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SOUTH AFRICA, May 16, 2004: Six months before his department closed, Dr. Bisraam Rambilaas, former head of Sanskrit at the University of Durban-Westville, invested his money in the establishment of KwaZulu-Natal’s only Hindu school. Westville Hindu Primary School, which he runs himself, is unique in that it offers Indian Studies in a structured formal syllabus. “We’re Hindus, but we’re also South Africans,” says Rambilass. “We teach conversational Hindi and simple Sanskrit alongside Zulu, but we also treat Afrikaans as an academic subject. By making these Indian languages and culture an integral part of mainstream education, we’re equipping our pupils with a cultural identity relevant to modern South Africa. We’re not caught up in any fundamentalism.” Westville Hindu Primary School began in January, 2000, with nine students. Now there are 50 pupils, six full-time teachers for academic subjects, part-time teachers for dance, music, yoga, meditation and computer studies, and professional coaches for sports. “We also teach our pupils to play the harmonium, simple yoga postures and elementary meditation. They mainly meditate by chanting and lying still,” says Rambilass. “This has an educational as well as religious significance, because meditation focuses the mind and plays an important part in concentration,” he adds. Rambilass is an internationally known scholar with a PhD in Sanskrit.

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