“Un­der­stand­ing re­quires an Act of Con­scious Par­tic­i­pa­tion of an In­di­vid­ual, an Act of Find­ing Out” —Ne­ces­si­ty for Change, by Hardial Bains.

When the news of the pass­ing of Sat­naryan Ma­haraj broke, an­tic­i­pat­ing the tsuna­mi of as­sess­ments of the man, in trib­ute and de­ri­sion, I sound­ed a note of cau­tion at­tempt­ing to stem the flood of what could be not so proud mo­ments weigh­ing this con­tro­ver­sial fig­ure in the bal­ance.

This was my own ini­tial post:

“RIP SAT­NARYAN MA­HARAJ.

Our na­tion bids farewell to a man recog­nised as a leader.

In our as­sess­ment of his role and con­tri­bu­tion, it is hoped that we, as a so­ci­ety, do so in a dis­pas­sion­ate and ob­jec­tive man­ner.

We must not use the lens­es of pre­con­ceived or in­cul­cat­ed no­tions or bi­as­es or what is now po­lite­ly and dis­arm­ing­ly la­belled ‘iden­ti­ty’ pol­i­tics.

Farewell, Sat.

Con­do­lences to his fam­i­ly.”.

So­cial me­dia, the press and air­waves were awash with com­ments, pleas­ant­ly not filled with so much of the usu­al vit­ri­ol that was part of the com­men­tary on many things that the long-stand­ing Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al of the Ma­ha Sab­ha evoked over the years.

When the pleas­antries flowed from the halls of gov­er­nance, the high­est of­fi­cers of our land set a calm­ing tone. Oth­ers, to be ex­pect­ed, at­tempt­ed to mea­sure his lega­cy and some called for a State fu­ner­al and oth­ers for mon­u­ments and trib­utes.

He had hard­ly part­ed from our com­pa­ny and in the midst of the mes­sages from one quar­ter or the oth­er, it was clear to me that the di­vi­sive­ness some blamed him for, re­al­ly lies in ab­sence of a na­tion­al as­sess­ment of his role and con­tri­bu­tion. Even­tu­al­ly, I added the fol­low­ing in re­sponse to a lengthy and live­ly Face­book de­bate on the mer­its of a sug­ges­tion of a state fu­ner­al.

“Wow. This thread is so in­ter­est­ing.

What was Sat Ma­haraj? What you ask. What was he in so­cial terms. He was a re­li­gious leader, a po­lit­i­cal ac­tivist, a jour­nal­ist.

He was di­vi­sive, a pa­tri­ot, a fight­er, etc etc.

One thing is sure. Based on these com­ments here and oth­er pub­lic ut­ter­ances, it is clear that this so­ci­ety has not come to an ac­cept­ed con­clu­sion on the role of Sat in our so­ci­ety.

Some charge he was di­vi­sive. Well, ex­am­ine our po­lit­i­cal his­to­ry, colo­nial and post-colo­nial and be hon­est and see if there’s not a very long list to whom such la­bels can­not be ap­plied.

So What was Sat?

The an­swer will be this or that, not be­cause of what he ac­tu­al­ly did or said but more so be­cause of what nar­ra­tives have been spun about him and his words and deeds.

We hail the Bap­tists for de­fend­ing their re­li­gion; yet con­demn him for de­fend­ing his. We hail African lead­ers for de­fend­ing their “eth­nic race” (as one com­ment put it) but con­demn him for de­fend­ing In­di­ans. We hail An­tho­ny Pan­tin as an ac­tivist re­li­gious leader but con­demn Sat. Why?

Be­cause one re­li­gion is ac­cept­able and an­oth­er is not?

Hope­ful­ly, we, as a so­ci­ety, will agree how ob­jec­tive­ly we as­sess the con­tri­bu­tions and roles of all cit­i­zens to our so­ci­ety. So, we will be able to as­sess Sat or any­body else on those so­cial­ly ac­cept­able cri­te­ria and not about our own prej­u­dices and dog­mas.

We are di­vid­ed in our as­sess­ment of Sat, not be­cause of Sat, but, be­cause we are not unit­ed in our phi­los­o­phy, val­ues, pol­i­tics etc.”.

Some may have been sur­prised at the quar­ters from which de­nun­ci­a­tions of the easy deroga­to­ry la­bels came.

We have grown too ac­cus­tomed to ac­cept­ing nar­ra­tive prop­a­gat­ed by oth­ers for their own pur­pos­es. They now use ‘crit­i­cal think­ing’ as a mere buzz­word.

But, they en­cour­age us nev­er to un­der­stand oth­ers and their roles but rather to ac­cept stereo­typ­i­cal ob­jec­ti­fi­ca­tions of them with­out ever in­ter­act­ing with them, ex­am­in­ing their cir­cum­stances and his­to­ries; with­out an Act of Find­ing Out for our­selves.

How­ev­er, his­to­ry will weigh him in the bal­ance, none can doubt his con­tri­bu­tion to the ex­pan­sion and de­vel­op­ment of a re­mark­able por­tion of our ed­u­ca­tion­al sys­tem.

Per­haps with the dy­ing em­bers of his fu­ner­al pyre and the fi­nal treat­ment of his ash­es, we, this rain­bow na­tion will fi­nal­ly be able to pro­nounce on the lega­cy of Sat Ma­haraj.

Clyde Weath­er­head

A Cit­i­zen long­ing for the

Re­new­al of the Na­tion­al Pur­pose