When the Indian National Congress held its annual session at Lahore in 1909, the situation both within and outside the party was tense. Lord Curzon’s Partition of Bengal (1905) had provoked a string of revolutionary activities and Swadeshi intellectualism. The government, alleging that Indians were planning a revolution on the 50th anniversary of the 1857 uprising, had come down heavily with a series of repressive Acts. At the same time, His Majesty’s government tried to compensate by implementing the Minto-Morley Reforms (1909), which not only enlarged the Indian element in the provincial councils but also introduced the poison ivy of separate electorate. Inside the Congress, ‘extremists’ had been expelled following the Surat split (1907), and ‘moderates’, popularly seen as loyalists, were in control of the party at the Madras Congress (1908).
As Sir PM Mehta declined the presidency of the Lahore Congress (1909), the mantle fell upon a moderate with a difference — Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya. It was a tribute well-deserved to someone associated with the Congress since 1886. An advocate, journalist, legislator and educationist rolled into one, Malaviya was recognised as an ace orator in English, Hindi and Sanskrit. Typical of moderates, he was a constitutionalist who believed that the British rule was inherently beneficial for the Indians. But unlike liberal moderates, he made no secret of being a conservative Hindu. The devotional idealism of the Bhagavad Gita permeated his worldview. He had founded the Hindu Samaj at Allahabad in 1880, and was the principal figure behind the Sanatan Dharma Mahasabha held in Allahabad in 1906.
Despite being a conservative Hindu, a tribe generally presumed to be regressive, Malaviya’s farsightedness on technical education put him on a different plane altogether. In his presidential address to the Lahore Congress, he said: “If millions of people in this country are to be rescued from poverty, if new avenues for employment are to be opened and prosperity spread over the land, it is essential that an extensive system of technical and industrial education should be introduced in the country. The examples of other countries point out that to be road to prosperity.”
Malaviya walked the talk. In instituting technological education at the Banaras Hindu University (BHU), his magnum opus, he proved himself years ahead of Jawaharlal Nehru, who commissioned the IITs in the 1950s and 1960s. Not until Subhas Chandra Bose, at the 1939 Haripura Congress (when he spoke of Planning Committee, forerunner of Planning Commission), any Congress president had said anything like this. In his dissent note to the Industrial Commission (1916-1918), of which Sir Thomas Holland was the president, Malaviya made important observations as a member. Therein he advocated both science and technological education in existing universities and colleges, setting up of an imperial polytechnic, provision for scholarships and so on.
BHU is the institutionalised legacy of Malaviya. It was planned as a university where Hindu scriptures and treatises, Sanskrit language and literature would be pursued along with modern scientific, technological and professional knowledge; where advanced research could be pursued in branches of arts and science; and, where ethical education aimed at character-building should be imparted.
The idea was first mooted in a meeting at Mint House, Banaras, in 1904, presided by the Maharaja of Banaras. A prospectus of the university was published and circulated in October 1905. The idea was well-received by the British government. It, however, took the Raj 12 years to bring it into reality. The foundation stone was laid by Lord Hardinge, Viceroy of India, on February 4, 1916, in presence of many Hindu princes, British officials and Indian dignitaries. The contemporary Hindu nationalists often try to prove that British destroyed an indigenous education system that was presumably ideal. They, however, never refer to the fact that BHU was welcomed by the British.
Malaviya was a visionary far ahead of his time. The inclusion of departments on Mining, Metallurgy, Industrial Chemistry and Geology alongside pure science subjects like Physics, Chemistry, Botany and Zoology speak volumes about his farsightedness.
OPPOSING the Mahatma
In 1919, non-cooperation was envisaged as a technique by Mahatma Gandhi in support of the Khilafat cause. It was only later in 1920 that attainment of Swaraj was added to as an appetiser for Hindus. This dichotomy of Muslim and Hindu objectives proved to the bane of twin movements. Malaviya was apprehensive of this from the beginning. At the Calcutta Congress (1920), he along with Bipin Chandra Pal, Annie Besant and CR Das opposed the Gandhian programme of non-cooperation. In December 1921, Malaviya and Besant led a deputation to the Viceroy to negotiate a way out the unrest.
HINDU MAHASABHA
The Khilafat movement, unnecessarily coupled with the non-cooperation movement for Swaraj by the Congress at the behest of Gandhi, whetted Muslim fundamentalism. It catapulted mullahs — a class scrupulously avoided by the Muslim League — into national politics. With the failure of the Khilafat movement, Muslim ire was directed towards Hindus. The Moplah riots (1920) in Malabar were followed by a string of violent eruptions in Kohat, Multan, Lucknow, Lahore, Delhi, Nagpur and Bengal during the 1920s.
At the face of this naked Muslim aggression, Malaviya rose to the occasion. He presided over the Banaras session of the Hindu Mahasabha in 1923. About 1,500 delegates, including Sanatani Hindus, Jains, Buddhists, Sikhs and Parsis, congregated in the compound of Old Central Hindu College in Banaras. Though Malaviya left the Hindu Mahasabha after the 1928 Jubbulpore (Jabalpore) session, he remained in touch with the organisation. In 1935, he was again elected president for the Pune session. He was so intimately identified with Hindu causes that MA Jinnah insisted on having Malaviya’s words on Hindu-Muslim bargains made by Gandhi.
Until the Gandhi assassination in 1948, one could be a member of Hindu Mahasabha and Congress simultaneously. Malaviya continued to be member of Congress until 1934 when he left the party on the question of Communal Awards. He founded the Congress Nationalist Party.
Hardly a conservative
Despite being a conservative Hindu, Malaviya was a proponent of Shuddhi (bringing back coercively converted Indians into Hindu fold) and Achhut-Uddhar (redeeming untouchables). Vaishnavism, to which he belonged to, is an egalitarian persuasion. He himself gave mantras to many ‘untouchables’ and ‘outcastes’ on banks of the Ganga in Banaras and Allahabad. Sometimes he faced disruptions like stone pelting by ruffians, which only doubled his zeal for the cause.
The LAST OF THE MOHICANS
Malaviya was no radical democrat. He belonged to the pre-Gandhian era where Congress stalwarts were not mass leaders. His approach was akin to Thomas Jefferson than a revolutionary advocate of mass politics. Nor did he sympathise with the socialist faction of the Congress. His approach to economics was functional rather than doctrinal. He was amongst the ‘many-sided’ leaders of pre-Gandhian politics, a species that slowly became extinct. Thanks to the dynastic politics of the Congress, Malaviya, like other pre-Gandhian Congressmen, would also have been forgotten had it not been for his institutional legacy of the Banaras Hindu University.
The 150th birth anniversary celebrations of Malaviya, under the aegis of Ministry of Culture, are likely to be a low-key affair. But for the intervention of Karan Singh who forced the Government to set up a committee under the Prime Minister, Malaviya might have been overlooked. Such has been the fate of pre-Gandhian leaders like Bal Gangadhar Tilak, BC Pal, Lala Lajpat Rai, among others, who are neglected for their pro-Hindu leanings.
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