Richard Lord

It's an out­rage. That's how Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley de­scribed yes­ter­day's clo­sure of the Tu­na­puna Hin­du School.It was the lat­est de­vel­op­ment in the un­re­solved dis­pute in­volv­ing the Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion, the Sanathan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha (SDMS) and school prin­ci­pal Si­ta Ga­jad­hars­ingh-Nan­ga.

Row­ley said: "I find this very wor­ri­some.There ought not to be no sit­u­a­tion where the Tu­na­puna Hin­du School is closed."He then called on the au­thor­i­ties to en­sure school re­sumes this morn­ing "and to en­sure the prin­ci­pal was there with her charges and that teach­ing takes place in that school."Told that there was a plac­ard at the school gate de­scrib­ing the prin­ci­pal as a trai­tor to the Sanathan Dhar­ma, Row­ley said: "You see where it has reached. You see where it has reached."

He said: "I hope the silent ma­jor­i­ty in this coun­try will re­alise they have to raise their voic­es now against this out­rage."This is an out­rage, which must not be tol­er­at­ed by the de­cent peo­ple of T&T. It should nev­er have come to this."He blamed the Gov­ern­ment, say­ing it should have act­ed de­ci­sive­ly ear­li­er.

Row­ley said the Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials failed to act de­fin­i­tive­ly be­cause they saw them­selves "as be­hold­ing to the vote bank, sup­pos­ed­ly con­trolled by Sat Ma­haraj, and that is why the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion had not act­ed, why the Prime Min­is­ter did not in­ter­vene be­fore and why the leader of the COP made that stu­pid state­ment about play­ing the race card."

Ga­jad­hars­ingh was locked out of the school last month af­ter al­leged­ly fail­ing to com­ply with a di­rec­tive from SDMS sec­re­tary gen­er­al, Sat­narayan Ma­haraj, to refuse ad­mit­ting chil­dren of African de­scent to the school.Ma­haraj has de­nied the claim.

The Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion or­dered that the prin­ci­pal re­turn to school yes­ter­day but the school was closed for the day.Row­ley said at a news con­fer­ence in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day: "As I speak to you now there is a school in this coun­try where the du­ly, legal­ly-ap­point­ed prin­ci­pal has been phys­i­cal­ly pre­vent­ed from the premis­es. That is a fact."Row­ley re­spond­ed to a claim by Ma­haraj that if Ga­jad­hars­ingh-Nan­ga was al­lowed to re­turn to the school there could be vi­o­lence.

Row­ley ap­pealed to Hin­dus and oth­er cit­i­zens to speak out against the lat­est po­si­tion by Ma­haraj."I am ask­ing the rest of the Hin­du com­mu­ni­ty to talk to Sat Ma­haraj. This is the po­si­tion of a mi­nor­i­ty threat­en­ing the sta­bil­i­ty of a ma­jor­i­ty," Row­ley stressed."We are not to be threat­ened in this way. This is an af­front," he added.