Dr. K. M. Munshi – “A Shining Star” – by R. Venkataraman

In the Galaxy of eminent men of India, Kanhaiyalal Maneklal Munshi is a shining star that still beckons humanity to the path of duty and dharma.

Kulapati Munshi – “The Man and His Mission” – by S. Ramakrishnan

As a young man, Kanhaiyalal Manekalal Munshi was imbued with a sense of Indian’s greatness. Not yet our of his teens, he learned from his mother’s songs and stories about the sages and seers of India’s past. The heritage that these master-spirits represented was ingrained in the young Munshi deeply; and later this incipient perception received an adult dimension.

The seeds so sown were precognitive and were backed by K.M.Munshi’s great inner strength, which prompted and sustained his external actions. His sense of India as the motherland of the Spirit impressed him irreversibly. And so, as he moved professionally and politically rung by throng, it was with a sense of pride in the cultural, intellectual and spiritual heritage of India. India was for him not just a nation but an ongoing civilization; not an accident of history but a design of destiny. For him the vitality of Indian culture and its self renewing greatness constituted a living principle. Like most others of his generation and class, Munshi took to the study of law and rose to the pinnacle of his profession even in the era of legal giants. It was but natural that law led to politics and politics to the service of the country’s heritage. The call of Mahatma Gandhi for sacrifice led to Munshi Bidding goodbye to his lucrative practice and prepared to risk his all in the fight against injustice in and to his country. Also his training and temperament inclined him to constitutionalism. The framing of the new nation’s supreme statute called for the gift of idealism as well as realism. Munshi was possessed of both. He regarded India’s independence in 1947 as an opportunity for an ascent once again. He believed that the people of India has tit in them to climb up into a new millennium. Munshi showed that a man with pride in the past could also have faith in the future through the instruments of science and technology.

Today when the world is so conscious of the environment and of ecological factors, it is edifying to not that as much as half a century ago, Munshi’s Vanamanhotsava scheme heralded the impulse for preserving ecology. Munshi’s vision was as deep as it was vast. A heightened commitment, the genuineness, sincerity and dedication of his played an immensely crucial role in bringing stature to a man which was a binding force of a pan-Indian movement, a Pan Indian spirit and a pan Indian ethos which would present to contemporary Indian, and to the world at large, a glimpse of the composite magnificence of ancient times. Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan. The name became synonymous with reverence… of the people’s own inner vision.