In order to create a compendium on ‘Mahamana’ Madan Mohan Malviya, the principal founder of Banaras Hindu University (BHU), Drub Singh, professor of history at Banaras Hindu University (BHU), along with two of his assistants, toured the country. Nearly over a decade to shape his labor of love. He visited the National Archives of India and the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library in Delhi; Various State Archives such as Maharashtra; archives of princely states including the Lalgarh Palace of Bikaner and the Maharajas of Jodhpur and Darbhanga; researched the private letters of Malaviya’s contemporaries, including paleo-botanist Birbal Sahni and other BHU founding members such as Rai Bahadur Sir Sunder Lal, and Annie Besant at the Theosophical Society in Chennai; And read old newspapers and magazines.
In December 2011, at a commemoration event to mark Malviya’s 150th birth anniversary, then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced various projects under the Ministry of Culture to celebrate his life and achievements, including a repository dedicated to the BHU founder. Of. A National Implementation Committee was constituted under the chairmanship of Karan Singh, the then Rajya Sabha MP and Chancellor of BHU, to oversee the execution of various projects.
Professor Dhub Singh started the project in 2011 which now has 25 different categories of documents. Photo: Special Arrangement
Professor Singh was entrusted with the responsibility of setting up the archive at an initial cost of ₹40 lakh extended by the University Grants Commission and the Ministry of Culture. After about 10 years, this mammoth work is nearing completion. Housed in the Mahamana 150th Birth Centenary Building, the collection includes 25 different categories of documents, including his speeches in the Imperial Legislative Council, interventions in the Congress Party, testimonies to various commissions, and his defense during the freedom struggle, among other historical events. Protesters accused in the Chauri-Chaura incident of February 1922 participated in the non-cooperation movement.
There is also a collection of over 1,000 photographs of Malviya, including photographs taken at the time of the university’s inception, such as an image where he can be seen surveying land, as well as images from charity campaigns across the country Are included. The country where Maharaja Rameshwar Singh of Darbhanga accompanied him to raise the ₹1 crore needed to set up the university.
The team of five, including two administrative staff, also collected several newspapers and magazines, including Malviya’s Hindi-language weekly, Abhyudaya (1907); leader of allahabad, an English-language daily (1909); and other hindi dailies like todayWhich also covered the daily activities in BHU.
The team also looked at BHU’s calendar, various rules governing its functioning, its teaching community and the books taught, for information about the university’s past. Since Malaviya played an important role in the Hindi Nagari movement, resources were also pooled from the 129-year-old Samaj Nagari Pracharini Sabha in Varanasi for the promotion of Nagari, which played a key role in developing a standard grammar for modern Hindi, Collecting rare manuscripts, publishing first Hindi dictionaries, encyclopedias and periodicals.
“We are now starting the process of digitizing and cataloging documents and various resources so that readers can have better access. The collection will continue and we will continue to receive documents from the various sources that we find. we’re trying to figure that out too [Malaviya’s] Voices and the films made on them, and have already started a gift register where anyone can donate mementos associated with Malviya, and we will preserve the gift under the name of the contributor,” said Professor Singh.
Although Malaviya was a Hindu nationalist leader who helped establish the Hindu Mahasabha, Professor Singh says historical documents show that the 106-year-old university was indeed national in character. “The name of BHU contains the word Hindu but in its character, conduct, recruitment and admission of students, it was truly national. There was no sectarianism. In the initial years of BHU, there were Muslim boys and girls who passed out from the university. The Persian and Arabic departments were some of the earliest departments in the university. When he [Malaviya] Speaking about Hindu, he had in mind a community which was to develop and receive the positive elements of their religion, but not to the exclusion of other religious communities from the University. In his convocation speech in 1929, he proudly said that the students came from states like Andhra, Punjab, Kerala, which shows that he was very conscious that he was building a national institution,” Prof. Singh said.
Malaviya recruited the best of talent from across the world to establish a prestigious university. On a trip to London for the Round Table Conference in 1932, he sought out young Indians studying at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge and brought VV Narlikar, who was then studying at the University of Cambridge. Malaviya paid off Narlikar’s debt to the state of Kolhapur to make it possible for him to attend BHU, where he founded the School of Relativity. On the recommendation of PC Ray, considered the father of chemistry in India, Malviya also brought Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar from London, who had completed his doctorate in 1921 at University College, London.
“He had a habit of being assertive, and convincing young men and women that they were assets, and wrote letters to them to come and join BHU; Otherwise, the university would not have shaped into the institution it did,” Prof. Singh said.