Sat Ma­haraj

On Ju­ly 4, Lak­sh­mi Girls Hin­du Col­lege held its grad­u­a­tion ex­er­cise at the school's au­di­to­ri­um on the East­ern Main Road, St Au­gus­tine. Clement Sankat, prin­ci­pal of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, and Mrs Sankat were there to wit­ness their daugh­ter Sar­isha's grad­u­a­tion. De­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress was Jwala Ram­baran, whose daugh­ter is al­so a stu­dent at the col­lege.

Mr Ram­baran was sub­se­quent­ly ap­point­ed Gov­er­nor of the Cen­tral Bank. We pro­duce part of his ad­dress to the grad­u­at­ing Lak­sh­mi stu­dents, to­day, Trinidad and To­ba­go is ad­just­ing to the end of its third en­er­gy boom. Di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion is the new mantra. We have our first coali­tion gov­ern­ment. We have our first fe­male Prime Min­is­ter.

Our lead­ers are strug­gling with an eco­nom­ic cri­sis that start­ed since the sum­mer of 2007 and con­tin­ues to send shock waves through­out fi­nan­cial mar­kets. To­day, tech­nol­o­gy is rapid­ly defin­ing our world. Here are some sur­pris­ing sta­tis­tics on tech­nol­o­gy's in­flu­ence:

• There are over 800 mil­lion reg­is­tered users of Face­book (and that does not in­clude the hid­den ac­counts of the Lak­sh­mi Girls). If Face­book were a coun­try it would be the third largest, af­ter Chi­na and In­dia.

• The num­ber of text mes­sages sent and re­ceived dai­ly now ex­ceeds the to­tal sev­en bil­lion peo­ple on the plan­et.

• For stu­dents start­ing a three-year BSc de­gree, half of what they learn in their first year of study will be out­dat­ed by the start of their fi­nal year of study.

• We are cur­rent­ly prepar­ing stu­dents for jobs that don't ex­ist-us­ing tech­nolo­gies that haven't been in­vent­ed-in or­der to solve prob­lems we don't even know what prob­lems are yet.

• By the time I fin­ish my speech, 120 ba­bies would be born in the US, 488 ba­bies would be born in Chi­na, and 702 ba­bies would be born in In­dia. None would be born as yet in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

• Wa­ter, or more pre­cise­ly the lack of fresh wa­ter, is shap­ing up to be a cat­a­stro­phe for hu­man­i­ty. To­day, about 2.8 bil­lion peo­ple (or 44 per cent of the world's pop­u­la­tion) live in re­gions where fresh-wa­ter re­sources are un­der se­vere stress. By 2025, an es­ti­mat­ed four bil­lion peo­ple-about half of the world's pop­u­la­tion-are ex­pect­ed to be liv­ing un­der se­vere stress.

Your world is chang­ing and you must be pre­pared for it. It is in this con­text that I of­fer you on­ly three pieces of ad­vice. It is ad­vice based on Hin­du phi­los­o­phy but is ap­plic­a­ble to all per­sons re­gard­less of re­li­gion, cul­ture or eth­nic­i­ty.

My first piece of ad­vice is to al­ways place em­pha­sis on fam­i­ly. Your suc­cess to­day was nev­er soli­tary and in­di­vid­ual, nor will it ever be. With you to­day are those who dreamt of and imag­ined this day, and worked tire­less­ly to make it a re­al­i­ty. Their hearts are unit­ed with your own, de­light­ing in your suc­cess and sup­port­ing you through dis­ap­point­ments and fail­ures.

Your par­ents are qui­et he­roes; no ar­ti­cles have been writ­ten about most of them; no na­tion­al awards have been be­stowed up­on them. Yet they do their du­ty. They meet their re­spon­si­bil­i­ties to you and the rest of the fam­i­ly. They are ful­fill­ing the re­quire­ments of the "gri­hastha ashram," or house­hold­er stage of life.

Our par­ents did not set out to change the world, but in small im­por­tant ways they changed our world. I ask you to ap­plaud your par­ents. And when the cer­e­mo­ny is over, touch their feet, give them a hug and a kiss, and say thank you. Your suc­cess to­day al­so re­flects the ef­forts of your fore­fa­thers. Many of us are fourth or fifth gen­er­a­tion de­scen­dants of the im­mi­grants who left In­dia some 167 years ago and jour­neyed across the Kala Pani to make a new and bet­ter life in a for­eign land that would even­tu­al­ly be­come home.

I had the priv­i­lege to vis­it In­dia twice over the past year, both in of­fi­cial ca­pac­i­ties rep­re­sent­ing the Gov­ern­ment of T&T. I had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to see "the good, the bad, and the ug­ly" of In­dia. I al­so vis­it­ed Luc­know from which many of the in­den­tures orig­i­nat­ed and I saw the port of Cal­cut­ta from which they board­ed. I still have an unan­swered ques­tion. Would I have at­tained sim­i­lar achieve­ments, pre­sum­ably in In­dia, if my fore­fa­thers had re­mained in In­dia?

While I may nev­er have an an­swer to that haunt­ing ques­tion, I do know that your cel­e­bra­tion to­day is a cel­e­bra­tion of the progress and achieve­ments of our fore­fa­thers, who en­dured dif­fi­cult con­di­tions dur­ing in­den­ture­ship and es­tab­lished a firm In­di­an pres­ence in T&T.

We stood on the shoul­ders of our fore­fa­thers to reach our goals; as our chil­dren will stand even taller on our shoul­ders to reach their goals. Your suc­cess to­day is al­so due to your teach­ers, your gu­rus over the past five-sev­en years. You are the prod­uct of Lak­sh­mi Girls' Hin­du Col­lege, an in­sti­tu­tion that now serves as a fo­cal point for the ed­u­ca­tion of our young women.

Like oth­er Ma­ha Sab­ha schools, Lak­sh­mi Girls' has pro­gressed, de­spite the deroga­to­ry ti­tle of "cow shed" that was used by the ig­no­rant, to be­ing a cen­tre of ed­u­ca­tion­al ex­cel­lence in busi­ness and mod­ern stud­ies. Some of this progress is due to the ded­i­ca­tion and hard work of your teach­ers.

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