By Dr Sanjeev Chopra
This week’s column is about two very remarkable individuals – whose lives are intertwined with institutions named after them – the Dr Dwijen Sen Kala Kendra, established in 1949, and Swami Rama Himalayan University established in 1995. While the former, born in Bardhhaman in Bengal in 1924, came to Dehradun from Shantiniketan in 1947, the latter was born in Pauri Garhwal a year later, but received his spiritual training and guidance from ‘Bengali Baba’, a mystic who lived in the Himalayan foothills. Both sought and received the blessings of Sri Aurobindo, Gurudev Rabindra Nath Thakur and Mahatma Gandhi – both were intense patriots and saw beauty and harmony in nature. Both earned the appellation of doctor, the former for homeopathy, and the latter in allopathic system from the Medical College, Darbhanga. Both were very widely travelled, and chartered rather unconventional pathways. Dada left home at fourteen, for in the ‘bhadralok’ household that he was brought up in, art work was looked down upon – as contemptuously as sex work! He soon joined a revolutionary group, was arrested in an assassination attempt but, while in jail, his spirts soared high, and he honed his skills as a charcoal artist. On his release from jail, he landed up at Shantiniketan, where he was mentored by Abaninadranath Tagore. He then joined Kala Bhawan where he studied with Nandlal Bose and Benode Behari Mukherjee, and graduated from Vishwa Bharti with a diploma in painting and sculpting. Travelling across India and Nepal, he learnt the finer nuances of bronze casting.
Dada chose Dehradun on account of the openings to art teachers offered by its top schools – the Doon, Welham’s, Colonel Brown’s, Manav Bharti, among others. While at Manav Bharti, he developed his lifelong association with and affection for Shakuntala (whom he called Ma) and Pyare Lal Dougall, who later became the Headmaster of Modern School, New Delhi. So here was a revolutionary Bengali adopted by a revolutionary Punjabi family, for Shakuntala Dougall nee Thapar was the first cousin of the famous revolutionary, Sukhdev! In the fifties, he took to homeopathic medicine in a big way and became a ‘doctor’ to one and all who thronged the Kala Kendra – some for art, others for matters of the heart and soul, and some for curing them of their physical ailments!
Among the many firsts attributed to the Kala Kendra were the art school affiliated to the Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi, the bamboo and cane crafts centre established by the Government of UP, a sculpture studio as well as a Handicrafts Board under the chairmanship of Rathindra Nath Tagore, who had taken over as the Chair of Kala Kendra after he left Shantiniketan. Those were indeed the heydays of the Kala Kendra. It then went into a tailspin for a few years, but is now on its revival trajectory under the guidance of Colonel VK Dougall, Meera Dougall, Vibha Puri Das, Nicholas Hoffland, Monica and Shaswati Talukdar and Brig Anand Lal. Valley of Words will be collaborating with Kala Kendra for curating exhibitions, documentaries, discussions and retrospectives for the Eighth Edition.
While Dada made Dehradun his home, Swami Rama went off on his spiritual quest to Tibet. At the very young age of 24, he was anointed to the high spiritual position of Shankaracharya of Karvirpitham in Kolhapur, where he ‘made a meaningful impact on the prevalent customs by eliminating the system of devadasis in temples, and making it possible for all segments of society to worship in temples’. However, by 1952, he relinquished this position to return to the Himalayas for intensive meditation. He then resumed his formal education at Bangalore, Prayaag, Varanasi and Oxford University, England. He worked as a medical consultant in London and assisted in parapsychological research in Moscow. He then returned to India, where he established a clinic and ashram: the Sadhana Mandir Trust in Rishikesh. In 1960, he completed his degree at the medical college in Darbhanga. Later he went to Japan, where he established a major spiritual centre. At the behest of his master, he went to the United States in 1969 to build a bridge between science and spirituality.
At the Meninger Foundation in Topeka, Kansas, Swami Rama demonstrated, under controlled laboratory conditions, his exquisite control of involuntary physiological parameters such as body temperature, brain waves and heart rate. These experiments were reported in many leading scientific journals and set the stage for the recognition of the psychosomatic origins of a majority of diseases, the development of bio-feedback and holistic paradigms of health.
Swami Rama established the Himalayan Institute of Yoga, Science and Philosophy, USA, in the early 1970s and, during his 23 years in the US, he became recognised as a yogi, teacher, philosopher, author, poet, humanist and philanthropist. He returned to India in 1989 to establish the Himalayan Institute Hospital Trust at Jolly Grant, Dehradun. Under Swami Rama’s guidance and direct supervision, the trust opened a multi-specialty hospital in 1994 and a medical college in 1995. Today, the sprawling campus also has an Ayurveda Centre, Rural Development Institute, the Himalayan College of Nursing, Himalayan School of Management Studies, Himalayan School of Science & Technology, Himalayan School of Bio Sciences, and Himalayan School of Yoga Science. With Dr Vijay Dhasmana as the Chancellor and Dr Rajendra Dobhal as the Vice Chancellor, the university is now exploring new centres like Traditional Indian Knowledge Systems, Public Management, Political Ecology and Policy Studies.
Before closing, in the interest of full discourse, it is important to place on record that Dr Rajendra Dobhal has been on the Governing Board of Valley of Words for over five years , and your columnist is now an Honorary Professor at the SHRU, and the two institutions will be collaborating for the eighth and the subsequent editions of VoW!
(Dr Sanjeev Chopra superannuated as the Director of the LBS National Academy of Administration after thirty-six years in the IAS. He is now the Festival Director of Valley of Words (VoW) and a Visiting Professor of History, Public Policy and Knowledge Management at the Swami Rama Himalayan University, Dehradun. He has held the Hubert H Humphrey, Robert S McNamara, Twenty First Century Trust and the Royal Asiatic Society Fellowships.)
