Thir­ty-five years ago when Pul­waty Ho­lass-Beepath and her hus­band moved to To­ba­go to man­age her Trinida­di­an boss’ hard­ware, she was tak­en aback when there was no mandir or tem­ple for her fam­i­ly to con­duct wor­ship.

She was a moth­er of a one-year-old daugh­ter, Gee­ta, at the time and was hop­ing to im­part to her off­spring as many of the Hin­du tra­di­tions as pos­si­ble passed on by her own par­ents.

A sec­ond-gen­er­a­tion In­do-Trinida­di­an, whose par­ents had been trans­plant­ed to this coun­try as in­den­tured labour­ers, Ho­lass-Beepath’s fa­ther, Har­ry Ho­lass, had al­ways in­stilled in his sev­en chil­dren the im­por­tance of pre­serv­ing their cul­tur­al her­itage. Grow­ing up, her fa­ther and moth­er, Sam­daye, taught them In­di­an folks songs and tra­di­tions and they formed a band called Amar Sangeet. Ho­lass-Beepath’s broth­er Bu­dram would be­come an icon­ic singer across var­i­ous East In­di­an gen­res and her sis­ter Ruk­m­i­nee would be well known as an In­di­an folk singer, com­pos­er and cul­tur­al stal­wart.

So Ho­lass-Beepath looked to the sole Hin­du body on the is­land of To­ba­go for sup­port and di­rec­tion in re­tain­ing her cus­toms–the To­ba­go Hin­du So­ci­ety. She was, how­ev­er, dis­ap­point­ed to learn that its lead­ers had per­ma­nent­ly re­turned to Trinidad and the or­gan­i­sa­tion was in­ac­tive. Back then, the East In­di­an pop­u­la­tion on the is­land was quite small and there was very lit­tle cul­tur­al ev­i­dence of an East In­di­an pres­ence.

Tobago House of Assembly presiding officer Abby Taylor, left, area representative for Signal Hill Nigel Taitt, Secretary of Tourism, Culture, Antiquities and Transportation Tashia Burris, president of the Hindu Society in Tobago, Pulwaty Holass-Beepath and the India High Commissioner to Trinidad and Tobago Arun Kumar Sahu turns the sod for the first Hindu temple at the temple ground Signal Hill, Tobago, in February.

VINDRA GOPAUL-BOODAN

Ho­lass-Beepath helped re­vive the To­ba­go Hin­du So­ci­ety in 1992, along with oth­ers, and they start­ed host­ing fes­ti­vals for Di­vali and Phag­wa, lat­er adding In­di­an Ar­rival Day to their list of cel­e­bra­tions. They al­so per­formed so­cial work like help­ing the needy. Elect­ed as pres­i­dent a year or two lat­er, Ho­lass-Beepath set her sights on build­ing a place of wor­ship. Up to that time, they had used the To­ba­go Sai Cen­tre at a ho­tel in Crown Point owned by Ho­lass-Beepath’s for­mer boss.

A piece of land was ac­quired by the so­ci­ety, but be­cause of an is­sue with the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha which the so­ci­ety had joined years be­fore, plans for the land stalled.

In 2014 un­der then-chief sec­re­tary Orville Lon­don, the so­ci­ety was award­ed four lots of land from the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA).

Af­ter some 30 years, in­clud­ing two years of a dead­ly pan­dem­ic that test­ed economies, bod­ies, and minds world­wide, the sod turn­ing for the tem­ple to be con­struct­ed in Sig­nal Hill came in mid-Feb­ru­ary this year. Ex­pect­ed to ac­com­mo­date 200 devo­tees, the foun­da­tion has been start­ed and the steel­work is be­ing done in Trinidad, Ho­lass-Beepath re­vealed, adding that the so­ci­ety’s spir­i­tu­al leader Pun­dit Ram­dath Ma­hase is di­rect­ly over­see­ing the project.

They are still in need of many ma­te­ri­als for con­struc­tion and are yet to have a paved road in the area which they will share with a Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tist church and an Ad­ven­tist church. Ho­lass-Beepath was hap­py that all the de­nom­i­na­tions could co-ex­ist.

“We have our in­ter-re­li­gious group here in To­ba­go and we al­ways come to­geth­er and go to each oth­er’s func­tions; church or at the mosque,” she in­formed.

See­ing the tem­ple to fruition con­tin­ues to be an up­hill climb, but Ho­lass-Beepath is op­ti­mistic that it will be com­plet­ed by the end of next year and join the two pop­u­lar roti shops, a few restau­rants, ho­tels and hard­ware stores that re­flect the East In­di­an pres­ence on the is­land to­day. She looks for­ward to a fundrais­er to be held in Trinidad soon.

Mean­while, she poured out ut­most grat­i­tude on be­half of her­self and the so­ci­ety to the THA, the CEO of the Na­tion­al Com­mis­sion of Self Help Ltd El­roy Julien, the High Com­mis­sion of In­dia in Port-of-Spain, Pun­dit Ma­hase, nu­mer­ous donors, well-wish­ers, and her three chil­dren who have al­ways kept up the cul­ture.

“We will get there be­cause we are get­ting as­sis­tance from busi­ness peo­ple in To­ba­go and many oth­er peo­ple in To­ba­go, and Trinidad as well and I re­al­ly want to thank them,” Ho­lass-Beepath who was award­ed by the THA for her con­tri­bu­tion to East In­di­an cul­ture in To­ba­go a few years ago said.

Last Mon­day, In­di­an Ar­rival Day, the so­ci­ety held a cul­tur­al pro­gramme at which her grand­daugh­ter, Mia, sev­en, per­formed and food was dis­trib­uted to those in need.