Bruhat Katha kosha

Author(s): Harishen Acharya,
Publisher: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan

Page 18

[A7]
Singhji Singhi could have earned three to four lacs of rupees if he had, like many other miserly merchants, sold off the hoarded lot of grains, taking undue advantage of the prevailing conditions. But he resisted the tempta. tions, and has been daily distributing freely the grains among thousands of poor people who shower blessings on him; and he enjoys a deep self-satisfaction. This is the most recent example that puts us in adequate knowledge of his silent munificence. Really he is a very silent and solid worker and he has no desire to take active part in any controversies, social or political, though he has sufficient fitness and energy to do so. Still however he is skilful enough to do what is proper at a particular time. The following incident will best illustrate this statement. It was in the fitness of things that a wealthy multi-millionaire like him should give an appropriate contribution in the war funds. With this view he arranged in the second week of December, 1941, an attractive show, styled Singhi Park Mela in the garden of his residential place at Calcutta in which all the local people and officers of name and fame, including the Governor of Bengal, Sir John Arthur Herbert and lady Herbert as well as the commander-in-chief (now the GovernorGeneral-designate) Viscount Wavell, had also taken part with enthusiasm. This show fetched thousands of rupees which were considered substantial financial help to the war funds.
The series was started, as mentioned above, in 1931 A. D. when I worked as a Founder-Director of the Singhi Jain Chair in Visvabhāratī at Shantiniketan, at Singhiji's request. It was, then, our aspiration to put the Singhi Jain Chair and the Singhi Jain Series on a permanent basis and to create a centre at Viśvabhārati for the the studies of Jain cult in deference to the wishes of the late Poet Rabindranath Tagore. But unfortunately I was forced to leave this very inspiring and holy place on account of unfavourable climatic conditions etc. which I had to face during my stay of about four years there. I shifted, therefore, from Viśvabhārati to Ahmedabad where I had formerly resided and worked in those glorious days when the Gujarat Vidyapith and the Purătattva Mandir had been established as a part of the movement for national awakening and cultural regeneration. I went there in the hope that the reminiscences of those days and the proximity of those places would serve as sources of inspiration in my literary pursuits.
In the intervening period the activity of the Purātattva Mandir had languished and along with the arrest of its many scholar-workers the vast, precious collection of books also was confiscated and placed in a locked room by the British Government. After some years when it was set free it layunadored, like images, without its worshippers in the Mandir. My old friends and colleagues of the Purătattva Mandir and the Vidyāpith had, like myself, taken to different pursuits at different places. When some of them, namely, Prof. R. C. Parikh (who is, at present, the