Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

The "cow­sheds" of the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha (SDMS) have been trans­formed in­to record-break­ing ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions. Sec­re­tary-gen­er­al of the SDMS Sat­narayan Ma­haraj said, "In 1956, Er­ic Williams said that the Hin­du schools were cow­sheds and every­body went mad. "But I say to you to­day that Er­ic Williams was ab­solute­ly right."

Ma­haraj was speak­ing at the Ma­ha Sab­ha's an­nu­al In­di­an Ar­rival Day din­ner at the Crowne Plaza, Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain, on Fri­day. The Ma­ha Sab­ha ho­n­oured "a prod­uct of the cow­shed schools," Ra­bindranath Ma­haraj who is the au­thor of eight books.

Ra­bindranath at­tend­ed the Robert Vil­lage Hin­du School in Table­land, which Ma­haraj said pro­duced some of the finest aca­d­e­mics in T&T. He re­called Ava Bruce, a for­mer pupil of the school, who won the an­nu­al Baal Vikas com­pe­ti­tion. She al­so placed sec­ond in the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment in 2003.

"You all must re­mem­ber that. This is where we came from," he said, re­mind­ing the crowd that in 1978, when he vis­it­ed the school, it was made out of round wood posts from the forests, carat leaves and cow dung on the floor. Ma­haraj said, "These cow­sheds are now record-break­ing ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions in the land."

Al­so ad­dress­ing the gath­er­ing were Trans­port Min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj, Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Prakash Ra­mad­har, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Tim Gopeesingh and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Chan­dresh Shar­ma. Seat­ed at one of the re­served ta­bles was Ma­haraj's friend­ly pro­tag­o­nist, Prof Sel­wyn Cud­joe, who was seen tak­ing notes dur­ing the func­tion.

Ma­haraj said it was un­for­tu­nate that nei­ther Ra­bindranath nor VS Naipaul were ho­n­oured by any gov­ern­ment in T&T. How­ev­er, he lat­er cor­rect­ed him­self, say­ing Naipaul was ho­n­oured by the Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion.

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About Ra­bindranath Ma­haraj

• Re­ceived his ed­u­ca­tion from Robert Vil­lage Hin­du School, Na­pari­ma Boys' Col­lege, the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies and the Uni­ver­si­ty of New Brunswick

• Found­ing ed­i­tor of the Cana­di­an lit­er­ary jour­nal LICHEN

• Au­thor of eight books

• Win­ner of the 2010 Tril­li­um Book Award, nom­i­nat­ed for a Com­mon­wealth Writ­ers Prize; fi­nal­ist for the Chap­ters/ Books in Cana­da First Nov­el Award