Pt. Madan Mohan Malaviya

Madan Mohan Malaviya Born on December 25, 1861, in an educated orthodox Hindu family, Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya was a freedom fighter, an educationist and a social reformer with a vision of independent and self-reliant India. He became the Indian National Congress President four times. He is remembered in the world as the founder of Asia’s largest residential university at Varanasi, the Banaras Hindu University in 1916. The University has around 12,000 students all across the field such as the arts, sciences, engineering and technology. He was the Vice Chancellor of BHU from 1919 to 1938. He was also the founders of Scouting in India as well as a highly influential English newspaper, “The Leader” which was published from Allahabad in 1909. Apart from holding the post of the President of Indian National Congress, he represented India along with Mahatma Gandhi at the First Round Table Conference In 1931. Founder of the prestigious Banaras Hindu University (BHU) at Varanasi, he was also a social reformer and believed in egalitarianism. This philanthropist, also addressed as ‘Mahamana’, passed away in 1946. He has been posthumously honoured with Bharat Ratna, India’s highest civilian award, on 24 December 2014. Utilizing new and authentic source material, this book traces Malaviya’s role in the freedom struggle, the people who supported him, his relations with other established political leaders of the country within and outside of the Congress party, and how he saw his own actions and role in public life. He shows that rather than being a restraining influence, Malaviya’s faith in constitutional politics and educational advancement laid a solid foundation for the uplift of the nation.