Dr. Arvind Goyal (Goel), a medical practitioner from Moradabad has donated his entire property to the Uttar Pradesh government to help the poor. The value of his entire property is close to Rs 600 crore. He has been working for the past 50 years.
Talking to reporters, Dr Goyal said that he had taken this decision about 25 years ago. Goyal had provided free facilities to the people by adopting 50 villages of Moradabad during the lockdown. He had even arranged free education and better treatment for the poor in the state.
He has been honoured four times by Bharat’s Presidents, including President Ram Nath Kovind, former Presidents Pranab Mukherjee, Pratibha Devi Patil and Dr APJ Abdul Kalam. Dr. Arvind Goyal and his wife Renu have two sons and a daughter. The moving story of the many ways in which he helps the needy can be read here.
This generous act by Dr. Goyal is symbolic of the millennia-old practices of daan (giving) and sewa (service), integral parts of Hindu Dharma. Wealthy Hindus donating a major chunk of their property for schools, temples, dharmashalas (rest houses) and other public works was common in our society till Independence and a few decades after.
However, post independence the stifling influence of Nehruvian secularism over our polity gradually gave a negative connotation to anything Dharmic. As our business families and other elites grew increasingly Westernized, they started gravitating towards global liberal causes and started aping Western philanthropy.
In a bid to seek approval of their peers and Western audiences, wealthy Hindus today fund chairs in American universities and pour millions into foundations aligned to Western intellectual frameworks. They are unaware or indifferent to the nefarious goals and linkages of Western philanthrophy, which is often a front for pushing Western geopolitical agendas. The problem has become especially acute in the last decade and a half. One example of a non-profit funded by top Indian business houses which is aiding BreakingIndia forces, inadvertently or otherwise, is IPSMF.
So philanthropy of the type exhibited by Dr. Goyal is welcome. But one important caveat here is that instead of donating it to the government – a representative of the secular State dominated and controlled by our deracinated elite – Dr. Goyal should have considered donating to a Dharmic foundation or trust, arguably one dedicated to supporting the Hindus of western UP who are fighting a grim existential battle in the face of various modes of Islamist aggression.
The UP govt is currently headed by a staunch Hindu, but the government apparatus CM Yogi Adityanath controls is still steeped in ‘secular’, i.e Hinduphobic, values. Even Yogi is unable to stem the diversion of govt funds for disastrous programs like madrassa ‘modernization’ and minority-only scholarship and other schemes. In our fickle and flawed multi-party democracy, we could easily have a ‘secular’ coalition govt in power after the next election, with land sharks like Azam Khan back in the saddle. Hindus and other Dharmics need to develop foresight and understand the magnitude of the threat they are facing, and act accordingly.
(With IANS inputs)
