Mahabir Prasad Dwivedi (Pandit)
Mahavir Prasad Dwivedi full biography and he wrote books
Mahabir Prasad Dwivedi (also known as Acharya) was born in 1862 in a lower
middle class Brahmin family of village Daulatpur in the district of Rae Bareli
(in modern Uttar Pradesh). His father Ram Sahai began service in the Indian
army, but his unit mutinied in 1857 and Ram Sahai fled back to his village
almost in a destitute condition. Later he got employment in Bombay where he
passed the rest of his life. Dwivedi’s grandfather was a scholar the traditional
orthodox type, and as such vestiges of scholarly tradition had persisted in the
family which the child Mahabir Prasad imbibed.
Mahabir Prasad was married but had no children. Mahabir Prasad’s earliest
schooling was at home in Sanskrit religious texts and the ‘Amar Kosh’. He read
Urdu in village school and at the age of thirteen joined the district High
School to learn English. But owing to extreme poverty, his academic career did
not last long, and he had to leave school even before matriculation. He joined
the railway service as a telegraphist, and it was during hu stay at Hoshangabad
that he came into contact with educated people and his innate love for learning
found a concrete expression. Later in Jhansi he developed his taste for
scholarship and made a deep study of Hindi literature and the English works of
Bacon, Mill and Herbert Spencer. He cherished the ambition of being a poet and
learnt prosody, but did not pursue this line far enough. He cultivated a good
prose style and translated some English classics into Hindi.
It was in 1903 that he entered journalism and became the editor of the Saraswati
at Kanpur. It is as a literary critic and journalist that Dwivedi made his
impression on the public life of the country. His chief field of work lay in
Uttar Pradesh, and continued from 1903 till his death.
Mahabir Prasad was essentially a self-made man and derived little from home
influences or close contact with others. He was considerably helped in the
making of his character and personality by his studies, specially of the
Ramayana of Tulsidas, poetical works of Harish Chandra and the writings of
Mill. A peculiar mixture of orthodoxy and liberalism is therefore evident in his
thought and actions. He played scarcely any significant part in the national
movement, for politics was not his field of work. His contribution was mainly
in the realm of the progress of Hindi prose, which he helped to develop as editor
of the premier Hindi monthly journal, the Saraswati. He was a great stickler
for Sanskritisation and moulded the Hindi style in the frame-work of Sanskrit
grammar and etymology. He has left a great mark on Hindi literature and its
devotees, and for his services to this cause he was given the appellation of “Acharya”
or “Great Teacher”. As the editor of the Saraswati, he corrected the writings
of others and introduced a style which bears his appellation, and is
based-largely on Sanskrit. His poetic works were modelled on Kalidasa and
Bhavabhuti; but it is largely as an essayist that Dwivedi has a place in Hindi
literature. His essays arc devoid of originality but convey information culled from
Western literature and science. He wrote profusely, translating Sanskrit and
English literary pieces, communicating knowledge through essays or children’s
books and commenting on style and form of language. More than a journalist,
Dwivedi is known for his literary production and influence on contemporary Hindi
literary style.
As a journalist, he occasionally commented on contemporary political, economic, social and international affairs, but there was little of originality in his observations. In the field of nationalism, he reiterated the conventional ideas about the utilitarian and materialistic character of the educational system inaugurated by the British Government, the poverty and backwardness of the rural population as compared to the urban professional classes, disunity among the Indians and the apathy of the Englishmen to the Indians. He advocated the cause of peasant welfare, largely as a result of his close contact with them and insight into their miserable conditions. He spent the last 18 years of his life in his village home. He had respect for Mahatma Gandhi, but it is doubtful if he had any living faith in his ideas. There is little evidence of any contribution to social reform, for Dwivedi remained orthodox in his personal conduct. He died in 1938, highly respected as a leader of reform and progress of Hindi. In recognition of his services, he was given an ‘Abhinandan Granth’ on his 70th birthday by the Nagri Pracharini Sabha at Benares, which ended his long feud with the Sabha since 1904.
(Mantosh Singh) Bisheshwar Prasad
Reference: DICTIONARY OF NATIONAL BIOGRAPHY – Vol 1 edited by
S. P. Sen – Institute of Historical Studies – Calcutta - 1972
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