An authorised biography of Sat Maharaj has been written by Dr Kumar Mahabir and was officially launched on October 11, at the auditorium of the Lakshmi Girls' Hindu College.Speakers included Attorney General Anand Ramlogan; Minister of Education Dr Tim Gopeesingh; Prof Ramesh Deosaran; Patrick Edwards, High Commissioner to Uganda and East Africa; Prof Selwyn Cudjoe and feature speaker Dr Fazal Ali, provost of UTT and chairman of the Teaching Service Commission.
Dr Ali's historic presentation is hereunder reproduced:
Derek Walcott left a life of painting and turned towards "Another Life" in poetry because the paintbrush failed to capture the flux of reality. The paintbrush fixed a cloud on the canvas into a single position and it could no longer move or change its shape.
But the word was a crystal of ambiguities with infinite cadences of meaning; each awaiting revelation based on what the reader brings to the text. The text is therefore never static; it brings out of conceitedness that is possible through the interaction of the page and the life-world of the reader. Two people will therefore have different understandings of the same text.
The life of Sat Maharaj is a crystal of ambiguities, which refracts all that falls upon him. He is, at his simplest, a scroll that has been written upon over and over across time. The initial marks repressed and faded deliberately for new markings to be layered over and over and over again, until we see traces and watermarks of erasures like the abeer of phagwa beneath the most recent scribbles presiding over, and on top of, layers of previous passages and lives.
My textual analysis of this complexity called Sat Maharaj has to be confined to just one aspect of his life, because time will not permit more today. I have therefore chosen his pursuit of Dharma–sharing knowledge with the uninformed, as my focus today.
Thomas Kuhn, in his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, remarks that as the light of knowledge expands so too does the darkness of what remains unknown. This is at the heart of Dharma and Divali as captured also by the Lord of Dance, Lord Shiva, as he stands in a circle of fire that burns away parts of the old paradigm that must perish, as he beats the drum to usher into birth the new order that will displace parts of the old frame.
Sat has asked me in a simple jotting to me on the inside cover of his biography to "Let Dharma be taught to all." He has therefore asked me to propagate Schumpeter's disruptive innovation and to spread Nur among the uninformed; to demolish misunderstandings. On page 69 of his biography it is stated that this is the ultimate path to follow. His gigantic efforts in education bear testimony to this reality.
In 1869 Patrick Keenan, reported to Earl Granville, KG, the following:
"Now the Government has exhibited a paternal solicitude for the physical wants and comforts of the indentured class of Asiatic immigrants, it has required that hospitals shall be provided for them on the estates, that medical attendants shall be every week at their service, and even in compliance with an ordinance passed during my stay in the colony–that cooked food shall be provided for them during the first six months after their allotment to an estate.
"But the solicitude of the state ended there. The moral and intellectual necessities were overlooked. The Indian's mind was left blank. No effort was made to induce him, through the awakening intelligence and dawning prospects of his children.
"I cannot call to mind any other case of a people who, having come voluntarily to a strange land which they enriched by their labour, were morally and intellectually as completely neglected as the 'Indians' have been during the past 24 years," pg. 48.VS Naipaul, in A Bend in the River, hammers out the following words: "The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it."
Unwilling to be nothing or to become nothing, Sat Maharaj has carried the banner of Dharma through the establishment and modernisation of Maha Sabha schools under his care. He is the Jaggernath that darkness kneels before and his beloved Shanti.
His bhajan to her is recorded in his biography and I will read it to you now: "I have experienced all the happiness and tensions of a normal marriage, and my 50-plus-year relationship with my wife, Shanti, has provided me with overwhelming joy and fulfilment. From the day of my marriage, my wife has been very loyal and supportive of every single one of my various activities.
"Occasionally, when everyone in the world seemed to be against me, the comforting arms and voice of my wife would renew my spirit and drive me forward. I have not always been kind enough to her, nor have I ever expressed how grateful I am to her. But not a single one of my ventures in religion, culture, community, education or business has been without her input. Without her, I could do nothing. This is the nearest I have come to saying, 'Thank you, Shanti.'"