Bharat Ratna Sir M. Visveswaraya’s birthday today (September 16th)

Brahma, Vishnu and Maheshwara form the Hindu trinity with each assigned a specific job. Creation, preservation and destruction. Brahma will create. He is the creator of this world, architect of this universe and Vishnu is the preserver of that creation while Maheshwara, Shiva, is the destroyer of what is created so that Brahma will get new contract to create the universe again…

We see this happening since 1947 rather religiously and constitutionally. Nehru was the first Brahma after independence. Indeed he did create an India that would make it industrialised and march towards modernisation. Two major steel factories Bokaro and Rourkela; Bhakra-Nangal dam which he called the ‘modern temple,’ Scientific and Technological Research Centre so on and so forth. However, after the first few years of his 17-year-long rule as Prime Minister down-slide began, administration turned effete, corruption raised its ugly head and finally, culminated in the humiliating defeat in the 1962 China war. Soon after, he died.

Next one to rule us for almost as long a period, 16 years, as Nehru did was his daughter Indira Gandhi. She was more a Maheshwara and less of a Brahma. Bank nationalisation, abolition of the privy purse, yes. However, she was the prime cause for weakening our till then sound and strong constitutional institutions that were in place, in order to perpetuate her rule. She made the Supreme Court and even the Parliament captive in 1975 when she declared the internal emergency and passed draconian laws. Virtual dictatorship.

Time passed. Six years of NDA rule was colourless, spineless. Remember exchanging a terrorist to release passengers of a hijacked plane… in a foreign country… our Foreign Minister personally going…? However, NDA had good excuse for its pusillanimous performance: NDA is not BJP; hence following coalition dharma was a great hindrance and hugely restrictive to function freely.

People answered appropriately when time came. UPA under the leadership of Congress came to rule with Dr. Manmohan Singh as Prime Minister. Now it is about to complete 10 years. But where are we? Are we seeing Dr. Manmohan Singh as the creator of a new, resurgent India? He has wasted his time gathering votes for the 2014 Parliamentary election doling out rice, sugar and edibles and such other concessions to poor voters who are in majority instead of building a new dynamic India creating new industries, infrastructure and schemes that would generate employment, and as a natural, general rule increase per capita income.

The 2014 election-oriented laws and schemes like doling out rice at Re. 1 a kg, cash subsidy etc., by the UPA are counter-development-economic incentives. This will make the beneficiaries lazy, absent themselves from work, spouse to separate and as in Charles Dickens novel to ask ‘Some more Sir.’

Such are the leaders we got after independence. No wonder we still belong to the third world, to the category of developing country, as the developed countries call us.

Contrast these so-called leaders and nation builders with some others; but the most well-known and famous among them is Sir M. Vivesvaraya whose 152nd birthday is today rightly observed as Engineers’ Day. Though it may be a bit of exaggeration to say he was the builder of India when British were ruling us, his contribution was substantial in many areas of development, wherever he served — Bombay, Hyderabad and Karnataka. As for Karnataka, he was really the Brahma, the creator. Son of Karnataka (then Mysore Kingdom), no son of this soil has done so much for its development as he has done in just six years when he was the Dewan from 1912 to 1918. That he was fortunate, so also the people of Mysore, in having Krishna Raja Wadiyar IV as the ruler, a Raja Rishi and philosopher-king. He gave full support to Sir Vivesvaraya’s many visionary projects. Of the many, I must mention at least a few major one’s — KRS Dam, Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd., Bhadravati Iron and Steel Mill, Government Soap Factory, Sandal Wood Oi

l and Soap Factory, State Bank of Mysore, Mysore University, Hydro-Electric Project at Shivanasamudra, Mysore Sugar Factory, Hindu Modern Hotel and Metropole Hotel in our city, Century Club, Bangalore, Engineering College and more. The list seems endless. One man and what a service to the country. A real Brahma.

But sadly we have now only Maheshwaras coming in the way of Vishnu who is prevented from even maintaining what Brahma Sir M. Vivesvarayahad created for us. Look at the maintenance of KRS dam and garden; Bhadravati Steel Mill, HAL and a host of other institutions and industries. Mysore Sandal Wood Oil Factory is closed or almost closed but a huge sandal oil factory is flourishing in Kerala border. Raw material is from Karnataka! Sir M. Vivesvaraya must be turning in his grave!

Such a great man, it is said, had a very disturbing, unhappy family life. The cliche often used while honouring great achievers is that ‘behind every great man there is a woman’, inspiring him. Fate cheated him with his first wife Savithramma, who died early after marriage. Second wife died at delivery. At the persistent request of his mother he married again but this too led to his despair. Thus the aphorism that behind every successful man there is a woman was belied in Vivesvaraya’s case, so also in many other cases.

Some examples. Abraham Lincon. He had a quarrelsome, nagging wife. Field Marshal K.M. Cariappa, father of Independent India’s Defence Forces, rose to that height even as his wife separated when he was a Brigadier. And he never married again. And to go to ancient times, Socrates, the world’s greatest philosopher. He had a nagging, quarrelling and cantankerous wife so much so once while he was having his dialogue with the youngsters of Athens in the garden Arcadia, his wife, enraged, came with a bucket full of water and poured it over his head. Socrates did not lose his cool but simply humoured himself muttering: “I thought it was only thunder, it also rained.”

I think it is Masti Venkatesh Iyengar, the great Kannada novelist and littérateur, who also served at the Palace, while giving a pen sketch of the great builder statesman, had mentioned some of Vivesvaraya’s idiosyncrasies. Sir MV was very meticulous in his sartorial outfit and in his speech highly measured. Carried himself with great dignity at all times even while eating food. For example, while eating banana he would gently peal it to a small length, break it with his fingers and plunk that portion to his mouth. He would not bite it like most do.

How I wish we had builders like Sir M. Vivesvaraya and rulers like Sri Krishnaraja Wadiyar IV. Now let us pray to Shiva and request him to keep quite for just next five years. Who knows Narendra Modi may play the role of Sri Krishnaraja Wadiyar IV. But where would Modi find his Visvesvaraya? Let us pray.

source: http://www.starofmysore.com / Star of Mysore / Home> Abracadabra……. Abracadabra   kbg@starofmysore.com / September 16th, 2013