'She was true to herself'
MADHVANIS PAY TRIBUTE TO FAMILY MATRIARCH MEENABEN
A MEMORIAL service for Meenaben Madhvani, the matriarch of the Madhvani family who passed away on September 29, was held at her home in Kakira, Uganda, last Tuesday (5).
The 92-year-old was the widow of Jayant Madhvani, the eldest son of Mulji Prabhudas Madhvani, the India-born Ugandan businessman, entrepreneur, industrialist and philanthropist who founded the Uganda-based conglomerate Madhvani Group.
Meenaben, who was from Tanzania, married Jayant in Bombay (now Mumbai) in 1950. Jayant died of a heart attack in India in 1971, months after former Ugandan dictator Idi Amin announced the expulsion of all Asians from the country.
Following her death, prayers were led by Nitin Madhvani, her eldest son, at a restricted gathering of the Kakira and Jinja communities. Short speeches were also made by Meenaben’s children and grand-children at the Uthamnu ceremony.
Nitin paid rich tributes to his mother, who he said was “someone with a natural nobility, who was classless and who needed no recognition”.
He added that Meenaben often told him it was her “innermost feeling of the suffering of others that made it possible for her to connect with such a diverse constituency of family and friends”.
He said, “For all the status, the glamour, and the applause Meenaben enjoyed when her great husband was alive, she remained throughout and thereafter steadfast to her principles and with the humblest determination to do good for her children, her family, her relatives, her friends near and far, and for so many others, so she could release herself from deep feelings of their difficulties or suffering, of which her strong-mindedness was merely a symptom.
“It is a tribute to her levelheadedness and strength that despite the most bizarre life – being torpedoed by the Germans on a journey from Mombasa to Bombay, coping with the illness of her son when he was only eight months old, lovingly caring for all the youngsters in the family, the tragic loss of her husband when he was only 42 year old, suffering the expulsion from Uganda, then returning home a decade later – that she remained intact, true to herself.”
Meenaben was known to defy Amin’s expulsion orders at the time and refused to leave their home and her husband’s legacy, irrespective of the consequences.
It was only after her family pleaded with her that she relented and went to neigbouring Kenya. But after the fall of Amin in the late 1970s, Meenaben returned to Uganda.
Nitin added, “To our family members and to so many others, I thank you for caring for my mother and her family.
“I want to end by thanking God for the many mercies he has shown us at this dreadful time.
For taking Meenaben, peacefully, at the sunset of her life, and gracing her with radiant beauty.”
The last rites were carried out on October 3 on the shores of Lake Victoria in Kakira.