Rajiv Prasad Shaha :
“My institutions are my place of worship” — this is what the great philanthropist Ranada Prasad Shaha used to feel and say regarding the various institutions that he founded. R P Shaha was born in the village of Mirzapur in Tangail in 1896 to Debendra Kumar and Srimati Kumudini. He was only seven years old when his mother died a painful death from tetanus infection. Lack of medical facilities and poverty contributed to his mother’s death which haunted him all through his life. A hundred years back he felt the requirement of education especially for women, respect for women’s right and empowerment of womenfolk; which is what the millennium goal envisages today.
He sacrificed his life to see his dreams come true, and it really happened. It is almost eighty years that he had founded the Kumudini Welfare Trust. All through these years the Trust has provided service to the humanity, the suffering and the distressed, education opportunity for all and above everything service to the state.
His philanthropic activities started centering his village home. For providing health care to the poor and the needy he established a dispensary in 1938 after the name of his paternal grandmother Shova Sundari. This later got transformed into a modern 750 bed free hospital named Kumudini Hospital. The hospital was inaugurated by the then Governor of British Bengal Lord R G Casey on 29 July 1944. Subsequently he had set up Kumudini Degree College for girls at Tangail in 1943 followed by Debendra College at Manikganj and “Bharateswari Homes” a residential school for girls in 1945.
During the war of liberation, this great son of the soil was abducted along with his only able son by the Pakistan Army and their collaborators on 7 May 1971. They never returned. Kumudini family had been able to convert this grief into strength and has carried forward the unfinished task of its founder. The Trust has since then established Kumudini Nursing School in 1973, Kumudini Handicrafts in 1980, Kumudini Women’s Medical College in 2001, Kumudini Nursing College in 2007 and lastly the first ever university in Narayanganj named Ranada Prasad Shaha University (RPSU) in 2014.
A dedicated force of self sacrificing and hard working workers have evolved centering around the family of R P Shaha who identify themselves as members of the extended Kumudini family. Together they all are striving hard to materialize the dreams of the founder.
The elder son of this great philanthropist Durga Prasad Shaha (1938-1985) was handicapped. All through his life he had to be given family care and looked after like a child. The entire family had to live with this grief and pain. Kumudini family is, therefore, better placed to understand and share the anguish and distress of the handicapped and the family to which the child belongs. Kumudini family has converted the grief of losing its founder into strength and moved on with his dreams; similarly it plans to overcome the grief of losing Durga Prasad Shaha and work in the field of autism. The work on autism will mainly focus on:
1) Awareness generation
2) Social rehabilitation of autistic children
3) Establishment of ideal institution for education and training of autistic children
The writer is the Managing Director of Kumudini Welfare Trust of Bengal (BD) Ltd.
