Back in 1948, govt employees came together to honour Gandhi’s legacy

Almost five months after Mahatma Gandhi’s death in 1948, government employees launched a donation collection campaign to collect donations for Mahatma Gandhi National Monument Fund. While celebrating Gandhi Jayanti on Thursday, a look at the year he stands out to honor the legacy of government employees.

According to a document from the Delhi Archives, historians often described it as one of the greatest spontaneous monetary contributions in history to honor a single individual.

Read the document, various inspectors and assistants gathered in Delhi on June 18, 1948 to organize a meeting to create a committee to collect donations from civil servants for the commemoration ceremony.
In the document, the inspectors from the Finance Branch said that the newly established committee, directed by Ishawar Singh and Vasdev, was assigned to convene the contributions regularly and to make sure that progress was reported to the registration company every month.

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Although the contributions are volunteer, the proposal submitted to employees claimed that each civil servant donated some equivalent to a 10 -day wage.
In order to facilitate the process, it was emphasized that the outages will spread on six installments.
The collection driving officially started on July 1, 1948.
In a remarkable example in 1949, General Talkkies Ltd presented 15,000 RS control to the Fund during the release of the film ‘Siddha’ at Majestic Cinema in Delhi on August 26th.

This movement, then President of the India. Rajendra Prasad added that it was announced to the public.

Nidhi, also known as the Gandhi National Monument Foundation, was later founded to advance Gandhi’s legacy by preserving his teachings, preserving his life -dependent places and producing literature on Gandhian thought.