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An Icon for Gen Next leaders 

Dr. M. V. Kamath

When I read in the papers that 50 percent of the Lok Sabha members and 17 per cent of Rajya Sabha members have criminal cases against them and another 16 per cent have “serious criminal cases” against them, I keep wondering about those great days in pre-Independence times, when it was an honour to be a people’s representative. Many of them were best and the brightest of the lot, who had fought for freedom and in the process often, gave up their flourishing careers. 

My favourite is Kanhaiyalal Maneklal Munshi (1887-1971), one of the greatest of his generation, who established the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan in November 1938 with the blessings of Mahatma Gandhi. It is the only organization which can boast of 119 kendras (branches) in India and seven centres abroad, not to speak of a record 367 constituent institutions that are engaged either in teaching or researching a range of subjects from science, arts, commerce, communication, engineering, management, yoga karate, to technology, ayurveda, chartered accountancy, personality development, Vedas and Upanishads, tribal culture, even tailoring! 

I am referring to the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan today for a special reason. It is celebrating its Platinum Jubilee. It is truly a tribute to its founder, Munshiji, lawyer, scholar, patriot, educationist and an out-of-the-box-thinker, if ever there was one! A Gandhian, he had given up his lucrative career as a lawyer to be a freedom fighter and understandably suffered imprisonment. 

Broadminded, the motto he chose for the Bhavan’s Journal reflects his catholicity: Aa no bhadrah kratavo yantu vishvatah. (Let noble thoughts come to us from all sides). One of the earliest institutions Munshiji set up after the establishment of the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan was the Mumbadevi Adarsh Sanskrit Mahavidyalaya in 1939. Then came the Mungalal Goenka Institute of Post-Graduate Studies & Research (1939), the Sanskrit Vishwa Parishad (1951) and the Saral Sanskrit Pariksha Vibhag (1952). 

A thinker in his own right, he had differences with Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, especially with Nehru, who as the then Prime Minister of India smelt ‘Hindu revivalism’ in Munshiji’s attempts to renovate the decrepit Somnath Temple in Gujarat. To him, Munshiji wrote frankly. “It is my faith in our past which has given me the strength to work in the present and to look forward to the future.” 

But Munshiji was no Hindu fundamentalist. At the Bhavan, every public meeting began with prayers from Hindu, Muslim and Christian texts. To him, the world was one – ‘vasudaiva kutumbakum.’ As the Bhavan’s ‘kulapati,’ he led from the front. 

As a legal expert, his contribution in the framing of the Indian Constitution was indeed notable. He wrote several volumes. His classic work, ‘Krishnavatara,’ published in seven long volumes, displayed his deep scholarship. His historic work, ‘Jay Somnath’ won him followers throughout Gujarat. His novel, ‘Pritvi Vallabh’ was made into a movie of the same twice. One was directed by Sohrab Modi. 

Nehru appointed him Governor, United Provinces (UP), when he became automatically the ex-officio chancellor of Allahabad, Lucknow and Agra Universities, during which, he chalked out a programme for youth which not only involved doing physical labour, but participation in cultural discourses on the Gita, Upanishads and Vedic literature.

Munshiji believed in the ultimate establishment of universal peace, despite contemporary socio-political churnings, which he dismissed as part of the larger ‘samudra mathan.’ He supported the ageless message of Faith, Self-discipline and dedication – Shraddha, Samyama and Samarpana. In many ways, he was a social revolutionary and perhaps one can attribute this to the fact that at Baroda College, he studied under Aurobindo Ghosh, the revolutionary who was to become Sri Aurobindo the saint. 

He championed the cause of widow marriage – and that, too, in the first decade of the 20th century, when it required extraordinary courage to stand by such principle. But he not only stood by his view, he had the courage to himself marry a widow in 1926. Leelavati Sheth, as she was known, who stood by him through thick and thin in his later years. 

The point is that he had a vision and the courage to follow it. His faith in India’s past led him to fashion his thought for the present and plan institutions for the future. What stood out was his self-evident pragmatism. It is that, one suspects that saw the growth of the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan from being a modest Indo-logical research institution, into a comprehensive, cooperative, apolitical national outlook, seeking to inculcate a value based life and the promotion of ethical and spiritual values in everything it does. 

What more can one expect not just from Munshiji, the great thinker and activist, but from his successors who have out done him? Munshiji stands as a role model for the new generation of politicians who have no leadership worth the name. Munshiji provides the answer. He has shown what one man can do, and how to do it. As he once stated, “the real strength of the Bhavan lies in the character, humility, selflessness and dedicated work of its devoted workers… and not in the volume of its assets”. Today we need not one Munshiji, but the ones like him in dozens, and let it not be said that the GenNext has not been kept informed.