Who was Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya, freedom fighter and educationist

News:Indian Prime minister has said that India will always be grateful to Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya for his numerous contributions during India’s independence movement.

Facts:

About Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya:

• Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya(1861 – 1946) was an Indian educationist and a Freedom Fighter.He was also addressed as Mahamana.

Role in Indian Freedom movement:

• As a member of the Imperial Legislative Council, he participated in the important debates most notable being the prohibition of recruitment of Indian indentured labour to the British colonies.
• He was a moderate leader and opposed the separate electorates for Muslims under the Lucknow Pact of 1916.
• He had also attended the Second Round Table Conference in the year 1931.
• He popularized the term ‘Satyamev Jayate’.However,the phrase originally belongs to the Mundaka Upanishad.The term now is the national motto of India.
• In protest against the Communal Award which sought to provide separate electorates for minorities, Malaviya along with Madhav Shrihari Aney left the Congress and started the Congress Nationalist Party.

Contributions and Organizations:

• He started composing poetry at the age of fifteen with the pen name ‘Makarand’.
• He founded “Prayaga Hindu Samaj”, and wrote several articles on the Contemporary issues and problems of the country.
• In 1887,he established “Bharat Dharma Mahamandal” to propagate Sanatan Dharma and Hindu culture.
• He also founded the Banaras Hindu University(BHU) at Varanasi in 1916 which was created under the B.H.U. Act, 1915.
• He also founded the Hindu Mahasabha in 1906 to oppose not the just claims of the Muslim community but the “divide and rule” policy of the British Government.
• He also started the ‘Abhyudaya’ as a Hindi weekly in 1907 and made it a daily in 1915.He also started the ‘Maryada’ a Hindi monthly in 1910 and ‘Leader’ an English daily in 1909.

Awards:

• Madan Mohan Malviya was posthumously conferred with Bharat Ratna, India’s highest civilian award in 2014.
• The train named Mahamana Express was named after Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya in 2016.It runs between Delhi and Varanasi.