Rachael Espinet

Few people will believe this, but Sat Maharaj is the greatest entity that will help end child marriage in T&T. You see, his statements are always so unbelievably archaic and antiquated that the general public will automatically retch with disgust every time Sat opens his mouth.

Oh Sat, everything regarding the nation is our business.

By 7.15 pm on Indian Arrival Day the citizens of the country saw Sat Maharaj, Secretary General of the Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha (SDMS), call out Archbishop Joseph Harris to “mind his own damn business,” when it comes to child marriage.

Well sorry to break it to you Sat, but any issue that goes on in our country has officially become our business.

Within minutes of a news station posting that article on their Facebook wall, the public discussion on child marriage picked up once again with more people becoming enraged about these so called patriarchs of our society fighting to maintain a human right violation against our young girls.

What Sat and his padnas like president of the Inter Religious Organisation (IRO) Brother Harrypersad Maharaj, and Spiritual Baptist Archbishop Barbara Grey-Burke are yet to realise, is that the more they talk and advocate for child marriage to remain legal, the more they disgust the public and make us want to demand the law be change immediately. In fact, many other people of their generation don’t realise, is that anything said in a public forum can and will be held against them in the social media courts. (This is something that ex Port-of-Spain Mayor, Raymond Tim Kee learned the hard way.)

However, the real problem for these older gentlemen is not a matter of the wrong entities having an opinion on religious issues. Their real problem is that Sat and friends can no longer pretend as if they speak for the nation. No, the public can now speak for themselves and their voices can, will and have been heard because of social media.

The Hindu Women’s Association has been advocating for years for the marriage acts to be amended. However, it took the out of touch words of these out of touch patriarchs for the public to say wtf? And then their statements went viral and the public shouted a collective, “No!”

One of the more annoying axioms that our religious population strongly believed in was that the voice of the people was the voice of god. However, many of the religious leaders took the opportunity to declare their voice as the official voice of the people. What Sat, Brother Harrypersad and many others of his generation fail to understand is that now the people have the ability to let their own voices be heard. So no matter what they try to say or claim that they represent the majority of the population, the people will finally be able to speak back and that is all because of social media.

To the Sats, to the Tim Kees, to all those who just want to speak off the cuff in the public arena, just remember whatever you say can and will be held against you online, and that would have real time, real world ramifications.

As for Sat, I hope he keeps it up. I hope he keeps on digging that hole, and pretty soon it will be the grave that we bury child marriage in.