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I gave my personal Bharat Ratna to Madan Mohan Malaviya long back

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Rashmi Dickinson
Rashmi DickinsonJan 05, 2015 | 16:27

I gave my personal Bharat Ratna to Madan Mohan Malaviya long back

I am thrilled to hear that Madan Mohan Malaviya will be awarded the Bharat Ratna. My family tales and life seem to be intertwined with the birth of our nation.

In 1938, my father, BN Singh, an 18-year-old man, boarded a train. Opposite him sat a learned man and they began to talk. He was Madan Mohan Malaviya. As a result of that journey, my father was awarded a scholarship of rupees two per month and a place at Banaras Hindu University. In years to come, the experience would change his mission in life and light a fire in his belly to fight for his mother country.

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The following year when my father joined BHU, he was inspired by Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, who was knighted by the British for his services to the field of education. Radhakrishnan had become the vice-chancellor, but Mahamana continued as a rector. Multifaceted Malaviya, who had been a journalist and a lawyer, urged students to not only be intellectually equal to their foreign counterparts but also lead a noble life. It was Malaviya who popularised the slogan "Satyamev Jayate". He wanted caste barriers to be broken and Hindus to become more progressive and liberal. He encouraged Sanskrit but also science and technology at BHU.

My father would study hard during the day and teach basic literacy to adults in the evenings. He would also preach freedom. But in June 1941, a friendly local policeman warned him that he must leave Benaras immediately, or else be arrested for subversion.

By now Mahamana had retired and lived with his eldest son Ramakant Malaviya, a high court lawyer in Allahabad, My father began his MA English at Allahabad University, but at the start of the second year, August 8, 1942, Mahatma Gandhi announced the Quit India movement. "Karo ya maro" was the slogan. The British had the support of all the princely states, the Viceroy's council (mostly Indians), the Indian Army, the Indian police, the Indian civil services and major businessmen, who benefited greatly from heavy wartime spending. The British promptly arrested every single top tier freedom fighter in the whole country, including my Nana. If they were released, it would be at 10pm and then rearrested on another pretext by 5am.

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Leaving all his belongings behind, my father left Allahabad with just one set of clothes, and rented a room next to the Police Officers' Club near Benaras. He spent most of his days distributing anti-British leaflets and eavesdropping on the conversations of police officers and informing the second-tier leaders of the freedom struggle who were about to be arrested. He escaped attention for a long time as he looked small and insignificant. Ultimately, however, he was arrested. His only request to the thanedar, who called him "Vidyarthiji", was to be sent to jail before the British officers arrived, in order to avoid torture.

He was allowed paper and pencil as a gift for being a "good prisoner". He wrote poems, later published as a book called Bandi Yug.  

By the time he came to be released in 1943, several of his colleagues were dead. He went to ask Malaviya to seek help for their families. Mahamana asked, "How much do you need?" My father replied, "Rs 100 would be enough". "What good would just a Rs 100 do?" he asked. His grandson, Shridhar Malaviya, said "give him Rs 150". The next day my father found a cheque for Rs 200! "Prince of Givers, not a Prince of Beggars", my father called him, as he distributed the assistance among the families of the martyrs.

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Many years earlier, Gandhiji had wanted to propagate Hindi as the national language. He asked Sampoornanandji to send a good Hindi teacher to Sabarmati. My nana had been sent from Allahabad. A year later, in 1919, the movement came to an abrupt end as World War I had started.

Anand Bhavan in Allahabad had become the hub for the freedom struggle, even though Nehru was almost always in prison. It was here that my father came to the notice of my nana, Shiv Murti Singh, whose secretary was Lal Bahadur Shastri. He thought it wise to keep this "boy" in the family. My mother was barely 13 and my father 25. The wedding took place six months after my father returned from Sevagram near Wardha in Maharashtra. He had to clean toilets like everyone else and walked with Gandhiji every morning and evening, hanging on to every word he uttered. Gandhiji asked my father to concentrate on "all round rural development"; it was imperative, he said, for the true progress of India. At Sevagram, my father received intensive training in the subject, which became his lifelong passion.

In 1946, an accidental meeting between an American architect engineer from MIT, Albert Mayer (here to make the Chandigarh master plan) and Nehru in Calcutta, resulted in the first integrated rural development project in Etawah. Having rejected my father at first for his lack of administrative ability, Mayer later took to him for his ease of communication with the simple villagers and top echelons alike. Mayer arranged a Rockefeller Foundation scholarship at Cornell for my father to do his PhD. Upon his return it led him, via the first agricultural university in India at Pant Nagar, Nainital to UNESCO and around Africa and Middle East, where my peripatetic childhood was spent.

I was closer to my father than my other three siblings; I followed his principles more. I became a cardio-vascular physician first, then did an MBA and later joined the senior civil service in London. But the desire to serve my mother country never left me. My English husband encouraged me to fulfil my heritage, and here I am in Amber, Rajasthan doing pretty much what my father did, only intuitively.

Whenever my fight against corruption gets too overbearing, I remember how these great men fought for India relentlessly and resiliently. It gives me the strength to carry on. Whenever I feel sorry for having sold my house in London to fund my work or if I calculate the cost of scholarships to poor children in the government schools I have adopted, I am shamed by the thought of the magnanimity of that great man, who came from a poor family. Where would I have been without that kindness and generosity of Malaviya to his countrymen? My personal Bharat Ratna was bestowed upon him long time ago.

Respect.

Last updated: January 05, 2015 | 16:27
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