Concept Note

National Unity & Integration: The Vision of Mahamana

Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya was one of the tallest leaders of the nation during the pre-independence struggle. He was a multifaceted leader simultaneously working in the fields of education, politics, freedom movement, law, religion, Culture and Literature, medicine, science, technology and journalism. He has indeed left behind a huge body of works, oral and written, spread over a large number of platforms. One of his lasting contributions is the Banaras Hindu University located in the holy city of Varanasi. It has been termed as the capital of knowledge with almost all conceivable disciplines starting with Religion and Philosophy to Nano science housed in a single campus. This is one institute that has contributed immensely to the nation building and still doing so and gearing to move ahead of the other institutions to be in a leadership position in the twenty first century. The efforts of Madan Mohan Malaviya for maintaining and underpinning national unity and integration are largely unknown. However, deeper examination of the literature, archival material, personal contacts, interviews of Partition survivors and visits to the places like Mumbai, Pune, Kolkata, Delhi, Amritsar, Lahore, London and Lucknow etc. may provide connectivity to the disjointed narratives.

Malaviyaji once said, “If Communal Award stands, every class and creed in the country will be organised under it as a separate political community to scramble for its own interest in the Legislature in disregard of people of its own.” When Gandhi was opposed to the separate electorates for depressed classes at the Round Table Congress and determined to risk his life for this and announced Indefinite fast, Pt. Malaviya was concerned for his life and immediately swung into an action. He issued a statement calling for a meeting of Hindu leaders on 17 and18 September:

“I honestly believed that there is enough patriotism and devotion to religion among us to help us to arrive at an agreement which will satisfy the reasonable desire of the depressed classes to take their proper share in the public life of India without putting them in a separate pen segregating them from the rest of the community………… in which they are born and to which they adhere in spite of the disadvantage to which they have been exposed.”

Needless to say that various micro-narratives related to Communal Award and Poona Pact can be juxtaposed with the grand narrative presented by the colonial, nationalist and postcolonial historiographies of India. Malaviyaji’s role in the Indian freedom struggle is multi-faceted, and he had an integrative attitude to nation-building. It is this diversity of his political career which is yet to be revealed thoroughly. A thorough re-examination of Malaviyaji’s role in the context mentioned above can rewrite the history of the Partition from new perspectives. Leela Gandhi has argued that postcolonial theory and praxis are oriented towards the project of anamnesis – a conscious remembrance, a corrective to and an undoing of collective amnesia. Malaviya’s role in the agitation against the communal award has fallen victim to a collective political amnesia in India. This amnesia needs to be undone, through a rigorous postcolonial project of anamnesis.

The seminar would facilitate this political anamnesis which is absolutely necessary for the interrogation and remapping of the Indian nationalist and post-Independence historiographies, and also for envisaging a more harmonious future for the Indian nation especially at a time when we are debating about the concept of Nation and Citizenship in the background of Hindu Nation.

The Seminar would deliberate upon the following issues and themes with special reference to Pt. Malaviya.

- Mahamana & his Philosophy of Education

- The Idea of a Hindu University

- Freedom Struggle and Pt. Madan Mohan Malaviya

- Poona Pact and the Communal Award

- Upliftment and Empowerment of Women and Children

- Cultural Heritage and National Pride

- Journalism with a Social Purpose and Sense of Social Responsibility