Growing up with Nanaji, Ram Narayan Chaudhary, meant growing up with the tales of freedom fighters ranging from Bhagat Singh and Vijay Singh Pathik to Gandhiji. He instilled in me a sense of justice through his social work, especially for Dalits in those formative years. Due to his influence, caste and religion did not mean anything in our house. He ensured what was unthinkable or unacceptable in those days: our cook was a Muslim and our house-help would invariably be a Dalit. In fact, when my school friends discriminated against Dalits or spoke about them in a demeaning fashion, I felt strange and hurt. This important lesson of treating all humans as equal beings opened my mind. Indeed, our family’s cosmopolitanism comes from Nanaji’s principled vision of equality.
Arvind Agrawal is currently the CEO of Jumbo Group (Dubai). He has over three decades of experience as a business person in the technology sector.