Distinguished Caribbean Hindu

Dr. Rudranath Capildeo
Mathematician, Physicist, and Politician
Born: Carnival Tuesday, 1920, Chaguanas, Trinidad

RUDRANATH CAPILDEO: Mathematics and Physics

 The School Paper of Trinidad and Tobago (June 1986)

Rudranath and three other boys peered over the lone reader on their desk at the back of the class. Classes in the Canadian Mission School in Chaguanas were overcrowded. Apart from the Presbyterian pupils, Hindus also attended the school. Rudranath was one such pupil. His father was none other than "Pundit Capildeo". He was a Brahmin. He hailed from a clan of princelings who owned several villages around Gorakhpur. This was a city in Northern India. In Chaguanas, Pundit Capildeo was the head of an eminent Hindu family.

He was brought to Trinidad, from Calcutta, as an indentured labourer. After his indentureship he was awarded a small plot of land. He worked the land, married and fathered nine children. Rudranath was the last. He was born on Carnival Tuesday, 1920.

His father died when Rudranath was only five. As a boy he helped in the family store - The Lion House. At home he learnt Hindi and Sanskrit. At school he performed well, thanks to Mr. Ramoutar, one of his teachers.

One day, Rudranath's mother, Sogee, boldly approached the principal of Queen's Royal College in Port of Spain. In those days East Indians rarely entered secondary schools. Rudranath's mother, nonetheless, was determined that her son be admitted to Queen's Royal College. She asked for Rudranath's admission. Impressed by her determination, the principal agreed.

Rudranath entered QRC in 1931. He was taught briefly by Eric Williams who was about to leave for Oxford University, England. Determined to win a scholarship, Rudranath studied up to 16 hours a day at times. In 1938, he succeeded. His mark in Mathematics was the highest ever in an island scholarship.

Rudranath was admitted to the University of London. During a period of illness, he underwent a change. Normally shy, he became more inquisitive. He began to understand that Mathematics and Science were not just subjects you learnt at school. They were a real part of everyday life. He developed a new interest in Mathematics and Science.

In 1943 he was awarded a B.Sc. in Mathematics and Physics. Two years later he obtained a M.Sc. in Mathematics with a distinction. Eventually he got his Ph.D. in Mathematical Physics. He then became Doctor Capildeo. Consequently, he began to rank with Britain's leading scientists.

Lawyer and politician, as well as scientist, his was the theory of Democratic Socialism. He was indeed a man of whom we can all be proud.

Capildeo died in London in 1970.  

MANY WAYS TO PRESERVE A HOUSE

Author: Judy Raymond
Source: Sunday Guardian, April 16, 2000 

The Lion House of Chaguanas was immortalized on paper in VS Naipaul's A House for Mr. Biswas, and now the building itself has been given a new lease on life.  The house on Main Street, Chaguanas, the ancestral home of the Capildeo family, has been restored by Suren Capildeo, Naipaul's cousin.

The house is also preserved in Adrian Camps-Campin's new painting.  Camps-Campins specialises in painting local historical landmarks, and publishes prints of his works on greetings cards, which include a short history of the building r site and the people and events associated with it.

The Lion House is renamed "Hanuman House" in Naipaul's great novel.  "Among the tumbledown timber-and-corrugated iron buildings in the High Street at Arwacas, Hanuman House looked like an alien white fortress," he wrote.

The house was built by Naipaul's maternal grandfather, Pundit Capildeo, who arrived in Trinidad, aged 21, as an indentured labourer on board the Hereford in 1894.  He came from Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh, and his destination was Woodford Lodge estate, Chaguanas.

Within months of his arrival, it was arranged that he should marry the Trinidad-born Soogee Gobin, whose family was well established in the area.  The Gobins, who owned a shop, paid off Capildeo's bond and as a wedding gift they gave the young couple the land on which the Lion House stands.  Soogee ran a store there while her husband carried out his priestly duties, and in 1923 they began to build the Lion House.

Built in the north Indian style, the trapezoid-shaped house is unique in local architecture.  It has walls almost a foot thick, and Pundit Capildeo is said to have made with his own hands all the bricks used in its construction.  The house contains lot of decorative plasterwork, with figures and patterns embossed on or etched into the walls, and several rooms feature mirror work.

The store occupied the ground floor of the four-storey building, and the family lived above it.  The third floor is taken up by a prayer room, and from the flat roof there is a panoramic view of the canefields of the Caroni plains and the hills of he Central Range.  The lions that gave the house its name stand at each end of the wall around the first-floor gallery.

Vidia Naipaul was born here in 1932 to Pundit Capildeo's daughter Droapatie and her husband Seepersad Naipaul, but he never knew his grandfather.  Pundit Capildeo died in 1926 while on his fourth visit to India.

His widow, Soogee, became the head of the family.  A strong-minded woman, she had over-ruled her husband's reluctance to send their children to school, which he regarded as a corrupting Christianising influence.  Thanks to Soogee, even the girls attended school and learned to speak, read and write English.

Soogee bought properties in Woodbrook and travelled to Port of Spain every week to take care of her son, Rudranath, who was to become a university lecturer and politician, while he attended Queen's Royal College.

It was for the sake of access to better schools that in 1940 Soogee moved the whole family to Port of Spain.  After that, the Lion House was rented out or stood vacant, and fell into disrepair.  When eventually it was renovated, it was with no respect for its original style and structure.  In 1998, however Suren Capildeo, the son of Soogee and Pundit Capildeo's son, Simbhoonath, has repainted it white and restored the grandeur of the Lion House, which stands as a monument to the indentured Indian labourers.