Rashan­da Mc Ken­na

Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sa­ba (SDMS), Sat­narayan Ma­haraj said yes­ter­day that the Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) and the school su­per­vi­sors, should bow to the Hin­du com­mu­ni­ty for pro­duc­ing such a mas­sive in­sti­tu­tion rather than pur­port­ing that Hin­du-owned schools are gov­ern­ment-owned prop­er­ty.

He said church-run schools have been vil­i­fied by TTUTA, as the teach­ers' union has at­tempt­ed to es­tab­lish di­vi­sions be­tween state-owned schools and de­nom­i­na­tion­al schools. "I hope the school su­per­vi­sors would shut their mouths and TTUTA, when they en­ter a Hin­du school, they should bow to the Hin­du com­mu­ni­ty, for pro­duc­ing such a mas­sive in­sti­tu­tion, rather than telling teach­ers that is gov­ern­ment prop­er­ty and this is gov­ern­ment prop­er­ty," said Ma­haraj.

Ma­haraj was speak­ing yes­ter­day at the 16th An­nu­al Chow­taal Sam­me­lan, where he un­leashed his anger on the teach­ers' union for try­ing to sub­vert the for­mu­la for ed­u­ca­tion as man­dat­ed in the Hin­du tra­di­tion. He said, "In or­der to com­plete a child's ed­u­ca­tion, one must teach the re­li­gious and the sec­u­lar." He asked, "What is the point if your child knows all the math­e­mat­i­cal equa­tions in the world, but does not know how to live and how to pray?"

Ma­haraj was re­fer­ring to the re­cent dis­pute be­tween SDMS and TTUTA re­gard­ing the rights and ex­ten­sions of pow­er of the Min­istry in de­nom­i­na­tion­al schools where ap­point­ment of teach­ers are con­cerned. He said that 75 per cent of all pri­ma­ry schools in T&T are owned by the church­es-the SDMS, the Catholic Church, the An­gli­can Church, An­ju­man-Sun­nal-Ul Ja­maat As­so­ci­a­tion (AS­JA)-and 33 per cent of all sec­ondary schools are owned by the church­es, who are mere­ly as­sist­ed by the gov­ern­ment but are not owned by the gov­ern­ment.

Ma­haraj read a pas­sage from a judge­ment giv­en by High Court judge Se­bastien Ven­tour, which stat­ed that the Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion must seek the ap­proval of the de­nom­i­na­tion­al board on ap­point­ing teach­ers to as­sist­ed schools. "Not a teacher could come in­to a de­nom­i­na­tion­al school with­out the ap­proval of the board. The con­ven­tion­al re­li­gious prac­tices of de­nom­i­na­tion­al schools were con­vert­ed in­to a con­sti­tu­tion­al right."

He sug­gest­ed re­li­gious ed­u­ca­tion and sec­u­lar knowl­edge should be one, and con­demned TTUTA, school su­per­vi­sors and cer­tain teach­ers, who he charged with at­tempt­ing to dis­rupt this prin­ci­ple. "We have a con­sti­tu­tion­al right to de­ny any­one en­try in­to our schools. That means, we can tell the Tu­na­puna prin­ci­pal, you can't come here and sub­vert our re­li­gion, we will lock you out."