R P Saha-Bangladesh's Greatest Philanthropist

I have known the name since I was a child. I am sure the case is no different for most people of my age who had access to some education or contemporary affairs. Some of the people may not have known his name but have come across one or the other charitable/voluntary/business venture of varied nature run by the great organisation founded by him: Kumudini Trust of Bengal (BD).

Under the Trust arrangements, any profit coming from any of the organisations, will go for charity and benevolent activities which will benefit our countrymen, the more needy ones in particular. The charitable activities mostly centered around Mirzapore in Tangail and are varied in nature, mostly related to health and education, two of the most basic needs of Mankind. Of course there were and still are such organisations established by him in various other places of present Bangladesh Indian and Pakistani territories.

The revenue earning business ventures are mostly located in Khanpur area of Narayanganj, where the Headquarters of the Trust is situated. By now the Kumudini Welfare Trust has become a huge conglomerate of various ventures aiming at development of the society in sectors like Education, Health, Women Development, Environment and simultaneously business ventures in different sectors to earn for running the benevolent activities. Amongst the business ventures, some are old, started by the legendary R P Saha himself and some are subsequent additions by his descendants.

The Kumudini Welfare Trust works in such diversified fields that different people come to know about their activities through different activities of theirs as the case may be. I presume, there will be very few people who will know about all their enterprises and activities because of the enormous diversity. As for myself I came to know about the Group's Girl's Residential School Bharateswari Homes first.

It was way back in the early sixties of the previous century. They were known in the then East Pakistan and beyond for their mesmerising performance of physical shows during important functions like different National Days,Honouring Foreign Heads of States and such other big occasions. Besides, if I remember correctly their Girls Guide squad was one of the best in the country.

By then he was known as "Daanbeer" to all and sundry, a popular name given by the people.He was personally known to all the high ups of Pakistan including Ayub Khan, H S Suhrawardy, Azam Khan, Iskander Mirza, Firoze Khan Noon, Abdul Gaffar Khan, Moulana Bhashani and Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. But reputation of up to that level could not save him.

During the same period my personal loss was no less. I lost my father too on 2June1971 to a similar gang of miscreants in Chattogram. After that I had a tough time to complete my studies and taking care of my family of five younger sisters and my Mom and settle myself in life and society. I believe, the difficulties faced by the descendants of the great Philanthropist R P Saha was much more to carry on with all the charitable and business activities of the conglomerate and keep it on track. Kudos to them.

Our R P Saha was placed in the Bengal Ambulance Corps during WW 11. Later, he served other units as well. His posting was in the Middle East to fight the Ottoman Turks. He showed exemplary Heroism and in 1919, King George V gave audience to a group of Empire's soldiers for their outstanding services. Ranada Prasad was amongst them and received a Sword of Honour.Soon after return he left his Army job and joined the British Indian Railways as a Travelling Ticket Examiner. Though he did not have any formal education, his intelligence and sincere heroic service in the WW bagged him the job.

In 1932 he chose Calcutta to be the first experimental base of his new career and he chose coal. Every long leap starts with a small step. In those days, steam engines ran by coal as fuel drove the riverine transport. A steamer company was not running well. They were in heavy debt with Mr Saha, not being able to pay for the consumed coal for a long time. Ranada Prasad struck a deal with them and got the ownership of a steamer in lieu of his receivables.

His business expertise turned the losing company to be a profitable one and his riverine transport business grew. Initially he had some partners but Saha used to manage the business. Saha bought the company and earned huge revenues. Together with it he started a Dockyard for repair and maintenance of riverine transports along with many others. From a nobody, slowly his family became the most prominent family of Mirzapore.

Then he devoted himself to Humanitarian activities. He was a free thinking man and believed in Humanism and equality of genders and all religion. After his marriage with the daughter of Baliati Zaminder Kiranbala, no voices could rise ever again against his vision. He has seen extreme poverty in his childhood and knew how it bites.

So, he decided a simple life for himself and family and decided to spend all earnings from his businesses for the poor and needy people and development of the society. In 1938 he established a 20 bed Shovasundari dispensary in the name of his grandmother to work for maternal and child health. The loss of his mother during child birth made him take a vow from his childhood to do something about it when he would have means to do so.

By 1944 he transformed it into a huge high quality general multidisciplinary hospital named after his mother Kumudini. The hospital treats poor patients free and a very reasonable is charged from others. It was a 750 bed hospital since long and since 1917,100 more beds were added. A nursing school was added which later was elevated to be a College and now it offers Master's Degree in Nursing. An International Women's Medical College has also been started there. Apart from our Bangladeshi girls, about 200 foreign female students are enrolled there.

The College is also quite reasonably priced and is not like a money minting machine like many other private Medical Colleges of the country. In the recent years the torch bearers of the Trust have gone for a private University in Narayanganj in the Trust's premise in which the students are not charged exorbitantly as many others of it's category. The university has been named as Ranada Prasad Saha University. I want to take the liberty here to make a mention of Bharateswari Homes which started as Bharateswari Vidyapeeth in 1942 by the legendary R P Saha after the name of his great grandmother.

His aim was to spread education amongst the womenfolk of the backward community of Mirzapore and around. Within 1945 it was established as an educational institution of high standards and with active support of his wife Kiranbala Devi, Sri Saha turned it to Bharateswari Homes, a residential school for girls. Their motto was overall development of the students. Apart from education the girls were given lessons for physical fitness and discipline of highest order. Every student has to take turn in cooking their meals and cleaning their hostels and school premises.

The girls of this school was then and are till now an indispensable part of different displays of physical fitness and gymnastics on National Days and other such important events. Their academic and extracurricular results are excellent too. In short, getting a seat to enter the School as a student was and still is a dream come true for many. That was and is the general perception. In 1943 Sri R P Saha founded Kumudini Mohila College in Tangail for higher education of the female students of Tangail and Mirzapore area. He established a college in his maternal place as well. In Manikgonj the college founded by him was named after his father as Debendra College.

He had an uncanny business acumen. Whichever business he picked up, was always a success story. Finally he decided to dedicate all his earnings to the needy people by establishing the Kumudini Welfare Trust of Bengal in 1947 and put all his businesses under the Trust.

All proceeds of the businesses were designated to be spent on welfare of the people and not for him or family. He himself started managing the Trust. Soon afterwards history saw the partition of India. The Trust had to be bifurcated. The Indian part of Kumudini Trust started functioning separately and managed the properties and institutions that existed there (mainly in Kurseong, Madhupur and Calcutta).

The greater portion of the properties and activities of course were in eastern part of Bengal (in Narayanganj, Mirzapore, Tangail and Dhaka) which became East Pakistan. Sri R P Saha was titled Roy Bahadur by the British for his benevolent services to the Nation but we hardly have seen him using the title. He was a man of the masses and desired to remain so. Perhaps that was the main reason that prompted him to opt for staying back in Pakistan amongst his own people.

 We may remember here that during the partition of India and Bengal, most of the wealthy landlords, businessmen and educated amongst the Hindus opted for shifting to India for safety of their wealth, property, prestige and physical being. But our R P Saha worked against the tide. He remained busy with his philanthropic and benevolent work dividing his time between Narayanganj and Mirzapore. He remained happy with his people and work until his ultimate days came. In 1971 we started our War of Liberation from the Pakistani oppression. The Pak Civil and Military junta unleashed a reign of terror in Bangladesh. All Bangalees except a few boot lickers of Pakistanis and collaborators were on one side.

Mr R P Saha and his son Mr Bhabani Prasad were summoned to the Governor's House by the military on 29 April. The family waited for their return. But the wait went in vain as the two were shot dead the Pakistani army.R P Saha was posthumously awarded Swadhinata Padak by the Government of Bangladesh. The Kumudini Welfare Trust also received the Swadhinata Padak and Sri R P Saha had been honoured by very many organisations at home and abroad.

I would like to conclude this write up with a personal note. As a part of our travelling around the country I and Anjana were to move through Mirzapore to some destination further. It was about 10 years ago. Our friend couple Niresh Chandra Das (a senior Banker) and Papia Bhowmik (a school teacher) were our co travellers. They had a relative working as a Teacher in Bharateswari Homes.

We made an unscheduled stopover in Mirzapore. It was a pleasant surprise for us to be greeted by the higher management of the organisations. Now that we are retired, I have an intention to go back there some time to explore if we can contribute in any way to the organisations. I finally conclude by paying my respect to the departed soul of Shaheed R P Saha, whom I put in the same bracket with Haji Muhammad Mohsin and Mr Ratan Tata.


Pradip Kumar Dutta is a columnist and a retired engineer