least that is what is evident from how it has gone about marking the 150th birth anniversary of Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya, the founder of Benaras Hindu University.
Just like it had done for the 150th birth anniversary celebrations of Rabindranath Tagore and Swami Vivekananda last year, the government recently formed a national committee to decide on programmes and functions to mark the same milestone for Malaviya. But that is where the similarity ends.
While the plans to celebrate the anniversaries of Tagore and Vivekananda were publicised with much fanfare, especially in the run-up to the Assembly elections in West Bengal, there has been silence in the case of Malaviya — who is seen as a rightist and is among the national leaders often invoked by the BJP.
The national committee on Malaviya, though headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, is relatively low-key. Neither UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi nor Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee is a member. Both were part of the committees on Tagore and Vivekananda. And while those two committees had representation from across the political spectrum, the 18-member committee on Malaviya does not include anyone from the BJP.
The first meeting of this committee was held last month, on July 26, but no press statement was issued. Even the speech read out by the Prime Minister at the meeting was not made public. This is in stark contrast to the practice of putting every speech of the Prime Minister on his website, including what he said at the meetings of the committees on Tagore and Vivekananda.
The government did, however, release two photographs of the July 26 meeting on the website of the Press Information Bureau. That is how many people became aware of the plans to commemorate the anniversary.
On the other hand, the website of the Ministry of Culture has links to the anniversary commemoration events for Tagore and Vivekananda on the homepage itself.
“There are many misconceptions about Malaviya, one of them being that he was a Hindu leader. Maybe the word Hindu in Benaras Hindu University led to such an impression being created. But nothing can be further from truth. Malaviyaji was as tall a nationalist leader as anyone else this country has seen. And he was elected Congress president four times,” said P L Jaiswal, one of the members of the government’s committee.
Jaiswal said the decision to celebrate Malaviya’s birth anniversary was due largely to the untiring efforts of veteran Congress MP Karan Singh. Jaiswal himself is the man behind the Mahamana Malaviya Mission, set up with the efforts of BHU alumni.
He said the events planned to mark Malaviya’s birth anniversary would help clear some of the misconceptions about the leader, who died in 1946. The programmes are scheduled to start from December 25, the birth date of Malaviya, and continue for a
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