Bhadase Sagan Maraj

The buffalo emerged from a lake of mud. Huge, it seemed that a part of the earth itself had become detached. It rose majestically against the dark gray sky with a white egret perched precariously upon its hind quarter facing in the direction from which it had come. The boy sitting under the oldest mango tree on the estate, hugged his knees and stared past the beast to the line of blue gray mountains to the North. They had recently shot his father as he lay, reading from the Bhagavad Gita in his hammock under his house in Central Caroni. Matthew Sagan Maraj, his father, had been a big, very strong, powerful man, he dominated the neighbouring villages and was known to invade them. Mitto Sampson said “He made laws and no man in Caroni broke them...” He was feared. “Expert stickmen crumbled under his ferocious blows.”

Michael Anthony wrote of his son, “Bhadase Sagan Maraj was born into an environment full of drama and bravado, lived in the self-same style of life, while contribution enormously to this country’s good.”

The hitmen promised to return for him. The boy had to flee. In the distance, the smoke, a harsher hew than the thunderous sky, rose from his father’s funeral pyre. The boy stepped from the cane piece just in time to stop the bus. He was 13; it was 1932. The bus was bound for Tunapuna, where a close relative would look after the boy. His earliest education had been gleaned from the Canadian Mission to the Indians in his home county of Caroni. Later, he had traveled to Port of Spain to Pamphylian High School. Now, however, with his beloved father dead, it seemed that his childhood had come to a close, as he was faced with the responsibility of looking after at least the material needs of his brothers and sisters.

The tall, gangly youth turned his hand to whatever came to it. Bottle collecting, running errands, he loaded cane trucks at the nearby estate, put on some size, he bought and sold scrap iron, he acquired a boat and took sand from the Caroni river so as to sell it in the building boom that came with the war days. He had inherited his father’s handsome features, size and manly manner. He was a man of his times, knowing that the future could be of his own making. He was good at business and knew how to make a profit. He was young, and felt compelled to return to his village, wanting to confront the reality that had forced him away. But the tensions were gone, and he moved on with his life. He became a wrestler, challenging all comers - it brought in a little extra money. He remembered one in particular; his name was Gotch. A natural leader of men, the American employers at the Naval Base at Chaguaramas were glad to see him. He went into trucking.

Made aware of the various shortages brought on by the war, like nails for example, Bhadase bought up as much old boards as possible, took the nails out, hammered them straight and sold them, making a profit. He worked hard and honestly for the Americans. This paid off handsomely. As the bases closed, he was allowed to purchase surplus goods at prices that allowed him to turn a remarkable profit. The foundation for his first fortune was laid.

In 1948, three years after the war, India was granted independence. This coincided with his own. He was wealthy now and could afford to finance a lavish celebration to mark India’s Republic Day.

In the context of the Indian community, he was regarded as a man of stature, a man to respect. His generosity to all was a hallmark of his life. He entered politics, and in the general election of 1950 “won handsomely” and became the member for Tunapuna in the island’s Legislative Council.

The boy who, tortured by his father’s death, had gazed helplessly into a bleak future, was now very popular, very powerful, and very wealthy. As a Hindu, his religion meant a lot to him. In 1952, he formed the Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha, a religious organization which had as its goal the preservation and dissemination of the Hindu philosophy, and which possessed a political wing, the People’s Democratic Party. A great wellspring of support rose about him. He was, however, not without detractors, who accused him of using his “Indianness” for political ends. It touched him, and he declared that he was a Hindu and could do nothing else but.

As a man of little education and knowing how little there was available, he rallied the Hindu community to organize a school building program. Forty schools were built between 1952 and 1960. In the real politic, the changes taking place in the overall society were to set the tone for the next four decades. The Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha acted as a catalyst in bringing the Hindu community together. Bhadase became a leader of the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) in 1953 and prepared to fight the general elections due in 1955. For various reasons, these elections were postponed to the following year. Disappointed and furious, he resigned his seat in the Legislative Council, only to reconsider fighting the by-election and regain his seat. The DLP contested 14 seats in 1956 and won 6. The People’s National Movement (PNM) under the brilliant Dr. Eric William's won 13 seats.

In the federal elections of 1958, Bhadase’s success was outstanding, leading the DLP of the West Indies, winning 6 of the 10 Trinidad seats for the Federal parliament. Politically, he moved from strength to strength. In 1959, he was able to win control of 5 out of 11 county councils in the municipal and county council elections of that year. He refused to be taken in by those who accused him of being a racist, insisting that he was a Trinidadian, a Hindu and a citizen of the world. People said his popularity was based on the schools he had built in cowsheds. His response was that it was better to be educated in a cowshed than not to be educated at all.

To the tens of thousands who passed through Bhadase’s cowsheds, there was no doubt in their minds. In a sense, he outgrew the DLP he had created, left the party and in the words of historian Michael Anthony, who wrote a short biography of Bhadase, he “fought on, like a lone gladiator”. He carried his battle to both the PNM and to the DLP. In parliament, he was a fierce critic and a true independent.

In 1960, the reins of leadership of the DLP passed to Dr. Rudranath Capildeo, a remarkable man possessed of genius. As age and illness crept upon Bhadase, he started to diversify his considerable interest. A substantial landowner, he sold to Canning & Co. as well as to the government some 310 acres of Streatham Lodge. The Maha Sabha benefited from his generosity with the site of a new headquarters at St. Augustine. In 1966, he lost at the polls to Dr. John Bharath of the DLP, and in 1968 he was on the huskings again, winning the Chaguanas seat in a by-election.

In 1969, he led a break-away faction of four members of the DLP. In 1971, he suffered a total defeat at the polls, and died at the early age of 52 on Thursday, 21st October of that same year.

Indian Women

Thank goodness, today we can take it for granted to see women of East Indian descent hustle to work in their “power suits”, see them dance “Chutney” in beautiful, traditional outfits on television, and enjoy their competence and leadership on many levels of national life. To reach there, the way has sometimes been rather thorny for the daughters of India! Shameen Ali, in a chapter of “150 Years of the Indian Contribution to Trinidad and Tobago”, gives a very interesting summary of the historical development of what Indian women were “permitted” to do. “Permitted” stands here in a rather wide sense: the 19th century Victorian and early 20th century society operated based on very narrow class, race and gender restrictions for everybody. The women of East Indian descent, a minority in a minority in a minority, had therefore a particularly difficult situation from where to fulfill their dreams and grow.

But to start on a positive note: the women who migrated from their homeland to an unknown place in the western world were probably the more “gutsy” ones from the start. More often than not, they had gone through hard times in India, fled from impossible familial situations, abuse, prostitution, famine. Some had been kidnapped by recruiting officers. Only a small minority came as wives or daughters of male immigrants.

In Trinidad, they faced the difficult situation of being very few in a ever-growing male Indian immigrant population. From the start, they had the handicap of being paid even lower wages than the indentured men, if that is at all possible. Having come from the caste system and an overbearingly strict patriarchal structure, they were used to be at the receiving end of injustices, and took it in stride. Bad housing conditions were nothing new for many of them, as was a lack of medical care.

In Trinidad, those sub-standard living conditions for the indentured labourers were, however, often life-threatening for the East Indian women. Promiscuity, prostitution and “wife-chopping” were not infrequent 19th century occurrences in the Indian community, isolating them even further from the Creole population (who saw themselves as “indigenous”, albeit the fact that both Europeans and Africans had immigrated just 3 or 4 generations earlier).

From the start, Indian women were earning their own living, something that was not always easy for their male counterparts to deal with. In traditional India, that was just never heard of. It lead to many conflicts, often with a violent outcome, in the Indian population, which contributed to its stereotyping by the Creole population, namely that the Indians were promiscuous and violent “wife-choppers”. As more and more Indian women came to live in Trinidad, this situation eased up, but the prejudices often remained.

In terms of religious and family life, Indian women had several challenges to face. On the one hand, they were much coveted as brides, given the fact that they were few and far between. Large dowries often changed hands. On the other hand, Hindu and Muslim marriages were not officially recognised by the British administration, which made children of a marriage illegitimate.

From the 1870s onwards, when many Indian women had terminated their indentureship contracts and decided to stay in Trinidad, they became increasingly the religious and cultural backbone of their families, maintaining beliefs and practices. Indian villages were created with the land the formerly indentured received as grants instead of a return passage to India, and some families were now in their third generation.

The majority of Indian women lived in rural areas, or more precisely in what was then rural. A lot of Indian villages from 100 years ago have grown into sizable towns since! Many of them interacted more with black and Creole Trinidadians than Indian men did. The Indian woman selling cow’s milk was a frequent sight in the morning light, so much so that she was depicted in popular comics. One such woman was, for example, Valiama, who came to settle in Trinidad from Martinique with her daughter. She spoke French and Patois, and wore foulard and madras, which made it easy for her to interface with the Creole neighbourhoods of St. Clair where she delivered milk. Eventually, she was able to carve out a niche for herself and her family in Boissière Village, and she became the mother of all the Pillais!

Education was and is of course key in the advancement of women. Today we know that women excel in academia, but many patriarchal cultures denied girls even a basic education in those years. In Trinidad, Indian girls had access to education, primarily through the efforts of Canadian Presbyterian missionary schools. Later, they would become teachers themselves, such as Anna Mahase snr., who was the first Indian woman to become a teacher in 1918, and Florabelle Harnarayn, who was the first woman to be appointed school supervisor in 1967.

Increasingly, Indian women entered into secondary and tertiary education. Dr. Stella Abidh was one of the several female medical doctors of Indian descent of the first half of the 20th century. She was the first woman to be appointed district medical officer for South Trinidad. Amongst her peers were Dr. Olga Rampersad, Dr. Pearl Ramkallop, Dr. Sylvia Ramcharan, Dr. Rosie Sheik, Dr. Indra Delipsingh and Dr. Rosie Ali.

With the introduction of the screening of Indian movies in Trinidad from the 1930s onwards, another arena opened up to the women of East Indian descent: public dancing and singing. As Shaheen Ali writes:

“Indian films kindled a new kind of pride in Indians for their heritage. Thus inspired, singers like Rhoda Asgarli, Myroon Mohammed and Zora Seesahai emerged together with the dancer Champa Devi who thrilled audiences throughout Trinidad during the 1940s and the 1950s.”

The awakening of the local performing arts, if one might call it thus, spanned in those years not only the Creole world in figures like Madame Chesola, who taught ladies how to dance, dancers Marie Basilon, Beryl McBurnie and Thora Dumbell, but also the women of the Indian community, who started to develop their very own Trinidadian expressions.

It seems that the 20th century was marked by an ongoing challenging of traditional roles by women, be it in the field of education, sports, entertainment, business, politics or religion. In the 1950s, Ruth Seukaran was the first woman of Indian descent to emerge on the political arena. Indira Rampersad was the first Hindu pandita in Trindad. Many have followed in their footsteps, making history, and often making the world just a little brighter for everyone.