THE Guyana Sevashram Sangha (Cove and John Ashram), is today honouring and celebrating the life and contributions to humanity of one of the most beautiful and evolved souls to have emerged from this country with the publication of a book dedicated to his life, works and achievements.Several years ago, Guyana’s Honours List included one of the most dynamic spiritual leaders and an outstandingly successful educator in the western hemisphere, His Holiness Swami Vidyanandaji Maharaj (lovingly called Guruji by all those whom he has mentored over the decades of his spiritual journey).

He has shaped or guided the direction of countless lives, including that of Guyana’s former President Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo, who began his working life as a teacher at the Hindu College under the auspices of Guruji, and until today Dr. Jagdeo, who has himself achieved greatness in his homeland and in the international sphere, still retains deep respect and reverence for the administrative and spiritual head of the Guyana and New York branches of Bharat Sevashram Sanghas.
The genesis, and one could also say the catalyst, of Guruji s lifelong tapasya (penance) and seva (service to mankind) lies in the circumstances of his birth.
His very young mother, after a series of stillbirths and miscarriages, had made supplication to Mother Ganga and was subsequently blessed with the birth of an only son, whom she named Seecharran.
His father, who was a sardar (foreman) at the Albion sugar estate, was not particularly religious. However, his mother observed all the ancient traditions of the Hindu religion, even moreso after being blessed with her son. So little Seecharran grew up in a home steeped in the rites and rituals of the cultural and religious mores that had kept alive and thriving the continuum of Hindu values and philosophy, even in the grimmest of circumstances circumscribing the dynamics of the Indian indentured labour system. Every Friday the young boy paid obeisance to the deities of his forefathers with offerings and prayers. He says Friday must have been chosen by his mother because he was probably born on a Friday – the 3rd July, 1926.

AN ORPHAN BEFORE AGE TEN
However, when Seecharran was a mere ten years old tragedy struck the happy little family when his mom succumbed to illness at the relatively young age of thirty-nine. Nine months after, at age fifty-two, her husband followed, leaving their pre-teen son an orphan.
Rather than living on charity, especially since life was singularly hard for his relatives, who were themselves living in the pecuniary circumstances that coloured a drab grey the lives of Indian indentured labourers and their descendants living in logies on sugar estates, and feeling belittled by the insignificant weekly sum offered him by the estate following the demise of his parents, Seecharran opted to join the workforce, initially as an odd-job boy, then as a gate-checker. At one time he even cut cane.
He continued fending for himself in his parents’ logie, but working at back-breaking labour for twelve hours then returning home to prepare meals was extremely difficult for the little orphan, who was still a very young child, just on eleven.
However, his feat of endurance and perseverance in situations of great hardship, honed and ingrained in his formative years, hallmarked and shaped his character, which was to stamp its imprimatur on thousands of young persons and mould their destiny – collectively and separately, over decades.
Guruji says that he vividly remembers a strange and frightening dream that he had when he was merely 4 to 5 years old, in 1941, in which he clearly saw a robbery taking place. He woke up screaming until he was hoarse. In the morning it was discovered that a real robbery had taken place at a Chinese restaurant not far away at the same time he was dreaming.
This incident prompted his mother to take him to a Yogi who, upon checking the Patra, predicted that Seecharran would die at the age of 25 unless he lived the life of a Sanyasi. However, when questioned about the improbability of someone embarking on such a spiritual journey without a guru (teacher and mentor), the Yogi foretold that the Guru would come in the right time.

A BLESSING FROM MOTHER GANGA
Whether it was because of his mother’s influence, his knowledge that he was a blessing for his parents from Mother Ganga, or his ordained future, Seecharran remained a vegetarian like his mother, even when he had to cook for himself; and he was never tempted to explore worldly adventures like other young men of his association at the estate.
At the age of fourteen he began working in the sugar factory, where he honed his skills in various aspects of sugar production, thereby acquiring the considerable scientific knowledge in the exquisitely minutely-detailed processes unique to the production of sugar, which is a coveted skill until today, one that no degree can confer.
When he was eighteen years old, the Constitution had been suspended and Guruji said conditions became so dangerous and deplorable that life became even more difficult for employees in the sugar industry.
Guruji’s spiritual journey, which began as a process from the circumstances of his birth, took a significant turn when Swami Purnanandaji Maharaj first came to Guyana in 1955.
Up until then he had kept true to his mother’s teachings through meditation and prayers, while his recreational activities included amateur boxing, wrestling, and body-building, which were then popular sports. He was also an excellent cricketer and played for the county team.
After his mother passed away, Guruji meditated every day and one day, while gazing into the light of the diya, Guruji fell into a trance where he found himself enveloped in a cave-like but holy ambience, with a voice resounding in his consciousness, saying “Come – come to me.”
Swami Purnanandaji Maharaj had been sent by the Bharat Sevashram Sangha to Trinidad, where he was working when he was sent an invitation to establish a mission of the Sangha in Guyana. He came for a brief visit on a one-way ticket but never returned. He had just been gifted land in Cove and John by great devotee, lovingly and respectfully called ‘Big Maie’, the wife of businessman Resaul Maraj, to build the Ashram.
Guruji said he immediately recognised that this was his pre-destined Guru reaching out to him, as was ordained by the Yogi when he was just four years old, so he wrote to the learned monk, who replied and invited the young Seecharran to meet him at Pt. Tiwari’s home in Cumberland, Canje in Berbice.
At that meeting Swami Purnanandaji Maharaj invited him to join the Sangha, promising nothing but hard work and sacrifice, but Guruji said that this was the moment and the mission for which he was born, so he gave up life as he knew it and journeyed to begin a life of service so intense and meaningful that his influence and breath resounds in the very walls of the buildings of the Guyana branch of the Bharat Sangha, and in the fulfilled aspirations of thousands of persons whom he taught lessons and moral values in sync with his existential application to prayerful work in education and the social revolution of the times.
One of his many achievements was the catalysation of a reformed thinking by rural Hindu parents on educating their daughters, for which he lobbied untiringly from house to house.
According to Guruji, conditions when he arrived at the site of the Cove and John Ashram were extremely basic and bordered on the primitive, with a couple of lean-tos for shelter and no bridge to cross the canal. The land was swampy and bushy and had to be accessed by canoe.

SAINTHOOD EARNED
The backbreaking toil of clearing and filling the land before any building could be erected would have daunted anyone with a faint heart, but everyone involved, including a multitude of volunteers and the patrons, were filled with zeal and, despite the discomforts that bordered real suffering, the pioneers of the Guyana Bharat Sevashram Sangha persevered.
Everything had to be accomplished using the most basic and rudimentary tools, with boulders pounded with sledgehammers and hammers to make ingredients for concrete.
Today, the Guyana Sevashram Sangha and its various arms in Guyana stand testimony to the courage, determination and commitment of Swami Purnanandaji Maharaj and his disciples, especially young acolytes Guruji, then Bramchari Seecharran, and current spiritual head and administrator of the Canadian Sangha, Guyanese spiritual leader His Holiness Swami Bhajanandaji Maharaj, to make a difference in the lives of their fellow humans. They have indeed earned their sainthood.
What is even more amazing is that everything done at the Sangha was by way of contributions and voluntary work. He spoke specially of Mrs. Resaul Maraj, who donated the land, and her son-in-law, who sponsored the construction of the first two buildings on the land, which were the dormitory and the Hindu College, with a small library and the first temple being erected almost simultaneously.
One Trinidadian oilfield foreman of African descent by the name of Mr. Gibbs, who had been so impressed by the work done by Swami Purnanandaji Maharaj in Trinidad that he became a Hindu, continuously supported the Guyana Sevashram Sangha with financial and other help until he died. He also donated the first vehicle owned by the Sangha, which was a Volkswagon. Mr. Gibbs even sent his son, Ansel, to help with the labourious work being done to convert twenty acres of marshy swamplands and bushy hillocks into the legendary place for learning and worship and pilgrimage that it is today.
Guruji said that the vegetarian diet made Mr. Gibbs’ skin almost transparent and that his demeanour and actions were so serene and peaceful that anyone could discern that this was a greatly spiritual person who lived a clean life dedicated to the upliftment of the human soul.
The Guyana Sevashram Sangha was established by an Act of Parliament in 1956.
Bramchari Seecharran began teaching at the Hindu College when it was opened.
This is the most amazing transformation that can best be described as miraculous. An unschooled orphan could go straight from the fields into the classroom, teach science – the most difficult of subjects, and produce world-class scholars who straddle the world in various spheres of achievement. His diction and fluency of language, as well as his knowledge of the ancient languages and scriptures of India is so mellifluous that he enthralls, influences, and motivates listeners worldwide, and I, easily bored and supremely intolerant, am no exception.
Guruji says that this transformative miracle is a natural progression of his absolute faith which drove his complete surrender to his Guru, because he believes that he was born and routed to this mission in this country by Divine ordination of Founder of the Bharat Sevashram Sangha – Acharya Srimat Swami Pranavanandaji Maharaj, who is in essence an incarnation of Lord Shiva, who adjured his disciples to go all over the world and ‘gather my children’. Guruji is absolutely convinced that he is a manifestation of an earlier birth, with ingrained, inherent knowledge and wisdom, which can be the only explanation for his ability to transcend his circumstances and fulfill the Sangha’s quest for the production of scholars of excellence that have hallmarked the continuum of successes in this endeavour at the Ashram.
The incandescence of absolute faith is a primal phenomenon, not subject to human equations and reasoning, and this is manifest in the life of Guruji, who surrendered his all to his Supreme Guru.

MYSTICAL TRANSMISSION OF KNOWLEDGE
Guruji says that all his acquired knowledge is transmitted knowledge, which was imparted silently through the medium of his Guru. He describes it as an evolutionary process of growth and rebirth and development, and said that his journey in this life was predicted by the circumstances of his birth and the Patra as interpreted by the Yogi when he was yet little more than a baby. Although he honed his knowledge with some time spent at Queen’s College, an institution that was almost impossible to enter without requisite qualifications, the basic knowledge was inherent within him through Divine grace.
Apart from being Principal of the Hindu College he gave tuition in physics, chemistry, biology, human anatomy, physiology and hygiene, botany, Literature, Latin, Hindi, Sanskrit, et cetera. Guruji imbibed all this knowledge himself without formal education, but only through his faith in his Guru and the philosophy that education is the manifestation of the cosmic trajectory of the atma (soul) over eons – from birth to re-birth, which is the transmigration of souls from one incarnation to another.
The belief that the Guru has the power to silently transmit his inhered knowledge created the gurukul system in India, and the Guyana Sevashram Sangha has based its educational policies and methodologies on that gurukul system.

NO COMPROMISE ON STANDARDS
Guruji described his Guru as being very stern and serious, and a strict disciplinarian who did not compromise on standards, and whose expectations were very high.
However, they also had to employ other teachers, so in the little spare time that the monks had they planted rice, another labour-intensive enterprise, and engaged in other activities to garner enough funds to enable children of indigent parents to be able to attend school. A nominal fee was charged the wealthier boys.
Guruji said that the Hindu College did not turn away anyone and that the school took in students who could not gain admission at the public schools because their grades were below average.
At a time when education for girls, or even for boys, was not a priority, the monks went from house to house to encourage parents to have their children attend school. The school was also a boon to Indians who were earlier disallowed entry to other schools because they refused to convert to Christianity and/or change their names.
Guruji said that those, whose entry level exams were low, were given special tutelage to enable them to graduate with their peers.

TEACHING PROFESSION
Guruji lamented the lack of commitment of many modern teachers, most of whom do not have a vocation for teaching, which he considers a mandatory prerequisite to motivating students to achieve optimum success. He said the transitory stages to develop a child and maximise potential through individual interventions no longer underpins teaching methodologies as of yore, because today it is like a one-stop-shop, with a general system to address the needs of every child, without consideration that each child has different peculiarities and different needs. He also regrets the lack of discipline in schools today, because he ascribes to a field of thought that dictates discipline in a school system. As Guruji describes it, ‘discipline’ is a derivative of ‘disciple’, which a child is until he evolves through a systemic process to become a master of his own destiny.
He reiterated that his knowledge is transmitted knowledge and said that he cannot himself explain how it was acquired, because there was no systemic educational process leading to his academic development, to the extent where he can hold his own at any forum in the world.
Guruji said that even while they were teaching at the school they were also farming the rice lands and simultaneously building the superstructure of the grounds and the several buildings that comprise the Guyana Sewashram Sangha, and that it was all done by manual labour.
He said the LBI estate helped with the drainage system, but that the monks and volunteers worked with only faith and the most basic implements over many years, and even until today, to create the physical structures and the ambience and ethos that are peculiar only to this haven that has become a place of pilgrimage for Hindus, and even many non-Hindus who were educated at the Hindu College and periodically return to pay homage to their alma mater.

GOD’S WORK DONE THROUGH VARIOUS CHANNELS
However, Guruji said that he planted the coconut trees and most of the plants with great difficulty, because the soil was not arable. He made mention of the continuum of God’s work through various channels and conduits and cited the inputs of countless contributors over the years, as well as those who serve the Ashram on a daily basis, such as the recently-deceased Seeram Persaud (Bhaiji Scouta), who dedicated the latter part of his life to the service of God through his voluntary work at the Sangha, Bhaiji N. Rampersaud, and Hindu College Principal, Ms. Rajkumarie Singh, former student of the Hindu College and protégée of Guruji, among myriads of others scattered all over the world.
He said that, of the many who worked and contributed, His Holiness Swami Bhajanandaji Maharaj stood out after he joined the Ashram and, like Guruji, remained in the Mission.

LIFE OF AUSTERITY
Speaking of the life of austerity, where one sacrificed all earthly things in order to serve the Lord, Guruji said that he did countless hours of meditation as a Bramchari. After teaching in the school, then labouring in the fields, then performing Guru seva (service to Guru), then preparing lessons for the next day for his various classes and marking books, the young Bramchari said he finally went to his altar, or to the mandir to commune with his inner self and his Lord before retiring to bed.
After a mere couple hours of sleep Guruji would then arise and help to prepare meals for the children living in the dormitory.
Subsequently, Swami Purnanandaji Maharaj went to London for a lengthy stay and Guruji was left with overarching responsibility for the Ashram, during which time Guyana’s Constitution was suspended, British troops landed in Guyana, and the PPP Government was forcibly ejected from office. Guruji said that, although the Mission is a “purely philanthropic and charitable Organisation, with non-sectarian, non-communal, non-political character and outlook, and that there were many ecumenical engagements and services held on the premises, with children from every walk of life attending classes at the institution, the Indian-based Organisation was viewed as a hostile one and treated accordingly, with raids and searches periodically carried out in the buildings.

SANGHA TARGETED BY AUTHORITIES
During the period of unrest in the country in the 1960’s, at the height of racial conflict, the Sangha was specially targeted by the authorities because, true to its charitable Mission, it had rescued and provided shelter to many of the victims of the massacres and riots that were devastating Guyana at that time. The school’s science lab was the special focus of attention as a result of unwarranted and unsupported suspicion that bombs and other incendiary devices were being made in that facility, and many times the chemicals used for experimental and demonstration purposes were seized, because the military considered the chemical elements dangerous material.
Guruji said it was a time of threats, attacks and fears and that, after a hard day, they had to stay awake at night on alert for attacks from the roaming gangs, especially because there were children in their charge, but the Sangha always responded to the violation of their sacred premises and the persecution by the authorities with silence, and without protest of any kind. The monks cooperated fully with the military personnel during the raids and searches of their persons and the Sangha’s premises.

MANY MIRACLES AT ASHRAM
Guruji said they witnessed many miracles whereby the Sangha and its inhabitants were divinely protected during those times of terror in the country. He cited an example where, after prayers one evening he was about to venture into the dark compound but was forcibly restrained by a dog, which came out of nowhere. The dog was so insistent that the other monks advised him not to leave the building, when there was a loud explosion in the yard.
The army tried to blame the explosion on the monks and questioned the children of the dormitory, showing them bullets et cetera, but Guruji said the children had no exposure to incendiary devices because there was never any violence perpetrated by the inhabitants of the Ashram.
Once, when the Ashram was under threat from attack by the “chain-gang”, Guruji encountered their scouting party of two in the dark compound. He shouted out “Who is there?”, upon which they immediately panicked and ran helter-skelter away. One Mr. Budhu, who lived on the perimeters of the Ashram, said he overheard the two relating to the waiting gang that they had seen a huge, monstrous figure with a thunderous voice in the grounds. That figure had only been Guruji in the dark, but that was a religious place and Guyanese, violence-driven or otherwise, are superstitious people, but the Ashram was once more fortuitously saved from attack by what Guruji is convinced was divine intervention. Guruji said that no transgressor ever managed to penetrate the sanctity of the Ashram because of this Divine protection. Ultimately, even the army realised that the Ashram was devoid of any threat and left them alone.

HINDU COLLEGE NATIONALIZED
Stating that it is a policy of the Bharat Sangha that the various branches of the Sangha in each part of the world worked along with the Government of the country, and that, when the PNC Government nationalised the private schools in the country that had been aided by the Government, Guruji said that, although the Ashram’s schools had never been aided by the Government, they were forced to relinquish the Hindu College and the Swami Purnananda Primary School to the authorities because they were warned that refusal would incur forcible seizure of the buildings.
Initially the schools of the Sangha were closed by the administration and the students assigned elsewhere, but that was not in keeping with the mission of the Bharat Sangha, which was three-pronged, with the provision of an education and impartation of learning being primary focal points, so Swami Purnanandaji Maharaj issued instructions for Guruji to hand over the buildings to the authorities so that the educational component of the Mission could continue.
But he continued to teach and help the students without accepting a salary from the Government, and although no rental was paid for the use of the Sangha’s school buildings, the name was changed to the Cove and John Secondary School, because the authorities said the original name connoted racial distinction, although children of mainly Afro-Guyanese communities of the Sangha’s neighbourhood attended the Hindu College because of the disciplined environment and the level of teaching that were trademarks of that institution.

HIGH LEVEL OF EDUCATION AT ASHRAM SCHOOLS
Guruji said parents of the students did not care about the name of the school, nor the fact that it was run by Hindu monks, only about the quality of education that their children were receiving. He said the personal care that they took over each child was also appreciated by parents, because they visited homes if children were absent or had a problem, or even to discuss the progress of the children.
Guruji said that, although as monks they remain detached from worldly things, yet the subsequent desecration of an institution they had worked on labouriously, with unremitting toil, was somewhat unsettling, but they had to accept the deterioration of standards in the school consequent upon its acquisition and administration by a governmental construct. However, Guruji said that within the dictated constraints they provided support to the students, without accepting anything from the administration, because they were sanyasis, sworn to serve without reward, although the monks resisted the administration’s diktat that all teachers had to give voluntary labour to the Hope Estate farm and other public institutions.

CORE GUIDING PRINCIPLES
The Government of the day allowed an unwritten concession to the monks that allowed them to retain authority and thus some degree of the original standards in the primary and secondary components of the school. However, it never again achieved the pristine record it was originally famous for, although the current principal, Ms. Rajkumarie Singh, is working hard to re-establish those core guiding principles that the monks had set.
Subsequently, the secondary school was restored to the Sangha by the current administration and re-named the Swami Purnananda Secondary School, popularly known as the Hindu College.
Guruji is currently based at the New York branch of the Sangha, while newly ordained monk, His Holiness Swami Shivsankarji Maharaj, formerly Bramchari Vidur, is current administrator of the Guyana Sangha, although Guruji remains spiritual head of both institutions.

WELL-DESERVED NATIONAL AWARD
However, Swami Shivsankarji Maharaj was brought up at the feet of his Guruji and brings a fresh dynamism to continue the wonderful work begun by the young monk from India, Swami Purnanandaji Maharaj, and ably continued by Guruji, with support from many other sanyasis, as well as secular persons who are devoted to keeping alive the precepts of the supreme Acharya, who said to his disciples: “Go ye to each corner of the world and gather my children.”
The conferral of the Golden Arrow of Achievement on Guruji His Holiness Swami Vidyanandaji Maharaj by then President Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo, who travelled to the New York branch of the Bharat Sevashram Sangha to bestow this award on his spiritual guide and mentor is well-deserved, even though Guruji places scant importance on such accolades, valuing instead the lives he has moulded and guided unto spiritual journeys and unto pathways of attaining the prerequisites that shape good human beings made in the form of God.
Written by PARVATI PERSAUD-EDWARDS