Ut­tar Pradesh, In­dia, Jan­u­ary 1, 1901. The cries of a new­born ba­by boy rang out from a mod­est house on that win­ter’s day.

The ba­by boy, born to a hum­ble fam­i­ly, will trav­el with his par­ents, Boodram and Bis­soon­dayia Sew­dass, to T&T in the Caribbean, and in time, will per­form an as­ton­ish­ing mirac­u­lous feat.

That mir­a­cle will be to re­claim land from the sea in cen­tral Trinidad at Wa­ter­loo. A pas­sion that will take him on a 17-year odyssey, tam­ing the waves of the Caribbean Sea to even­tu­al­ly build his tem­ple in that ocean., to­day known as the Tem­ple in The Sea.

Sew­dass Sad­hu was able to make many trips back to In­dia and even pur­chased a sec­ond-hand Bed­ford truck, a sign of his fru­gal­i­ty. He then went to Unilever and be­gan to pur­chase steel drums. He al­so gath­ered boul­ders, sand and ce­ment.

His next move was a stroke of great imag­i­na­tion. It is very im­por­tant to un­der­stand the topog­ra­phy of the land con­struct then. The land was a lit­tle above sea lev­el. The sea came to the edge of the land but in­creased in depth fur­ther out.

He drove his truck on the sand which was re­vealed when the tide was out. One by one he of­floaded the drums and em­bed­ded them in­to the sand. He placed the drums in rows of four start­ing at the wa­ter’s edge, filled them with boul­ders, then mixed the mor­tar and poured it over the boul­ders there­by bind­ing the blocks and adding weight to the drums. Sew­dass con­tin­ued his task with stead­fast de­vo­tion. Pur­chas­ing drums, ce­ment and sand when he could af­ford to while col­lect­ing bro­ken blocks and boul­ders.

One day while he was build­ing the foun­da­tion for his cause­way, the sea rose, al­most cov­er­ing him. His truck was per­ma­nent­ly dam­aged by the ris­ing sea wa­ters.

Un­per­turbed, Sew­dass con­tin­ued what he has be­come fa­mous for, con­struc­tion of the foun­da­tion and cause­way by us­ing a bi­cy­cle and two buck­ets.

At the end of the cause­way, he placed two drums—one on top the oth­er—so that the drums will be high­er than the sea. He did that by re­mov­ing the lid at the oth­er end of the drum, made slits around the rim and fit­ted it solid­ly over the drum al­ready placed in the sand. Sew­dass had com­plet­ed the first phase of his cause­way. Still us­ing just his bi­cy­cle and two buck­ets, Sew­dass be­gan to col­lect fill and pour on top of his bar­rel foun­da­tion.

Once that was com­plet­ed, he built yet an­oth­er deck with drums us­ing the same meth­ods as be­fore. It was ob­vi­ous he was think­ing of the pos­si­ble rise in the sea lev­els, and so set to pro­tect the struc­tures he was go­ing to build.

He then set him­self the task of build­ing the tem­ple. The struc­tures con­sist­ed of a mandir, a poo­ja area, a kitchen and an un­fin­ished room which was in­tend­ed to ac­com­mo­date guests. Sew­dass had built his struc­ture five hun­dred feet from the shore­line out to sea. It was five feet high, ten feet wide, and five hun­dred feet long.

His son, Nar­ine, said, "No one un­der­stood what he was do­ing. He nev­er talked too much, but he would ride his bike, col­lect his ma­te­r­i­al and down to the sea he would go. He con­tin­ued build­ing day af­ter day, week af­ter week. As I grew up I saw my fa­ther build­ing this struc­ture year af­ter year. From time to time his friend Chun­nelal would lend a hand."

A com­mu­ni­ty mem­ber said "Peo­ple used to laugh and make fun of the man when day af­ter day he would be seen rid­ing his bi­cy­cle for miles to the sea. Many of the vil­lagers said he was mad, but that did not both­er him."

In­dra, Sew­dass's daugh­ter, said her fa­ther was a man of deep thought. "He was al­ways think­ing. It was like he was al­ways work­ing out some­thing in his mind. He had his work in the sug­ar es­tate, he al­so grew rice, and he had that mam­moth project in the sea. Al­though he was quite busy, he al­ways found time to sit with us and tell us sto­ries and he would al­so talk in Hin­di to us. A qui­et man, but a lov­ing ded­i­cat­ed man. That was my fa­ther."

Ap­peal for a na­tion­al award

Dr Su­ruj Ram­bachan, a for­mer Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress min­is­ter de­scribed Sew­dass as "A leg­end! A na­tion­al hero!’"

He said by con­struct­ing a mandir five hun­dred feet off the shore in­to the sea at Wa­ter­loo Bay, cen­tral Trinidad, al­most sin­gle-hand­ed­ly with 'Hanu­man­ian' ef­fort, stead­fast­ness and in­domitable courage, even suf­fer­ing colo­nial per­se­cu­tion, a poor and de­vout Sad­hu has for­ev­er chal­lenged and pro­pelled the col­lec­tive will and psy­che of Hin­du Trinida­di­ans and in­deed Hin­dus world­wide to in­fi­nite pos­si­bil­i­ties.

"The very name Sew­dass Sad­hu (1901–1970) evokes rous­ing feel­ings of unique ad­mi­ra­tion and awe and em­bod­ies the dreams and as­pi­ra­tions of the Hin­du Samaj yet to burst forth in­to uni­fied glo­ry."

In 1995, a con­crete stat­ue of Sew­dass Sad­hu was erect­ed, clad in tra­di­tion­al dhoti kur­ta and mala, with his hands clasped. The large mar­ble stone stat­ue is placed on the ex­act spot where he had built his first tem­ple. To­day he proud­ly stands on that spot as a sym­bol of con­quer­ing ex­treme ad­ver­si­ty and his old ad­ver­sary the British Au­thor­i­ty.

The large mar­ble stone on which the plaque is writ­ten, and on which the stat­ue of Sew­dass Sad­hu stands, was do­nat­ed by the Bel­grove Group of Com­pa­nies. Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of The Bel­grove Group of Com­pa­nies, Kei­th Bel­grove said "We at Bel­grove are achiev­ers from since 1888. We ap­pre­ci­ate achiev­ers like our­selves. What Sew­dass Sad­hu did was an in­cred­i­ble achieve­ment.

"By so do­ing, he demon­strat­ed a na­tion­al build­ing at­tribute which has now re­dound­ed to a tourism at­trac­tion for our coun­try.

"Yes, I would say he de­serves the high­est Na­tion­al Award for his ded­i­ca­tion and de­vo­tion to na­tion-build­ing."

Af­ter many years the cause­way and the tem­ple were re­paired by Ran­dolph Ram­per­sad with gov­ern­ment fund­ing.

The Na­tion­al Trust has list­ed this site as a tourism at­trac­tion and of­ten takes vis­i­tors to this coun­try as well as lo­cals for sight­see­ing tours. Mar­lon Green, a se­nior tour guide at the Na­tion­al Trust said, "When­ev­er I take peo­ple to this site, they are amazed at how Sew­dass Sad­hu built this cause­way and to even­tu­al­ly build the tem­ple in the sea. They are tru­ly fas­ci­nat­ed."

Avanelle Boyce, 36, who trav­els the length and breadth of our coun­try vis­it­ing the var­i­ous tourism sites, wrote on her pop­u­lar blog Callaloo Cul­ture: "Of course, Sew­dass Sad­hu de­serves our coun­try’s high­est award. I thought he had got­ten it al­ready. I met up with some tourists re­cent­ly and they were ex­cit­ed to go and see and learn how Sew­dass Sad­hu built that site go­ing back so many years. Yes! Yes! He de­serves our coun­try’s high­est award."

Peo­ple who know of Sew­dass’s mind-bog­gling feat all agree that he should get our coun­try’s high­est award. This coun­try’s num­ber one 2D an­i­ma­tor, Kevin Bhall, 35 pro­duced the first an­i­ma­tion on the Sew­dass Sad­hu sto­ry. It is a won­der­ful piece of work, well writ­ten and an­i­mat­ed with great cre­ativ­i­ty and imag­i­na­tion. It was shown on TTT sev­er­al times ear­li­er this year.

He said, "With­out a doubt, he de­serves a na­tion­al award. It should be our high­est award. When you con­sid­er that he built this cause­way sin­gle-hand­ed­ly some 500 feet out to sea, us­ing a bi­cy­cle and two buck­ets as I dis­cov­ered from vil­lagers in my re­search, then built sev­er­al struc­tures to ac­com­mo­date vis­i­tors, and he did this over 17 years. That was tru­ly a re­mark­able dis­play of guts, de­ter­mi­na­tion and some­thing else which I haven’t got an ex­pla­na­tion for. His ini­tia­tive has be­come one of our coun­try’s main at­trac­tion."

Sew­dass Sad­hu's achieve­ment is a re­minder of the need for us to make our own con­tri­bu­tion to na­tion-build­ing that is so vi­tal for our coun­try to­day. I too, sup­port a na­tion­al award for Sew­dass Sad­hu's out­stand­ing achieve­ments and con­tri­bu­tion to this coun­try’s tourism sites.

Sew­dass Sad­hu died in 1970. He is buried on land near the sea at Wa­ter­loo. Very un­can­ny, he did not ex­plain to any­one why he pre­ferred to be buried rather than to be cre­mat­ed, be­ing a de­vout Hin­du. He sim­ply re­quest­ed it.