Muzaffarnagar District
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Muzaffarnagar District is a district of Uttar Pradesh state in northern India. The district is part of Saharanpur Division. The town of Muzaffarnagar is the district headquarters. It is claimed to have the largest jaggery market in Asia.[citation needed]
Muzaffarnagar district had the main family of Late Shri Zorawar Singh ji,followed by Late Shri Dhoom Singh ji.They were followed by Late Rai Saheb Shri Balbir Chandra ji Jain,L.LB,Magistrate.Their family is supposed to have owned most of the area of the district at one time.
Rai Saheb Balbir Chandra ji Jain was a very respected and learned person.He was held in high esteem by the district administrators.He was also a benevolent philanthropist and progressive personality.He started a school of his own for girls in pre-independence India when girls were not allowed to go to schools.This later was expanded into a full fledged school then a college with hostel and is currently a post graduate college for girls where they also do Ph.D.
After partition he gifted his fifty room house(Haveli) in Nai Mandi to the District Magistrate for a token compensation of only 'half a pice' to help the refugees.
He was having a stable of about twenty five horses.He gifted most of these to the police/army.He retained one horse for himself.
He also had a buggy and was the first to get a car-an Austin.He also went on a round the world trip on a ship and visited Japan etc.
He also donated a golden chariot(rath) to Shree Mahaveerjee temple in Shree Mahaveerji in Hindon in Sawai Madhopur District of Rajasthan.This chariot was sent by a special train in 1942 from Muzaffarnagar station to Mahavirji,where a platform was constructed to receive the chariot.This chariot was actually pledged to be donated by late Shri Dhoomsinhgji. This nis the chariot or rath which is taken out in the procession on Shree Mahavir Jayanti.
Shri Balbir Chandra ji was following the 'sadavrat' of donating.When his Dewan sahib asked for some money for his daughter's marriage the money given by him left so much with the Deewanji that his children started a steel factory in Meerut much later.
He could be seen at the window, distributing food,clothes, money etc.to the needy, in a simple dhoti, right from morning till the last person in the queue had left.He was a very simple and religious person and ate two chapatis after this daily ritual of giving aid to the needy at his door. Zamindari abolition took away most of the family property.
He made trusts to look after the remaining little property he left behind, for the welfare of the people.He expired in 1957. He had several daughters Kamla,Vimla,Sarla,Trishla and Sheela and two sons Shri Yatindra Kumar Jain,LLb.who wrote some scripts for films and Shri Jogeshwar Kumar Jain who composed Jain bhajans and at one time in his youth had a roving Jain Bhajan Mandali.
His eldest daughter Smt Kamla Devi Jain,BA,ex-President of Inner Wheel club and Mahila Jain Milan,residing in Baraut, had been a progressive,mostly self-educated and independent minded girl who also took part in the freedom struggle and carried the Indian flag in front of the processions in the Quit India movement.Her husband, late Shri S.S.Jain(Sukhbir Singh Jain), a renowned Agricultural Scientist(Plant Pathologist)s/o Late Shri Padam chand Jain, was the eldest son of the famous family --Gangaram Kishorilal of Baraut, District Meerut.
She had education as a mission and initially started a school in Cuttack CRRI in her husband's bungalow's verandah.She is known as a very good social worker and Jain bhajan singer.She knows more than a dozen languages including English and German.She is treated as a Patron by Inner Wheel club and Jain Milan Shastrinagar Meerut and Baraut and even though aged and ailing is still actively writing articles in Hindi and English, some having won her prizes from other Inner Wheel clubs.
After Zamindari abolition in the fities ,presently there have grown up many other big,powerful and very rich families in Muzaffarnagar district due to industry,commerce and agriculture. The district is teeming with population growth and crime graph is hig.
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