MARGAO
Noted Gandhian, freedom fighter and founder of MARG Trust, Gurunath Kelekar, passed away on Tuesday. He was 91 and is survived by his son, social activist Dr Sameer Kelekar and daughters Dr Sanjivani Keni and Dr Chitra Zuwarkar.
His mortal remains will be brought to his residence at Margao near the old Hari Mandir temple, Malbhat, at 9.30 am on Wednesday. The funeral is scheduled at 11.30 am at the Margao crematorium. An appeal has been issued to all those wishing to attend the funeral to maintain social distancing and all other necessary precautions.
It was 21 years ago that Gurunathbab, as he was affectionately called, begun the MARG movement with the aim of spreading awareness and executing programmes to reduce the rapidly increasing number of road accidents in Goa.
Over the last 20 years, he travelled the length and breadth of Goa to communicate with over seventy thousand schoolchildren to inspire them to grow up and become responsible citizens of the country. He was a staunch believer that children should be inculcated with a sense of social commitment at an impressionable age. “We should not be just voters but ideal citizens” was the principle that led Gurunathbab to initiate the formation of civic clubs in many schools all over Goa.
His concept of ‘Gandhiji’s Children’ conveyed Mahatma Gandhi’s life to children through short stories, thereby planting the seeds of nationalism in their young minds. For the last many years, Gurunathbab would facilitate tours of schoolchildren to social institutions in Ghatprabha and elsewhere so that these youngsters would be exposed to the workings of organisations with social commitment.
Gurunathbab proposed the unique concept of ‘Swachchhata Narayan Pooja’ with the aim of public cleanliness. He published the Marathi and Konkani editions of the book ‘MARG – Our Friend’, a treatise on our duties towards maintaining and nurturing public roads. He established a branch of MARG in Belgaum as a step towards converting this unique model into a national movement.
Chairman of MARG Trust, Prashant Naik, and other trustees have condoled Gurunath’s death, with the former saying ‘We have lost, not just our founder, but also our guide and our inspiration.’
Naik said Gurunathbab had a dream that the country would adopt Marg as a way of life as, in his words, ‘The road is a part of our life and to understand the vagaries of life, one has to appreciate the value of roads’.
“He believed the nation would progress and flourish only if the common man was familiar with Gandhiji’s and Pandit Nehru’s thoughts and principles. To achieve this, he set up the ‘Pandurang Mulgaonkar Library’, which has a fantastic collection of literature,” he added.
