Who is Sir Ganga Ram and why his legacy lives on in India and Pakistan?

There are few personalities in India and Pakistan who also left a lasting legacy on both sides of the border as iconic engineer and philanthropist, Sir Ganga Ram.

Hospitals in Delhi and Lahore – built by his believe in and family in the name – continue to keep uphold his legacy to this day.

While Pakistan’s Lahore city was his home, during the 1947 Partition of India , his family moved to Delhi in India.

Ganga Ram died in 1927, but writer Sadat Hasan Manto’s brief story, The Garland, summed up exactly how much the man and his legacy is intertwined with the city of Lahore.

In the story, considered based on a true occurrence during the Partition, a mob attacks Ganga Ram’s statue in front of his hospital in order to wipe out his Hindu name. But when a guy is injured, the mob shouts, “Let us rush him to Sir Ganga Ram Hospital. inch

The strict disciplinarian, Ganga Ram was also known to be a kind-hearted guy. His contributions spanned the fields associated with architecture, engineering, agriculture and women’s rights. He specially centered on the welfare of widows.

Much of what we know about him comes from the 1940 book Harvest from the desert, the life plus work of Friend Ganga Ram by Baba Pyare Lal Bedi.

Ganga Ram was born in 1851 in Mangtanwala community, about 40 kilometers from Lahore.

His father Daulat Ram had left Uttar Pradesh, a northern Indian condition, and worked as a junior police sub-inspector here.

The family later moved to Amritsar in Punjab state where Ganga Ram memory studied in a government-run high school.

His higher education saw Ganga Ram travel across northern India and Pakistan as he went to Lahore to study at the government college then later secured a scholarship to study anatomist at the Thomason Anatomist College in Uttarakhand’s Roorkee in Indian.

Of the fifty rupees ($0. 63; £0. 52) he or she got as scholarship, he would send fifty percent to his mothers and fathers in Amritsar to supplement their earnings.

After Ganga Ram memory secured his architectural degree with best marks, he became an apprentice in the office of Rai Bahadur Kanhaya Lal, then chief professional of Lahore. Right here began the “Ganga Ram period” in Lahore’s architecture. He went on to become a best civil engineer plus shaped the structures in the city by means of his work.

He could be credited with creating and constructing several magnificent buildings, including the Lahore Museum, the particular Aitchison College, the particular Mayo School associated with Arts (now called the National College associated with Arts), the General Postal office shooting, the Albert Victor Wing of the Mayo Hospital, and the Government College Chemical Lab.

Ganga Ram memory used arches along with other Indian architectural traditions while employing traditional western construction devices to safeguard them from the heat and cold of the climate in the Punjab province and ensure efficient and unobtrusive sterilization, Bedi wrote.

Famous Pakistani journalist Khaled Ahmed described Ganga Ram as because “the father of recent Lahore, ” for that indelible mark this individual left on the city.

Whilst Ganga Ram has been transforming urban structures in Lahore as part of his government job, his heart remained in rural Punjab where he had grown up.

He returned to his roots, in 1903, when he retired from his government article and was allocated land in Chenab Colony (later called Lyallpur and Faisalabad) as reward associated with his past services.

Here, he set out to establish Gangapur, a model village with new irrigation and farming systems.

He also constructed an unique system to move passengers from the Buchiana railway station, 2 miles away (3. 2km) to Gangapur – laying a narrow track to allow two trollies addicted to each other to be drawn by a horse.

Ganga Ram has been keen to attempt the particular irrigation system he previously set up in Gangapur on the bigger scale. One of his most dedicated projects was the hydel power project in Renala Khurd in Punjab province.

The project, which was officially opened up in 1925, used five turbines in order to irrigate 360sqkm (139 sq miles) associated with wasteland and transform them into suitable for farming fields.

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Ganga Ram would be upward early in the morning to go through his files plus prepare for his day time. Bedi writes which he would sometimes recite verses of Munajat-e-Bewgan (The widow’s prayer), a poem by Urdu poet Maulana Altaf Hussain Hali, to himself.

He was often moved to tears when he or she read the verses. It had been the inspiration behind the work he went on to do for widows in conservative Hindu society.

Within 1917, Ganga Ram tried to pass an answer on widow re-marriage at a religious Hindu conference in the province’s Ambala city.

In order to failed, he created the Widows Marriage Association and donated 2, 000 rupees (a large sum at the time) from his own money into it.

The organization would raise recognition about the difficulties widows faced in community. Ganga Ram shortly realised that while some of the widows were too old to re-marry, many of them did not wish to marry again.

With the government’s acceptance, Ganga Ram built a Hindu Widows Home in 1921, costing 250, 500 rupees, to train this kind of women with skills to support themselves. The house would go on to have two schools plus a hostel. It would assist the widows pass examinations and train them to become instructors of handicrafts.

Ganga Ram furthermore funded the institution of Lady Maynard Industrial School for Hindu and Sikh women who faced financial difficulties.

In 1923, the Sir Ganga Ram Rely on was formed within the engineer’s name.

The same year, the particular Sir Ganga Ram memory Free Hospital and Dispensary was set up in the heart of Lahore. It was later developed as a full-on hospital with well-equipped surgical and medical departments, Bedi’s books says.

The hospital was second only to Mayo Hospital, the oldest and biggest hospital in the Punjab state, according to the book.

The trust also set up a Hindu College student Careers Society within 1924 to help Hindu students gain work and the Sir Ganga Ram Business Bureau and Library.

Ganga Ram’s last charitable project during his life time was the establishment of the Hindu Apahaj Ashram over two acres of land. This was a home for the elderly, the disabled as well as the infirm.

After his death in July 1927 in his London home, portion of his ashes were brought back to Lahore and buried alongside Hindi Apahaj Ashram as per his wants. While the ashram is no longer here, his tomb, the Ganga Ram Samadhi, still appears.

According to Bedi, renowned Urdu article writer Khawaja Hassan Nizami wrote about Ganga Ram’s death, saying that if one could contribute one’s life, he then would have chosen to include his years to Sir Ganga Ram’s life, “so that he might have lived lengthier and rendered even greater services to the distressed women of India”.