It was in 1992 that eminent jurist Nani A. Palkhivala visited Sankara Nethralaya.
He was so impressed with their work that he gave them all the stocks he owned. The following year he gave the hospital all the cash he had, and finally, bequeathed all his property to it, says S.S. Badrinath, chairman emeritus, Sankara Nethrayala.
On Thursday, the institution remembered him yet another time.
Chief Justice of the Madras High Court Sanjay Kishan Kaul, who unveiled the portrait of the jurist, author, economist, and philanthropist, recalled how, as a young lawyer, he too was in awe of the multifaceted genius.
“He had the ability to simplify issues before the court. He had the ability to put it across to the judge in a simple manner. He had a deep reverence for the Constitution. He was conscious of the fact that it needed to be protected and it was on this basis that he developed his theories and propositions,” Mr. Kaul said.
Quoting from Mr. Palkhivala’s will, he said, “so far as his salary was concerned he followed the policy that one hand must not know what the other hand made. The fact that a man would devote a large part of his wealth to an institution says a lot about him,” he said.
Delivering the Nani Palkhivala Memorial Lecture, V.K. Raju, faculty, Department of Ophthalmology, West Virginia University, the U.S., spoke of the facets of India which Nani Palkhivala and V.S. Naipaul recorded in their writings.
From Friday, Sankara Nethralaya will host the three-day conference, OSKON 2015, the second meeting on ‘ocular surface and keratoprosthesis.’
The story of how eminent jurist Nani Palkhivala bequeathed his wealth to Sankara Nethrayala.
