This article is part of a series by The Wire titled ‘The Early Parliamentarians’, exploring the lives and work of post-independence MPs who have largely been forgotten. The series looks at the institutions they helped create, the enduring ideas they left behind and the contributions they made to nation building.Serendipity led Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, who was on the lookout for brilliant young lecturers for the Siddharth College of Arts and Science in the then Bombay in the 1940s, to a physicist who had completed his postgraduation degree with distinction and secured a first division as a graduate.Physics would eventually lose the professor to public life where he would leave a lasting but largely unsung imprint, so to speak, on countless railway seats that offer relief to as many sore haunches.Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty.A committed socialist, a true Gandhian, a freedom fighter, a veteran parliamentarian – an overarching label that does full justice to Professor Madhu Dandavate is hard to come by. Otto Von Bismarck should come in handy. Did the Iron Chancellor have someone like Dandavate in mind when he said that “a really great man is known by three signs — generosity in the design, humanity in the execution and moderation in success?”Dandavate stood by the socialist ideology throughout his public life, earnestly striving to lay the foundation for a unified socialist movement in the country. As a student aged 18, he participated in the Quit India movement of 1942. Four years later, he expressed solidarity with the Royal Indian Navy revolt. In 1955, he led a satyagraha in Goa against Portuguese imperialism. He was severely beaten up by police, saddling him with a hip injury that troubled him throughout the rest of his life. But the mass satyagraha did help generate the climate for the Indian government to mount military action and liberate Goa from the Portuguese domain in 1961.Dandavate was born on 21 January, 1924, at Ahmednagar in Maharashtra. Completing his primary education from a municipal school, Dandavate enrolled himself in the Ahmednagar Education Society School for secondary education.He was sent to Mumbai for college education. After the intermediate course, he joined the Royal Institute of Science, a premier institution in the city. It was from here that he secured the first division in BSc physics. He passed the MSc examination with distinction from the same institute in 1946, following which Dr Ambedkar’s search by chance facilitated the appointment of Dandavate as a lecturer in the physics department of the Siddharth College of Arts and Science. Later, Dandavate taught nuclear physics in the same college, and at the postgraduate level in the Bombay University till 1971.The socialistDandavate found as much relevance in Marxism as in the views of Mahatma Gandhi and Jayaprakash Narayan. He had read the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and Das Kapital and the Civil War in France by Marx. At the same time, he found a lot of relevance in Gandhiji’s methods and the emphasis on ethics in politics to build a just and equal society. Dandavate felt that socialism should be tinged with Gandhiji’s thinking for a sustainable change in society.Dandavate was a member of the Socialist Party from 1948. Later, he joined the Praja Socialist Party, Samyukta Socialist Party and the Socialist Party. He was an active leader of the land liberation movement in 1969. During the Emergency in 1975-77, Dandavate was arrested and he spent time in the Bangalore Central Jail.Dandavate was an author, too, writing books on matters of parliamentary interest, planning, secularism and notable personalities such as Gandhi, Marx, and Narayan, to name a few.ParliamentarianDandavate was first elected to the Maharashtra Legislative Council from the graduate constituency (where only graduates are eligible to vote) and was an MLC during 1970-71. From 1971 to 1991, he was a member of Parliament, having been elected to the Lok Sabha for five consecutive terms from Rajapur in Konkan, Maharashtra.He was one of the prominent opposition leaders during the tenures of Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi as Prime Ministers. Dandavate also served as railway minister in the Morarji Desai government (1977-79) and as finance minister in the V.P. Singh government (1989-90). He was also the deputy chairman of the Planning Commission from 1996 to 1998.Secular valuesIllustration: Pariplab ChakrabortyDandavate was a strong believer in the spirit of tolerance. For him, “the communalists through their diversionary tactics only weaken the social and economic struggles of the deprived sections of the society”. Making his stand clear on secularism, he told the Lok Sabha on 7 November, 1990: “Our concept of secularism in the Indian context has not been anti-religionism or non-religionism. In the Indian context, secularism always meant sarva dharma sambhava, i.e. harmonious and peaceful co-existence of various religious groups.”Cushion pioneerAs railway minister, Dandavate initiated a number of improvements in the country’s rail infrastructure. The measures included computerisation of the railway reservation process, sanctioning the first phase of the Konkan Railway in 1978-79 and the repair or replacement of 5,000 kilometres of worn-out tracks.Notably, Dandavate introduced cushioned berths, replacing wooden ones, for passengers of second-class sleeper coaches. In India After Gandhi, historian Ramachandra Guha underscores Dandavate’s role in the introduction of cushioned seats in trains. Guha writes that “those two inches of foam” have probably “brought more succour to more people than any other initiative by an Indian politician”. The historian places Dandavate among the few ministers who “shall be remembered for having carried out programmes that radically reshaped the lives of their people”.Guha highlights Dandavate’s pragmatism, stating that “his socialism eschewed rhetoric against the rich in favour of policies for the poor. As he put it, ‘what I want to do is not degrade the first class but elevate the second class’.”Finance ministerAs Union finance minister, Dandavate abolished the Gold Control Act, which had imposed restrictions on ownership, manufacture and trade of the precious metal. The budget presented by him had a socialist touch, reflected in debt relief to small farmers and artisans and rolling back an excise duty hike on diesel.As an advocate of decentralisation, he saw to it that 90 per cent of the centrally sponsored schemes were transferred to the states. He also introduced measures to regulate the functioning of financial institutions. Dandavate considered a proposal for making the right to work a fundamental right but could not succeed because the V.P. Singh ministry lost power in December 1990.Dandavate’s emphasis on balancing economic stability with the need to uplift the downtrodden was reflected in his 1990-91 budget speech: “…While the poor at the grassroot level suffered in silence without much benefit of growth trickling down to them, the affluent at the top lived in splendid isolation and monopolised most of the gains of economic growth. The new government rejects this trickle-down theory of development. Instead, it would work for growth with equity, ensured through employment-oriented planning in which the decentralised institutions of the four pillars of the state, aptly described by Rammanohar Lohia as the ‘Choukhamba Raj’, will play a pivotal role.” The Choukhamba Raj sought to broaden the model of government from two pillars (the Centre and the states) to four pillars – the village, the district, the province and the Centre.One of Dandavate’s standout interventions as a parliamentarian was to ensure the incorporation of a safety clause in the anti-defection law in 1985 to allow dissent. Dandavate’s parliamentary career ended after his loss in 1991, and he took a step back from active national politics.Besides his scientific temperament, Dandavate had an aptitude for literature, poetry and classical music (both Indian and western). He enjoyed watching art films and theatrical plays in various languages and had an abiding interest in cricket. He seemed to have nursed fond memories of receiving the silver medal as the skipper of the Lok Sabha Cricket Team from the President of India.Partnership with PramilaDandavate married Pramila Dandavate who was also prominently involved in the socialist movement. She was a great source of support and inspiration to him both in his personal as well as public lives. Both cooperated with each other in all social and political movements. She had a deep sense of commitment to gender justice and empowerment of women. With her commitment to social causes, she rose to become a member of the Seventh Lok Sabha (1980-1984) from the Mumbai North Central constituency.During the Emergency, Madhu was lodged in Bangalore Central Jail and Pramila in Yerawada Jail in Pune for 18 months. The couple wrote each other 200 letters, discussing music, books, philosophy and love.After a long battle with cancer, Dandavate died at the Jaslok Hospital in Mumbai on 12 November, 2005, aged 81. In line with his wish, his body was donated to the J.J. Hospital in the city.Qurban Ali is a trilingual journalist who has covered some of modern India’s major political, social and economic developments. He has a keen interest in India’s freedom struggle and is now documenting the history of the socialist movement in the country.