CURATED BY – GAURAV SINGHAL | CITYCHIEFNEWS

Saharanpur, on the death anniversary of immortal freedom fighter and ideal teacher Pandit Vishambar Singh, today Mokshayatan Yoga Sansthan and Nation Builders Academy celebrated his death anniversary by performing Vedic Yagna, Pushpanjali and remembering the inspiring incidents related to his life. He was such a teacher in whose memory the 14th President of the country Ramnath Kovind himself came to Saharanpur with his wife Savita Kovind two years ago to inaugurate the grand Vishwambhar Singh gate and road built. This unique fighter, who rejected the Mahantaship of the huge Jalgovind Math in Bihar and became active in the freedom struggle while being a teacher in a basic school, believed that our aim is to liberate the country from British rule at any cost, without fearing arrest, bullet, hanging and torture! His aim was not to go to jail but to live and die to liberate the country if needed. He used to say that if the aim was only to go to jail or to be hanged, then the fight could not have continued. He used to say that whatever is found while walking on the path of the nation is also right. Pandit ji, along with being a freedom fighter and social reformer, was the first teacher of the city on whose invitation the first President Dr. Rajendra Prasad came to Saharanpur to inaugurate the school for the deaf and dumb of his son Omkar Singh Sharma and who was honoured with the National Teacher Award by Sarvepalli Dr. Radhakrishnan himself. After the country became independent, his fight to gain freedom turned into a fight to protect freedom. Everyone had such faith in Pandit Vishwambhar Singh, the confluence of education, religion and patriotism, that even after fighting cases up to the High Court, people used to get justice at his doorstep in complex cases. Addressing the Smriti Diwas today, Pandit ji's son and international yoga guru Padmashree Swami Bharat Bhushan said that we learnt from his life that the work of a teacher is not just to impart alphabet knowledge to children but to make them successful people by imparting them alphabet knowledge (true knowledge that never fades) and the way of living, Pandit ji was a walking university in himself. He told that former Prime Minister Chaudhary Charan Singh once told him while talking about his childhood relationship with Pandit Vishambar Singh ji that Pandit ji's way of fighting was unique, he never missed to give protection and help to active revolutionaries. Narrating an interesting memoir, Charan Singh ji told that during the freedom struggle, Pandit ji once hid me in the garden of his house to save me from the police and the guard had to return empty-handed. After independence, on the initiative of Pandit ji, Dr. Sampurnanand, who became the Education Minister of Uttar Pradesh, took the historic decision to make Sanskrit compulsory along with Hindi from class 6 to 12 in Uttar Pradesh. Pandit ji's life will remain a source of inspiration for teachers, students and society. Nandkishore Sharma, Mithlesh Sharma, Yogacharya Anita Sharma, Surabhi Sethi, Mukesh Sharma, Ajay Singh, Amarnath, Mohit Dhalla, Rajiv Anand, Deepak Maurya etc. also expressed their views in the Smriti Diwas program.