Respected spiritual guide, Chandradatt Persaud, is a ‘Special Person’
By Leon Suseran, July 21, 2013, By KNews, Filed Under News, Source
“I love what I do and I did it well without any kind of regrets or despondency. I am not a despondent person by nature. I like to be positive and nothing bothers me. I always have this positive outlook in life that with God’s power and strength, anything is humanly possible.”
Chandradatt Persaud followed directly in the footsteps of his father and embraced his religion by becoming a pandit at the age of 14. His father Gurdat Persaud, a renowned pandit in the Berbice area, groomed the young boy and brought out great leadership qualities in him, which he [Chandradatt] took into his community as well as school. From there, he rose into a budding community leader and proponent of Hinduism and the culture, which he continues to do to this very day.
Chandradatt Persaud
He was born on June 23, 1972, at the New Amsterdam Hospital at Reliance Abandon in East Canje. His father was a “well established pandit, known wide and far” and his mother: Sumintra Persaud. He had 10 other siblings, including a twin sister who died at a tender age.
Persaud attended Reliance Primary School after which he attended Canje Educational Institute, which later became the Canje Secondary School.
“We were the first batch of students who attended that school in 1983.”
During high school, he recalled being a leader in many aspects. He participated in numerous plays and was called upon regularly to give talks to his peers during assembly time. They must have known, too, that he had become a pandit and sought to make use of his skills and knowledge.
“I used to do a lot of religious stuff—funerals too. Just imagine, the naughty boy who played pranks now turned a pandit, doing a lot of religious work in his community.”
Our ‘Special Person’ was not hesitant to become a pandit. “I liked the whole thing, the religious idea, going to mandir, listening to the bhajans and growing up with a strong religious background. It was very joyful and challenging too, and I had no problem doing the pandit work since I was well taught and schooled by my father.”
Getting along with his friends at school, while being a pandit, was a cinch.
“I got along with them and I was very jovial. I was the ringleader, in a good sense, so they respected me for that, even my headmaster at the school was very impressed…I was very good at English at an early age and they used to call me out to chair the assembly prayers and give talks about Hinduism and moral education.”
He got married to the love of his life, Rohinie, at the age of 19. “I felt cupid was around and propelled me to get married.”
They have four children: Vishwani, Shiromini, Trivani, and Dhruvishkar.
After high school, he went into teaching at Betsy Ground Primary and Reliance Primary for a total of six years. Not too long after, he worked briefly at the JP Santos store in New Amsterdam and then became an Overseer at the Canefield-Enterprise Neighbourhood Democratic Council (NDC) at the age of 20.
There being a shortage of pandits in the area, he was made the Senior Pandit in East Canje.
“As I grew older, I felt there was need for more pandits in the area, so I have trained some, and also from the Corentyne as well as Mahaica.”
He trained and taught over 15 pandits, many of whom have migrated.
Delivering a talk at a Youth Conference at Gay Park Mandir.
“Many of the temples were left without pandits and I said to myself that if the religion is to be effective and the Hindu masses be well taught and represented, they need good leadership so I trained these bright, intelligent young boys, and most of them are from the East Canje area and all now have their own temples officiating independently.”
He taught them Hindi; the Mantras; the various types of religious services; how to conduct funerals, weddings, “and giving them training on psychology, when people have social problems, and how they must be well-equipped to deal with those matters.”
Persaud stated that he believes it is very important that Hinduism is continued and promoted in this part of the Caribbean and the world at large, but said that there is a lot more that can be done.
“We need the Hindu organizations to be more united and to have a common platform and they need to do more for the Hindu community. Most of the things I find are more Georgetown- based, and they should make their presence felt more and evident and I am very much peeved that not much is being done in Berbice to promote [Indian] culture, religion and youth programmes.”
He believes that this work has to be done by the Hindu organizations, since the government would not do it.
“Religions are allowed to thrive on themselves and the organizations should make these plans more tangible and more far-reaching, rather than being confined only to Georgetown.”
“I love what I do and I did it well without any kind of regrets or despondency. I am not a despondent person by nature. I like to be positive and nothing bothers me. I am always in a spirit of joviality and camaraderie. No situation will come upon me. I will be on top of them and I always have this positive outlook in life that with God’s power and strength, anything is humanly possible.”
Over the years, Pandit Persaud has been involved in a string of community-related work as well as religious activities, social networking, counseling, social issues and cultural activities. He is in charge of most of the Hindu temples in the East Canje area, with specific responsibility for the Cumberland and Canefield Mandirs.
Engaging youths in yoga recently in Berbice at the VEDA Centre.
A few years ago, after seeing the need to have young people actively involved in getting to know their faith a bit deeper and to become more empowered and occupied, Pandit Persaud was instrumental behind the establishment of the Vocational, Educational and Dharmic Academy (VEDA) Centre. It is going through extensive renovation at the moment.
“It acts as a kind of institution to mould young people and to re-orient them… to train them in the Hindu way and to give them a moral, sound foundation and have them go the correct paths in life, so we train them.”
When fully completed, the centre will offer computer classes, pandit-training, Hindi classes, musical classes, cafeteria, a shop to sell religious items, and a counseling centre, “the first of its kind in Berbice.”
“If culture is to be promoted, you need a place to teach children—that is basic… and we need to have a building to house activities, so it came to me that since we have nowhere to teach, the children should be centralized instead of going to each mandir, we have them be at one place.”
He is also involved in community service whereby he assists members of the community with filling passport, birth certificate and other forms as well as giving recommendations, all done free of charge. Hundreds of persons turn up at his residence for these services on a monthly basis. He is also involved in the reconstruction of a brand-new crematorium at Reliance, Canje.
Pandit Persaud also has a TV programme ‘Divine Virtues of Dharma’ which airs every Monday evening on a local TV station in Berbice where he promotes the faith.
Our ‘Special Person’ also strongly believes that there should be a prominent place for Hindi in the public school system, since it “is our second-language.” “We have Spanish [curriculum] and we don’t have a Spanish-speaking population, so I believe Hindi comes after any other language and it should be taught in the secondary schools.”
He is very fluent in Hindi, reading and speaking. His father used to teach him and he supplemented this with reading. “I can read the Sanskrit fluently, it is a very complex language.”
Persaud has dealt with hundreds of cases of domestic violence in the Berbice area as well. He counsels couples. “The family unit is a very strong unit and if the moral fabric is eroded, civilization is done, culture is done, country is done; the family is the pillar of the world, and when this unit is destroyed, everything is destroyed…”
Performing a jhandi for a 95-year-old resident of East Canje a few years ago.
Taking all of this into consideration, Persaud sees it as very important to save the family unit. “With the heavy influence of Western trends, soap operas, people watch and want to copy and practice the same thing and this would cause them to remove the core practices of Hinduism which are being replaced by foreign programmes.”
He is very much disturbed and incensed by the high presence of alcohol consumption. “This is my main worry…it really burns my spirit when I drive the road and know that these little children and young boys, what their activities are.”
He is quite concerned that many fathers are not performing their duties in the home properly. “I am much peeved that they don’t really perform their duties well—there are some good ones—but I find a lot of them don’t live up to the expectations of their religion, teaching their families and children, spending quality time. So I would like to urge fathers to be more centred with their families. I would like to see a change in that men come out in their numbers to be in congregational worship.”