Biography of ‘Ganesh Vasudev Mavalankar’
Ganesh Vasudev Mavalankar (27 November 1888 27 February 1956), popularly known as Dadasaheb, was an independence activist, the President (from 1946 to 1947) of the Central Legislative Assembly, then Speaker of the Constituent Assembly of India, and later the first Speaker of the Lok Sabha, the lower house of the Parliament of India. His son Purushottam Mavalankar was later elected to the Lok Sabha twice from Gujarat.
Mavalankar hailed from a Marathi family but lived and worked in Ahmedabad, former capital of Gujarat. His family originally belonged to Mavalange in Ratnagiri district of Bombay Presidency in British India. After his early education in Rajapur and other places in the Bombay Presidency, Mavalankar moved to Ahmedabad in 1902 for higher studies. He obtained his B.A. Degree in Science from the Gujarat College. Mavalankar joined the Indian Independence Movement with the Non-Cooperation movement. He was appointed secretary of the Gujarat Provincial Congress Committee during 1921-22. Although he temporarily joined the Swaraj Party in the 1920s, he returned to Mahatma Gandhi and the Salt Satyagraha in 1930. After the Congress had abandoned its boycott of elections to the pre-independence legislative councils in 1934, Mavlankar was elected to the Bombay Province Legislative Assembly and became its Speaker in 1937. Mavalankar remained Speaker of the Bombay Legislative Assembly from 1937 to 1946. In 1946, he was elected also to the Central Legislative Assembly.
On 15 May 1952, after the first general elections in independent India, Mavalankar was elected the Speaker of the 1st Lok Sabha. The House carried the proposal with 394 votes, against the opponent’s 55. In January 1956, Mavalankar suffered a cardiac arrest and died on 27 February 1956 in Ahmedabad.
He was one of the guiding force with Sardar Patel in education front of Gujarat and was co-founder of Ahmedabad Education Society along with Kasturbhai, Lalbhai and Amritlal Hargovindas. Further, he along with Mahatma Gandhi, Sardar Patel and others was also one of the proposers of an institution like Gujarat University as early as 1920s, which later came to be founded in 1949.
