By C. N. Vaze, Chartered Accountant
In this series, I am trying to introduce to the readers the great personalities who deserve our Namaskaars. These personalities included freedom fighters, scientists, social reformers, entrepreneurs and so on. They laid the foundation for our country’s all-round development. Without a good education, the development of a country is difficult. In this article, I am going to write about one of the greatest educational thinkers of the world Mr. J. P. Naik.
UNESCO has made a list of 100 great educationists of last 25 centuries. Three Indian names are included in that list - Mahatma Gandhi, Ravindranath Tagore and J. P. Naik. Very few of us would have even heard Mr. J. P. Naik’s name!
His real name was Viththal Hari Ghotge. In the year 1930, during Gandhiji’s movement of non-co-operation, he went underground and changed his name to Jayant Pandurang Naik (J. P. Naik). Born on 5th September, 1907 in the village Bahire Wadi, Ajra Taluka of Kolhapur district in Maharashtra, he passed away on 30.08.1981. He was a great humanist, freedom fighter, polymath, encyclopedic thinker and socialist educationist. He was known as an institution maker. In the year 1948, he founded the Indian Institute of Education. He served as Member Secretary of the Indian Education Commission between 1964 to 1966 and worked as Educational Adviser to the Government of India.
He joined the Civil Disobedience Movement of Mahatma Gandhi in 1932, was arrested and put i
