Tuesday, July 8, 2014

A Life To Celebrate: Daya Krishna Bhatnagar (1925-2014)

Our father Shri Daya Krishna Bhatnagar left for his heavenly abode on July 2nd 2014. He was born on July 5th 1925 in Lahore, in undivided India. Throughout his life he was dedicated to the betterment of his family, his community, and the society at large. His achievements and contributions are to be celebrated as a life well lived for the betterment of others. 

He was born to Prof. Gulshan Rai and Smt. Ram Devi as their 9th child among ten siblings. Very early in his life he acquired two important traits that kept guiding him throughout the rest of his life. The first was a thirst for intellectual pursuits. He acquired this from his father who was a professor of history, the Principal of the Sanaatan Dharma College in Lahore, and the author of numerous books and newspaper columns on historical and contemporary issues. Despite the upheaval of the India-Pakistan partition during his college years, he completed three MA degrees, in Economics, in Political Science, and in Hindi. The second trait ingrained in him was a thirst for community work which too he acquired from his father who was president of the Sanaatan Dharma Sabha of Lahore and a very active social worker.

Our father grew up during the turmoil of pre-partition days in Lahore. He lost his father when he was only 19 years old. He had a large family to be responsible for including two brothers with physical disabilities. He continued his education and also joined RSS and participated in protecting Hindus who in the pre-1947-partition months were running away from the soon-to-be-Pakistan to take refuge in India. He himself came to India as a refugee in July 1947 and started his life literally from the state of being absolutely penniless. And at this time, at an age of 22, he had to provide support for his mother and a few members of his extended family. He took up a job in Delhi as a "Calculator" in the Economics and Statistics Directorate of Government of India. Over the years he rose to become a member of the Indian Economic Service and worked in the Ministry of Agriculture and in the Planning Commission. He retired in 1983 and then started writing newspaper columns on India's economic issues. He was a regular contributor for almost twenty years to the Organiser Weekly published from Delhi. He also authored a number of books on topics such as the green revolution of India, state of India's farmers, an analysis of India's poverty, and on history of India's economy over two thousand years. His opinions and commentaries were sought by various think-tanks and social and political organizations. He was as busy in this work during his retirement years as he was during his career in the government service. 

He was always active in some or the other social activities. Be it the local RSS shakha, the residents' welfare association, the local community center, the housing society, or activities of the Bharatiya Kisan Sangh, he was in the forefront contributing his time and energy to make a difference in the community. In early 1970s he organized monthly presentations by NPL scientists in our local community center on the research projects these scientists were participating in. I distinctly remember seeing in one such presentation a demo of how a copier machine (years before it became popular) was supposed to work. All these presentations were very well attended by the local community.  

Our mother, Bimla Devi, left this world in July 1987. He recovered from the loss and dedicated himself to his writing and reading activities. He practiced yoga and pranayam regularly since his youth and therefore his physical body remained in a good shape till the age of 89. He was diagnosed with vascular dementia in 2006 and we started noticing a slow and steady decline in his cognitive faculties, and then he stopped writing articles for the press. He still kept himself abreast of the latest in the news and events in the society at large. 

After his retirement he lived with his youngest son Vijay and his family, and moved to Delhi, Bombay, and Bangalore, wherever Vijay's job took him. He was in Bangalore when the end came on July 2nd and he was in hospital for only the last two days of his life. He did not suffer any pain and left this world calmly. He is survived by, from among his siblings, his younger sister Smt. Damayanti Bhatnagar and her family, and his three children, Raj, Nisha, and Vijay, and their families.

We have learned from his life quite a few valuable things. His forthrightness in all interactions and his penchant for always actively standing up for, and fighting for, the righteousness has given us courage to emulate him in our lives. His operating style of saying only a few words but working very hard to achieve his goals has taught us the same work ethic, and this has paid us rich dividends. He never explicitly told us what was right and what was wrong for us to do but we could see clearly how he made his decisions. He focused on teaching us how to make good decisions and never made decisions for us. We unknowingly absorbed all these values and have thereby learned some great principles of life and happiness. He cared for his family and loved us a lot; that we have imbibed this trait from him is clearly evident when all our children almost complain when they ask us why we overdo in loving them. His insistence to always give back to the society more than what we take form it has also subconsciously sunk in without our ever explicitly thinking about it. He would remain a guiding light for us for the remainder of our lives and we hope to impart these same values to our children.

Raj Bhatnagar (and family: Jyoti, Kovid, and Vishal)
Nisha Bhatnagar (and family: Deepak, Siddharth, and Manu)
Vijay Bhatnagar (and family: Sushma, Surbhi, and Abhishek)



2 comments:

  1. Thank u so much for this blog chachu. I knew very little about dadaji and his life through my mom. It's good to know so much more about him.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sad to hear the news.....my heartfelt felt condolescence to everyone out there......this blog seemed like a biography of dadaji.

    ReplyDelete