‘Hindu Mahasabha ties had nothing to do with Ratna’

BHOPAL: Madan Mohan Malaviya was conferred with Bharat Ratna, a day before his 153 birth anniversary, but his grandson, a retired director-general with Madhya Pradesh Police, says only governments in power can tell, why the highest civilian honour was given seven decades after his death.
Speaking exclusively to TOI, the former DGP, P D Malaviya, 81, parried questions whether India’s most well-known educationist was denied the honour by successive Congress governments as he was a founder member of the Hindu Mahasabha and espoused cause of Hindu nationalism.
“We are not complaining the Bharat Ratna was long overdue. If conferring of the award has something to do with a right-wing regime at the Centre and my grandfather’s association with Hindu Mahasabha, then I have to say BJP was in power earlier too. And my grandfather was close to Mahatma Gandhi as well. Let me clarify, Hindu Mahasabha was constituted to make people understand sanatan dharma better,” he said.
“My grandfather was a karmayogi. Contributing to society was a reward in itself and had he been alive, the Bharat Ratna would not have mattered much,” said Malaviya, who retired from the force in 1991.
And what the world perhaps didn’t know, the founder father of Benares Hindu University and a pioneer in education, had once flunked in his BA exam.
“When I failed in my school exam, my grandfather called me and said he too had failed in his graduation test. He asked me to keep working hard and be patient. Every year during winters, he would stay with us in Allahabad. Rest of the months, he would be in Benaras,” he said.
On his grandfather’s role in the freedom movement, the former DGP said he supported non-violence as a tool of struggle, but he would say “we should never quietly submit to atrocity and injustice”. The last public statement he issued was against the massacre of Hindus in East Bengal, he said. Not many know Malaviya Nagar in Bhopal was christened after his grandfather’s name. His octogenarian grandson said, “everything changes with time”. “Only few know that I am the grandson of Madan Mohan Malaviya.”
He’s not perturbed that his grandfather’s birth anniversary is not celebrated the way it should have been. “BHU Old Boys Association marks his birth anniversary every year near Mayur Park. To make people know what he stood for and what he practised in life would be the greatest honour to him,” he said.