­ent peo­ples of the Earth in dif- fer­ent pe­ri­ods of their his­to­ry, in dif­fer­ent ways. Maybe, the proph-ets through whom it is re­vealed are dif­fer­ent. Maybe, the mode of wor­ship rec­om­mend­ed is dif­fer­ent. Maybe, the gods are giv­en dif­fer­ent names. But the core of the teach­ing giv­en by all the re­li­gions and the con­tents of spir­i­tu­al ex­pe­ri­ence ob­tained are iden­ti-cal."

Mem­bers of the Sanatan Dhar-ma Ma­ha Sab­ha and all those who joined in the cel­e­bra­tion of In­di­an Ar­rival Day do not re­ly on me­dia cov­er­age, ill-in­formed jour­nal­ists or even state fund­ing to guide them in­to wor­ship and recog­ni­tion of ar­rival of our an­ces­tors and the con­tri­bu­tion they have made to the de­vel­op­ment of T&T.

The Hin­du "pan­chang" or cal­en­dar of re­li­gious events guides us as to how to cel­e­brate and how to wor­ship the con­tri­bu­tion of our an­ces­tors. This "pan­chang" is com­piled ac­cord­ing to both lu­nar and so­lar cal­cu­la­tions to pro­vide max­i­mum spir­i­tu­al and pos­i­tive in­flu­ence for the devo­tees.

In our 2012 re­li­gious cal­en­dar it is clear­ly de­fined that Pitri Paksh be­gins on Sep­tem­ber 30 and con­tin­ues for 14 days. An­nu­al­ly the Hin­du is in­struct­ed to re­mem­ber gen­er­a­tions of the an­ces­tors and that on every morn­ing they should rise, face the ris­ing sun and of­fer wa­ter from a lota (a brass ves­sel) in the name of the many de­ceased an­ces­tors who they could re­call.

Cer­tain ill-in­formed com­men­ta­tors write un­der the mis­tak­en no­tion that we cel­e­brate In­di­an Ar­rival Day on­ly be­cause it was re­cent­ly de­clared a pub­lic hol­i­day. This is to­tal­ly er­ro­neous and re­quires these writ­ers to re­turn to more his­tor­i­cal re­search.

As a teenag­er at­tend­ing pri­ma­ry school in Ca­roni Vil­lage, I was pri-vi­leged to join with oth­er mem­bers of my school, led by now de- ceased prin­ci­pal Daniel Pram­sook Kalloo, and trav­el by train to Skin­ner Park, San Fer­nan­do, on May 30, 1945. As a com­mu­ni­ty and even with­out state fund­ing, thou­sands gath­ered at Skin­ner Park to cel­e­brate this his­toric day of the land­ing of the SS Fa­tel Raza­ck with its first con­tin­gent of in­den­tured labour­ers. We con­sid­ered it then to be a du­ty to our an­ces­tors and we con­sid­er it now to be a re­li­gious re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

The In­di­an cen­te­nary cel­e­bra­tion was at­tend­ed by se­nior colo­nial of­fi­cers from Britain and the then or­gan­is­ers even re­ceived a ca­ble mes­sage from the great In­di­an leader, the late Ma­hat­ma Gand­hi. There are some who cel­e­brate their com­mu­ni­ty's ar­rival on­ly re­cent­ly af­ter In­di­an Ar­rival had be­come na­tion­al. To these we ad- vise: make your an­ces­tors proud by the way you live your lives on a dai­ly ba­sis.

But even as we cel­e­brate, the less in­formed rush to print with­out an ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the facts. In the Ex­press of May 29, un­der the head­line "We ent ar­rived as yet," Clarence Ramb­harat wrote (he based his the­o­ry on ill-in­formed facts): "Days af­ter the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship cel­e­bra­tion and Aloes' per­for­mance, the Sanatan Dhar-ma Ma­ha Sab­ha (SDMS) em­ployed no fig leaf for its In­di­an Ar­rival Din­ner (held at the Crowne Plaza on May 25). It re­mains in­con­ceiv­able and puerile for the SDMS to tout mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism, let four East In­di­an gov­ern­ment min­is­ters (ac­tu­al­ly five), ad­dress its din­ner, but not in­vite the non-In­di­an min­is­ter to ad­dress the din­ner.

"In­di­an Ar­rival Day is it­self a na­tion­al cel­e­bra­tion of an his­toric event in­volv­ing in­den­tured la-bour­ers from the In­di­an sub­con­ti­nent. But it is not a hol­i­day for 'In­di­ans,', an 'In­di­an' cel­e­bra­tion or Hin­du re­li­gious event. "It is there­fore dif­fi­cult to be­lieve that those sen­si­ble min­is­ters and their pub­lic re­la­tions and oth­er han­dlers would con­tin­ue to al­low them­selves to be props at these events."

The fact is that Min­is­ter of Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism "Gyp­sy" Pe­ters was in­vit­ed, did not at­tend, and gave us no rea­son for fail­ing for the sec­ond year to at­tend our In­di­an Ar­rival Day Din­ner func­tion or even send a writ­ten mes­sage. Ramb­harat should al­so know that one of our great an­tag­o­nists, Prof Sel­wyn Cud­joe, was at the func­tion, met many of our dig­ni­taries and prob­a­bly learnt a few lessons on how to cel­e­brate Eman­ci­pa­tion Day. We ex­pect Prof Cud­joe to write his usu­al crit­i­cal piece and ad­vise Ram-bharat to re­search his "pieces" more thor­ough­ly.

• Sat­narayan Ma­haraj is the sec­re­tary gen­er­al of the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha