Pandit Malaviyaji–
Some Personal Impressions
“Even more important than knowledge is a life of
emotions” wrote the late Bertrand Russell in a book of his. Certainly, without
emotions no life will be of any value to others. Viewed in this light, Pandit
Madan Mohan Malaviya’s career is one of utmost significance to us. His life was
a series of superb emotions. They were the unfailing freshes that surged and
rushed forth through him for India’s prosperity.
But behind them all he had a cool brain which never
shirked work. For he never showed dislike of toiling for his motherland nor
ever was known to have grumbled at his lot. He wore always a gentle smile on
his face and gained thereby much of human fellowship, which perhaps even gentler
words have yet to achieve. But if ever words should aid looks, his were the
most winning that went straight to our hearts. There were no artifices or make
believes in them. They seemed the normal currents of a Himalayan stream, which
coursed down unmindful of the changing seasons and the varying habits of men.
His voice was not stentorian but sufficiently clear and strong to sustain him
without effort in a lengthy speech. Anything of his English or Hindi utterance
was one, long, soothing note to the ear. Everything about him was so soft and
gainly, everything so meek and pure, that even the most uncontrollable temper
would assume moderation in his presence.
“The high embodiment of courtesy that I know of” said the late Sir C. Y. Chintamani referring to him once. This courtesy in him was less the result of his education than of inborn culture and good nature. For whomsoever he met, whether he be a child of eight or a man of seventy, he greeted him with folded hands as a mark of salutation, which showed no slackening for either pressure of work or hurry of business. His kindly manner and easy familiarity exacted an instinctive reverence from all who neared him. Perhaps he maintained all through his long life, like the Vicar of Wakefield, that “it is fit to keep up these mechanical forms of good breeding without which freedom ever destroys friendship”.
In appearance, too, there nestled close to him the
vestiges of a by gone type of unassuming orthodoxy. His quiet dignity and
simple austerity made him look one among the rishis of this ancient
land. By his religious zeal and rare dedication, by his unflinching courage and
live patriotism, he stirred our very depths. Nothing lured him away from his
daily Sandhya prayers or Puja; nothing daunted him in his
unstinting enthusiasm for the commonweal.
No one who goes to Benares today and visits the
spacious grounds and unending groups of buildings of the Hindu University on
the banks of the Ganges, can fail to be impressed by the extreme care and
devotion that have raised that grand edifice of learning. There is nothing in
the whole construction, which escaped his individual attention and immediate
care in its minutest detail. It is all on a colossal scale, which only a mind
cast in a gigantic mould could have perceived planned and perfected.
People of this generation may not with their best
imagination even conceive of the arduous labours gone into the rearing up of
the vast scheme of a Hindu University on the sacred soil of Benares. It came
upon the world with the puzzling success of a necromancer. The public marveled
at the rapidity with which the ways and means for the accomplishment of the
great plan were executed. Once the Pandit decided upon the all-comprehensive
university idea, his presence filled the length and breadth of this land. His
beseeching eyes and begging bowl could be seen everywhere. Rajas and rich men
vied with one other for a share in the honour of giving him alms. His prestige
and personality alone rendered the task easier for him. A prince among beggars,
he collected crores with nothing as surety save his unimpeachable character and
high integrity. He dreamt of a modern University, up-to-date as well in its
scientific and technological equipment, long before others could feel the
necessity for it. He realised it long-before others could believe it. His
beloved friend and admirer, the late Mr. V. Krishnaswami Iyer of Madras, with
all the outspokenness and vehemence characteristic of his utterances, remarked
in the year 1905 on learning of the University scheme from the Pandit’s own
lips, ‘Panditji your proposal is chimerical.’ Well, the friend did not live
long enough to find his prognosis turning totally incorrect. But the Pandit
used to be saying always, when recollections of his departed friend were
awakened in him. “Oh! how I wish my friend Krishnaswami were alive to see these
dreams of mine realised!” One could detect no tinge of pride or
self-satisfaction in words like these from him. He spoke like one dearly loved
by the departed, bemoaning the absence from the scene of his activities of a
kindred spirit and a sympathetic collaborator.
A tone of tenderness and warmth caressed the
listener, whenever he addressed a friend’s son or daughter. His loyalties were
abiding and his memories of friendship unfailing to the last. “Where is my old
friend of the Vaidyasala?” he would ask of the people around him for the
late Rao Bahdur A. Krishnaswami Iyer, whenever he happened to be in Mylapore
and particularly while staying in his friend’s, the late Mr. V. Krishnaswami
Iyer’s house. He would not stop merely with making such kind enquiries or
accosting his friend with warmth of expression, but, as a mark of true respect
to one more of years than himself, bend low at his feet with his turban removed
for the other’s benediction.
He was one who never spoke or preached what he did
not practice himself. What was good for others proved equally wholesome to him.
If he exhorted us to read the epics of our country or perform our daily
ablutions with faith, he could be never found guilty of neglect of either his
perennial interest in the sacred books of India or of his daily routine of
religious conduct from the time he opened his eyes up to the time he closed
them with satisfaction of having kept the vigils successfully for the day. Busy
as he was, he knew what time he could spare for his own personal wants. His
number of baths and purificatory items in the course of a day might have seemed
impossible for anyone else with so many preoccupations as he. In a running
train could be seen sometimes Panditji reading his correspondence-file or
dictating his telegrams, which often reached the length of personal letters.
With a copy of Manu in his hands he once got down from the train at Allahabad,
and when queried as to what he was doing with it, his reply came thus: “Don’t
you know that I often read Manu? His mind strikes me as far, far superior to
the rest of the world’s law-givers”. Again, the Mahabharata volumes
would be requisitioned by him for ready reference even during the short
intervals of a Congress session, between busy items of his programme when he
had to be either at the Subjects Committee sittings or at the rostrum of the
open sessions of the Congress for making his speeches. His passion for the
Sanskrit language was such that once, when asked to pose for a photograph, he
threw away a fat volume of a leatherbound English law-book, that was handed
him, saying, “Bring me the Aryacharita* volume. I love it so much and
should like to be seen too with it in the photo.”
As a moderate in politics, till the Gandhian flood
came and removed all traces of the old creed in him, he remained loyal to his
old chiefs like Gokhale. But the moment the call for severe tests and
sacrifices came, he threw all his moderation to the winds, and plunged headlong
with most of his enlightened countrymen into the fray to resist a feelingless
Government. To jail he went just like many others. And many were the physical
hardships he under went during the Satyagraha campaign. But all these he welcomed
when he found the moderates outliving their usefulness at a time when the cause
of the motherland demanded more unified action and faith in a single leader
like the Mahatma.
It only illustrates how much of self-reliance and
freedom of thought he possessed even at his advanced age. To give one more
proof of his untrammeled mine, when the opportunity offered itself for his
crossing the seas to participate in the Round Table deliberations at London, he
gave up his adherence to the inhibitions of orthodoxy and sailed with the other
delegates to England. Some of his critics were jocularly remarking that his
conservatism was still so strong that he carried with him the Ganges soil in
sufficient quantity to last him his entire stay beyond the native shores. Furthermore,
his death bed exhortation to the Hindus not to be cowed down by the defiler of
their homes and the violators of their gods, but to fight it to the finish in
the matter of asserting themselves, only convinces us of his unshaken belief in
the Hindu code of action and his divergence at some point in the philosophy of
non-violence from the great Mahatma himself.
Dr. Johnson confessed “to Boswell: “ Sir, I love
the acquaintance of young people, because, in the first place, I don’t like to
think of myself growing old.” Panditji felt in a similar manner the company of
youth invigorating, though not for the same reasons; for he loved to be young
only in order to further “the plan that pleased his boyish thought.” He could
the chatty and sportive with the young. Even when sufficiently old, he could
run races with his young companions and reach almost the winning post even if
not able to come out as the winner himself. There was in his lithe frame a lot
of energy which could stand the strain of the work of a dozen able men. If he
resorted to the Kaya-kalpa treatment in order to revive his bodily energies, it
was not because he wished to avoid death, but because he endeavoured to prolong
his period of service to his dear motherland. In this there is a striking
similarity between him and Gandhiji, who wishes a lease of a hundred and
twenty-five years for the completion of his plan of service on earth.
“Panditji, you are ever so much higher than I am,”
said the late Mr. V. Krishnaswami Iyer to him once, after knowing him
intimately. True, Malaviyaji was far higher than many an accredited nationalist
of his generation. True also, he was far abler than many an Indian living up to
the faith of his forefathers. Indeed, he belonged to the type of men of whom it
can, always be said that they are
“more able to endure,
As more exposed to suffering and distress,
Thence also, more alive to tenderness”.
* Aryacharita is
a compilation of stories from the various Indian epics and puranas edited by
the late V. Krishnaswami Ayar.