Raja Mahendra Pratap Singh was known as Aryab Peshwa who was known asa freedom fighter, revolutionary, writer, journalist and a social reformer.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation stone of Raja Mahendra Pratap Singh State University in Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh, to commemorate the Jat figure two years after the UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath promised to construct a university in his name.
Raja Mahendra Pratap Singh History
Raja Mahendra Pratap Singh, popularly known as “Aryan Peshwa”, was born in 1886 in UP’s Hathras, in the ruling Jat family of the princely state of Mursan. Coming from a royal family, he was actively involved in politics from a young age. He was a freedom fighter, revolutionary, writer, journalist, social reformer, and internationalist who entered Lok Sabha as an Independent candidate from Mathura in 1957.
Raja Mahendra Pratap Singh Education
He received his education from Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental Collegiate School, now known as Aligarh Muslim University, and donated 1.221 hectares of land in 1929 to the university. In 2019, BJP and RSS leaders demanded that AMU should be renamed after him.
The Raja was involved in the Swadeshi movement, and established a “Provisional Government of India” in Kabul in the middle of World War I in 1915, declaring himself as the President. He was a firm believer of Gandhi’s policy of non-violence and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1932.
“He was not a political figure. He was more of a reformer who promoted education. He gave his own residence to establish the first technical school of the country. He was well versed in eight different languages, he practised different religions, he founded the world federation, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize, he set up a Provisional Government of India in Afghanistan, but still, very few know about him,” said Charat Pratap Singh, the great grandson of Mahendra Pratap.
He always called and believed himself to be the “servant of the powerless and weak.”