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| Jagdish Charan Varshney who believed in Karma |
By Vinod Varshney
No need to always look for great men and women
from history to seek inspiration. There are always a few living examples around
us whose lives, behaviour and ideals are worth emulating. We only need to keep
our eyes open and mind receptive. When I look back to the days when I was a
teenager I find there were indeed a few people whose life secretly inspired me
at a crucial formative age by their remarkable strength of character, tenacity
of purpose, courage of conviction and scholarship.
One such mundane soul was Jagdish Charan
Varshney, who used to live at a distance of some 300 meters from our home. My
father had a tendency of telling about people who had some remarkable
achievements in any field as an example for us to follow. His range used to be
very wide---from national heroes to the people at the next door.
He mentioned several times how Jagdish Charan
Varshney belonged to a very small village Khera bereft of any educational
facilities, yet by his sheer hard work and perseverance he became a lecturer in
Shree Varshney College, Aligarh. It will not be out of place to tell that my
father Late Jai Narain Varshney was the first member of the community in Aligarh district to earn
an M Sc degree and one of the four founders of Shri Varshney College and a
freedom fighter who remained behind the bars during British period for his
activities in the national freedom movement. He temperamentally had great
affection for young folks who were pursuing higher education.
Jagdish Charan hailed from a family of modest
means in an extremely backward rural area in district Etah. He must definitely
have been inspired by some people in the society that triggered a fascination
in him for education. This is evident the way he continued to improve his
educational qualification even while earning by giving personal tuition to
students to meet expenditure of his own education.
To give a sense of that period I must tell when
the country acquired independence, Jagdish Charan was a lad of 13 years and
educational facilities even up to high school were not available in most
villages of the country, including his own village Khera near Vasundhara of
Etah district. Average literacy rate in the country was just 12 percent, it
must have been much less in UP. Barahseni Mahasabha, like many other community
organisations, began efforts to start its own educational institutes by
collecting donations to meet growing educational needs of the youth in the
society.
Leaders of the Varshney community during that
period had campaigned vigorously to motivate youths to acquire higher education.
If Varshney community today has a better
percentage of people with higher
education than other communities of the area, the credit must go to the foresight and efforts of social leaders of that time. Jagdish Charan can be seen as one of just few
hundred young men in the Varshney community who during those days went out of
their villages to seek education. Even
to seek High School level education he had to go to Hathras, a city known to be
more prosperous than Aligarh during that time. It may be difficult for the
present youths to comprehend the arduous journey the older generations had to undertake even to
see the gate of a college, much less a university. Today even remote villages
sport English medium schools.
So even as he took up a teaching job in a small
school to earn some money, he chose to
do his B Com as a private student from Agra University. Realising the need to
improve his employability, simultaneously he pursued LT course (Licentiate in
Teaching)-- equivalent to B Ed today. Later, while he was still a teacher at the Inter College at Bakewar
(Etawah), he acquired M Com degree also from Agra University (now called Bhimrao Ambedkar University). He got first division in M Com, a laudable
achievement, considering the conditions in which he slogged then.
But he was rewarded handsomely for all his
pains. At the age of 27 he landed a lectureship in Shri Varshney College to
teach graduate students. During his long tenure in the department of commerce
in the college he earned universal respect from students and colleagues alike for
his penchant to put across difficult concepts
of commerce in easily absorbable form and to make learning of prosaic subjects
like accounting a great deal interesting.
Jagdish Charan was blessed with five daughters
and two sons, and for each one of them he wanted to ensure good education. But,
for an honest person like him there was no other way to generate resources than
by devoting his leisure time to give tuitions to weak but aspiring students. So
when he was offered a chance to become the head & professor of the commerce
department of the college, he refused it on the ground that he wanted to
continue with tuitions as a necessity without which he would be unable to meet
his familial obligations.
He retired from the post of Reader in 1994, but
students continued to throng his residence for guidance and personal
coaching. Looking around Aligarh today,
one can easily find hundreds of CAs who have benefited from his unusual gift of
commitment to teaching. He wrote two books---‘Cost Accounting for B.Com’ and
‘Advanced Accounting for B.Com’.
He was a man of firm political views and as
disenchanted with the present ‘loot and grab’ political system as any sensible
person of the country. Clarity of opinion and its sharp articulation was his
quality. But he had no inclination or time to get involved in any political
work.
This posed a challenge before him to continue
his highly work-packed life. But his disciplined life style--going for a long
walk in the morning, doing exercises including Yoga and taking meals at the
appointed time helped him continue his vigourous routine till the last day when
he was only eight days short of 80 years.
On the extremely chilly Christmas morning of
2012 he succumbed to hypothermia when he
went out for a brisk walk as usual and
to procure milk for the family--
an unfailing routine— from a buffalo-owner in Pala village on the outskirts of Aligarh
city. His students came as usual at 8.30
am for tuition only to be told that he was no more.
His story needs to be told as it is because of
people like him that the society in spite of all around degradation still
retains some strength of character. He showed by his own life that even with
modest beginnings through perseverance one can do reasonably well and acquire
all material comforts which a decent middle class life style may aspire. In
these days of corruption seeped deep in the social fabric of the country,
ideals of discipline, study, hard work and honesty needs to told repeatedly and
followed by everybody.
If each and every individual follows these norms
of conduct then the society would definitely improve. If I could also do
reasonably well and became national chief of news bureau of Hindustan and later editor of a monthly magazine Lokayat in spite of having a lowly beginning, much
credit goes to people like Jagdish Charan Varshney whose lives were the nearest
examples to follow in hard times.
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