Prof. Veda Vyasa

Prof. Veda Vyasa had been actively associated with the D.A.V. Organisation for the more than 58 years and had rendered a Yeoman’s service to the Nation in the various fields of his long and fruitful life – education, law, farming, freedom movement, religious and social service.

Prof. Veda Vyasa was born on 1.9.1902 in a small village named Takhat Hazara in Sargodha District of Punjab (Pakistan). From his early childhood his education took place in an Aryan institution at Bhera where he became a close associate of Shri Vishwabandhu who initiated him in the Arya Kumar Sabha.

While in his middle teens, he left his scholarly pursuits to participate in providing relief to the famine stricken in Garhwal in 1918. Two years later, under the inspiration of Mahatma Hans Raj, the famine hit people of Orissa claimed his time and youthful services. These experiences of rubbing shoulders with the suffering humanity activated a new mental churning in him. Another inner urge of the mind attracted him to early freedom struggle, generally known as The Non Cooperation Movement, motivated to shatter the shackles of subjection. Under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi and Lala Lajpat Rai, he participated in the Non-Cooperation movement. Young Veda Vyasa fired with youthful zeal, undertook to spread the new message, by touring Punjab and specially concentrated his activities in the rural areas of Hissar.

In 1922, Shri Veda Vyasa was sent by Bhai Parmanand to Nepal for a first-hand study of what revered Bhai ji described as the only independent Hindu Kingdom in the world. This was the most valuable experience for him. In Kathmandu, he came in contact with Dr. Sylvain Levi, one of the most eminent Indologists of world, who became very kind to him and invited him to study with him at Shantiniketan for one year.

In pursuit of a nobler cause, he allowed his studies to be neglected; nevertheless, the intellectual genius surfaced. He appeared in 1923 from D.A.V. College, Lahore, and graduated in Sanskrit (Hons) securing First Class First. The same year he threw himself heart and soul into the Shuddhi Movement in Mainpuri District of Uttar Pradesh. He was successful in bringing back to the old fold Malkana Rajputs who had been forcibly converted to Islam by the Mughals. These activities deprived him of 19 months of study for the Master’s Degree. He was, however, goaded by his teacher, Acharya Vishwa Bandhu, to sit for M.A. in Sanskrit. Luck and pluck, concentrated devotion and deep desire, produced unanticipated reward for his prodigy.

His has been a brilliant academic career of attaining ‘first classes’ and creating records. The record set by him for his M.A. in Sanskrit in 1924 at the Punjab University remained untouched for more than 20 years. His special fields of interest had been History, Sanskrit and Indology. He took the Law Degree in 1928 rather casually as he had never imagined that it would one day be his profession. He was a favourite student of Dr. A.C. Woolner, the then Vice-Chancellor of Punjab University, a great Sanskrit Scholar and an Indologist. Dr. Woolner encouraged his favourite and bright student Ved Vyas by appointing him as lecturer for M.A. classes at the young age of 22 years in 1924. Contemporaneously he was appointed Professor of Ancient Historic Research. Three years study of Ancient Indian Colonies of Cambodia and Funan (Modern Vietnam) resulted in authorship of a work of 300 pages of scholarly book ANGKOR. He authored the book on Indian History in simple style which turned out to be an ideally suited text-book for High School students and was sold in large numbers.

Abruptly, he swerved in a different direction. In 1928 the lover of Sanskrit was lured to law which, in a short time, brought him lucre. He also made the land yield to his farm wealth. The hitherto scholar, teacher, lecturer, traveler, social worker, author, lawyer, now became a large scale scientific farmer, at first in the district of Gujarat in West Punjab and later in Uttar Pradesh.

Some of his friends and admirers wanted to see him take active lead in other and perhaps even more significant purposes of Arya Samaj as conceived by its great founder. Arya Samaj no less so now than ever before has to carry the message of the world’s most ancient Vedic culture, the noblest and the sublimest, to mankind and to bring back in its fold, the misguided who under coercion, cajolery, temptation or want, had strayed away. The task ahead is tremendous and let a new and reinforced lead by given by Prof. Veda Vyasa and his friends, who profess and stand by Vedic inspirations, and Vyasa’s intellectual and oceanic depth and breadth.

Prof. Veda Vyasa has been at one time actively involved in editorial and publishing business at various levels. Firstly, he had started a Law reporting journal in which he put in great effort and time and also staked his entire fortune. At that time AIR, another Law journal being published from Nagpur, has a monopoly in its sphere and it was certainly a great challenge to compete with it. This new venture made very exacting demands on him and his brother Late Shri Amar Nath, also a Senior Advocate. While they were at the point of turning the corner, the AIR used all possible pressure tactics to stranglehold this new rival journal and they succeeded in their designs and the journal folded up with heavy losses. It was a very difficult time for Veda Vyasa Ji and he had to face its aftermath. Just as dark clouds have a silver lining, this financial crisis also did a good turn to him. He was obliged to appear personally to argue the case brought against him by his creditors and he did it so successfully that the Chief Justice of Punjab High Court, Sir Douglas Young himself suggested that he should adopt law as his career. He even made an exception for him that he could start practice directly at High Court instead of the usual three year stint at lower courts. He rose to a position of eminence in his profession steadily and at the time of partition of the country in 1947 he was among the top lawyers of the Punjab. Infact, he was the legal advisor of Shri Lal Bahadur Shastri also.

Prof. Ved Vyas was a man of many parts. He has a wide range of abiding interests ranging from literature to law, from agriculture to archaeology, and from history to Indology. It is rather difficult to say which of these interests has been more dominating. He was a person who did equally well in the field of law and farming. After the partition of India he devoted a lot of his time and efforts and energies in building up an extensive agricultural and started applying the latest technique in this own farm. In the process, he came to be recognized as a knowledgeable person on the subject and was taken on the Board of G.B. Pant Agricultural University of Pantnagar (U. P.) which position he held for a number of years. He was one of the promoter Directors of the Tarai Development Corporation which was later used by the World Bank as a model for similar corporations in other developing countries. His rich experience about farming enabled him to introduce the concept of Social Forestry and Experimental Farms in some of the D.A.V. institutions which were suited for the purpose.

To talk about his interest in publishing, he has started a rather ambitious All India Law Reporting Journal which later ran into trouble and has to cease publication. But at Lahore he has launched another publishing project for the publication of text-books for students and also a well-planned programme of translation and publication of world classics into Hindi under the imprint of Vishva Sahitya Granth Mala. For the first time, text-books were assigned to imaginative and innovative writers instead of professional hack writers. These text-books were an instant success and became the envy of other publishers. One of his book rather became a trend-setter. Its title was Aajkal and it touched upon the great developments taking place in the society. As a book of this type would not fit into any syllabus, an exception was made by the Punjab University at the instance of Sir Manohar Lal, the then Education Minister, to prescribe this book in view of its fresh and innovative approach. Similarly, for the first time, readers of Hindi books were made aware of the writings of the great French, Russian and English writers through first-rate translations of their works. It was indeed a pioneering work through which windows on World Literature were opened for the Hindi readers. It will not be out of place to mention that Shri Chandergupt Vidyalankar was his associate and partner in this publishing programme.

He also had a very intrinsic interest in and uncommon aptitude for Indological research which was further confirmed when Prof. S. Bhaskaran Nair – Director, V.V.R. Institute, Hoshiarpur, in the capacity as the editor of the BharatiBhanam or the Light of Indology obtained research article from Prof. Vyasa on “Harappan Wars of Seven Generations”. He went carefully through it for the purpose of its editorial processing. Later on, in October, 1981, he presented this article to the Fifth World Sanskrit Conference held at Varanasi and received warm appreciation from the concerned scholars. Likewise, another article of his on “Destruction of Harappa”, which he presented to the Third World Sanskrit Conference held at Paris in June, 1977, was highly appreciated by such savants as the late Dr. V. Raghavan, the then President of the International Association of Sanskrit Studies; the late Prof. Jean Filliozat, the doyen of Oriental Studies in France; and the late Dr. Ludwik Sternbach of Polish origin, the then Secretary-General of the said Sanskrit Association.

In 1978, he was asked by the late Shri Suraj Bhan to carry on his work as the President of the D.A.V. College Managing Committee and later, on the demise of Shri Suraj Bhan, he was elected as the President of the D.A.V. College Managing Committee. His outlook in respect of everything was optimistic. The managing committee had only two or three model schools before he became the President. It is he who visualized that there was great scope of Public Schools and thought of opening 500 schools in the course of 5/10 years. In the beginning it was a risk which was worth taking and he took it. These Public Schools, at that time, had, to a great extent, stopped the children’s trend of going towards Christianity. The children were taught Vedic Culture in these schools. In this way the Managing Committee rendered a great service towards the Hindu society. His thought of giving education to the children of weaker sections was very praise-worthy.

Under his presidentship, a new life and dynamism was been infused in the D.A.V. Movement. While earlier the approach and outlook used to be conservative and rigid, later the emphasis came on flexibility, modernization, expansion and consolidation. He has been able to take the movement out of the grooves and give it a new momentum. D.A.V. Movement being more than 100 years old, has naturally became tradition bound and a bit retrograde. Prof. Ved Vyas had been able to give it a purposeful direction to meet the challenges of the 21^st Century. Under his stewardship a chain of D.A.V. Public Schools, almost 100 in number, have been opened to impart the latest and best in education for the young boys and girls. These schools measure up to the latest norms of public school education and are well equipped for sports and extra-curricular activities.

Another new and significant dimension for which credit entirely go to Shri Ved Vyasji is his dream of taking D.A.V. education across the seas, to countries where people of Indian origin have been asking for it. It was no mean achievement that later D.A.V. Institute of Indian Studies started functioning in association with the New York University and also D.A.V. Public Schools and Colleges in London, Bangkok and Mauritius. He had the spirit of an explorer and adventurer in him. At that ripe age also he loved travelling and in fact travelled a lot. He was always ready to go anywhere and to any length for the cause of the D.A.V. Perhaps it was not known to many that he used to make handsome princely donations to the D.A.V. Trust and was the single largest donor to this cause in those years.

The life of a busy and much sought after advocate involves, always, lots of stresses and strains. Of these Prof. Veda Vyasa had no small share. He could see the handicaps and hurdles involved in sticking to a course of rigid honesty and uncompromising integrity. Even so he refused to ‘compromise’ on principles. Forging ahead, with determination and with faith in his own capabilities, he reached the ‘summit’ and had been for many decades a legal luminary of the highest distinction. All this, and much more, he attained entirely on the strength of his untiring and dedicated hard work; his sterling merit and on the basis of his reputation for unimpeachable integrity. To Prof. Vyasa it is not the ‘end’ alone that matters. He is concerned, equally, with the means adopted to achieve that ‘end’. To be ‘right’ and ‘straight’ – was his highest religion. Even his worst critic would not say that at any time Prof. Vyasa did something which could be termed unethical or lacking in grace. That is why he was known, all around, to be a man of principles who would not compromise on his ethics or his standards of high morality.

Once asked, how he would view his own life in retrospect, he summed it up succinctly as follows:

“Many dreams

Many setbacks

Modest achievements

No regrets.”

He was really modest of a man of so many achievements in various spheres of life.