Sat Ma­haraj

On the ar­rival of Hin­dus in Trinidad on May 30, 1845, our an­ces­tors were of­fered no as­sis­tance by the colo­nial gov­ern­ment of Great Britain or the sug­ar plan­ta­tion own­ers to pre­serve their re­li­gious tra­di­tions and cul­tur­al prac­tices. In fact, every ef­fort was made to have them aban­don Hin­duism, the re­li­gion most prac­tised, and to em­brace re­li­gious be­liefs that were alien to them.

The Hin­dus were spe­cial­ly tar­get­ed by the Cana­di­an Pres­by­ter­ian Church which poured in re­sources and man­pow­er from Cana­da for its mass con­ver­sion ex­er­cise. Some his­to­ri­ans claim that ed­u­ca­tion, through the es­tab­lish­ment of schools, was made avail­able to the Hin­dus by the Cana­di­an mis­sion­ar­ies. But most of us who un­der­went this ex­pe­ri­ence will tes­ti­fy that con­ver­sion to Chris­tian­i­ty was the ex­pec­ta­tion of the mis­sion­ary and in many cas­es where teach­ing jobs were of­fered, the re­cip­i­ent had ei­ther to con­vert or pay the price, which was usu­al­ly unashamed dis­crim­i­na­tion. Even to­day, a num­ber of so-called his­to­ri­ans con­tin­ue to spread bo­gus In­di­an his­to­ry to strength­en their con­ver­sion ef­forts which have now to­tal­ly col­lapsed.

The strength of the Hin­du com­mu­ni­ty in Trinidad, In­dia and else­where is the Brah­min pun­dits who are versed in the phi­los­o­phy and rit­u­als of Hin­duism. With­out these pun­dits Hin­duism would have col­lapsed long ago in Trinidad as it did in Grena­da, Mar­tinique, St Lu­cia and Ja­maica.

Now every ef­fort is be­ing made by a hand­ful of "church"-con­nect­ed his­to­ri­ans to un­der­mine Hin­duism by at­tack­ing the pun­dits who came from the Brah­min class. One his­to­ri­an and his young acolyte have writ­ten that no Brah­mins came to Trinidad, al­though all the ship's records in­di­cate that more than 12 per cent of in­den­tured labour­ers were of this class of peo­ple. These records are avail­able and some are held at the Ma­ha Sab­ha.

Hang­ing on my of­fice wall is a ta­ble of the "Cast of im­mi­grants in­tro­duced dur­ing the 1879-1880 sea­son." This is a pub­lic doc­u­ment but "church" his­to­ri­ans in T&T pre­fer not to make these cor­rect fig­ures avail­able to stu­dents. Source of the in­for­ma­tion is the sur­geon ma­jor, DWD Comins. This chart records that 175 Brah­mins came to Trinidad dur­ing the 12-month pe­ri­od. Im­mi­gra­tion last­ed from 1845 to 1917, a pe­ri­od of 72 years.

An­oth­er bo­gus the­o­ry that has now been to­tal­ly dis­cred­it­ed by mod­ern-day In­di­an re­searchers and his­to­ri­ans is the "Aryan in­va­sion the­o­ry." In or­der to fur­ther fa­cil­i­tate con­ver­sion on the sub-con­ti­nent of In­dia they in­vent­ed this the­o­ry to di­vide In­dia in­to the "light-skinned" north and the "dark-skinned" south.

Al­though now ful­ly dis­cred­it­ed in the world of his­to­ry, one Chris­t­ian his­to­ri­an in Trinidad is still teach­ing this his­tor­i­cal lie. Fran­cois Gau­ti­er, writ­ing in his book The Won­der That Is In­dia, cap­tures the ma­nip­u­la­tion of his­to­ry in the chap­ter ti­tled The Mis­sion­ar­ies. He writes:

"The mis­sion­ar­ies ar­rived in In­dia on the heels of the British. As ex­plained in the first chap­ter, their first prey were the so-called Adi­va­sis, trib­al peo­ple, whom they prompt­ly pro­ceed­ed to name as the 'orig­i­nal' in­hab­i­tants of In­dia colonised by the bad Brah­mins dur­ing the myth­i­cal Aryan in­va­sion. Was it not right, they said, to free them from the grip of their mas­ters who had en­slaved them both so­cial­ly and re­li­gious­ly?

"Thus they set the Adi­va­sis against the main­stream of Hin­du so­ci­ety and sowed the seeds of an ex­plo­sive con­flict which is ready to blow up to­day, par­tic­u­lar­ly in UP (Ut­tar Pradesh) where the caste con­flict has been cre­at­ed by Mu­layam Singh, the butch­er of Ay­o­d­hya, and Kan­shi Ram.

"The mis­sion­ar­ies in In­dia were al­ways sup­port­ers of colo­nial­ism; they en­cour­aged it and their whole struc­ture was based on 'the good West­ern civilised world be­ing brought to the pa­gans.' In the words of Charles Grant (1746-1823), chair­man of the East In­dia Com­pa­ny, 'We can­not avoid recog­nis­ing in the peo­ple of Hin­dus­tan, a race of men lam­en­ta­bly de­gen­er­ate and base...gov­erned by malev­o­lent and li­cen­tious pas­sions...and sunk in mis­ery by their vices.'

"Claudius Buchanan, a chap­lain at­tached to the East In­dia Com­pa­ny, went even fur­ther: '...Nei­ther truth, nor hon­esty, ho­n­our, grat­i­tude, nor char­i­ty, is to be found in the breast of a Hin­du!' What a com­ment about a na­tion that gave the world the Vedas and the Up­an­ishads, at a time when Eu­ro­peans were still for­ni­cat­ing in their caves!

"Lord Hast­ings, Gov­er­nor Gen­er­al of In­dia from 1813, could not agree more; he writes in his di­ary 'near­ly lim­it­ed to mere an­i­mal func­tions...with no high­er in­tel­lect than a dog or an ele­phant, or a mon­key...'"

In his His­to­ry of Hin­du-Chris­t­ian En­coun­ters (AD304-1996), Si­ta Ram Goel writes:

"Je­sus Christ has been the stock-in-trade of Chris­t­ian mis­sions down the ages. He has been packed in all shapes and sizes de­pend­ing up­on the gulli­bil­i­ty of the clients to be duped. And he has been rammed down the throats of those who have re­fused to be hood­winked by the hoax.

"As one sur­veys the his­to­ry of Chris­t­ian mis­sions in lands where this hoax has been hawked or im­posed, one comes across no end of force and fraud em­ployed in its ser­vice by a va­ri­ety of sol­diers and sales­men, most of whom are pre­sent­ed as saints."

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