Mukund Mody, one of the tallest Indian-American community leaders and founder of Overseas Friends of BJP (OF-BJP) in the US has passed away at Staten Island University Hospital here.
He was 73.
He is survived by his wife Kokila Mody and two daughters - Swati and Sushama and his body was cremated within few hours as per his last wish.
A pediatrician by profession, Mody hailed from Talaja in Gujarat and had his education in Mumbai.
Although soft-spoken, he was a man with strong convictions. Living a routine normal life as a physician, the imposition of Emergency by the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1975 shook him and his life took a U-turn.
He plunged headlong into Indian politics for restoration of India's democracy.
In the US, he was conscientiously working to improve political character, discipline, and awareness among the Indian-Americans rising over party affiliations. He came to the US in 1967 and was practicing medicine and was leading a normal life till then.
When the Emergency was imposed, he gathered some like-minded Indians and staged a protest rally in front of the Consulate General of India's office in Manhattan protesting against trampling of freedom.
He was able to gather a motley crowd of RSS supporters, Communist sympathisers, Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Socialist supporters. The rally led to the formation of Friends of India Society International and the organisation fought for restoring press freedom, democracy, and abolition of draconian laws and release of political prisoners jailed in India.
The group started publishing a news letter Indian Opinion on the pattern of Mahatma Gandhi who introduced the idea in South Africa to get independence.
The newsletter published in the US and containing banned news was even distributed to political prisoners serving sentence in various Indian prisons. Indira Gandhi got to know this and banned the passports of all those traveled to India with the newsletter copies.
He was never interested in politics but the regime of Gandhi pushed him into politics as he would often say and he launched the Society in England, Hong Kong and Netherlands using his connections. He served as the Secretary General of the Society.
In March 1991, he launched the Overseas Friends of BJP to remove misconceptions and educate the NRIs on the policies of BJP. That was the first time BJP officially authorised opening of foreign cells to take the ideology among non resident Indians and rebuff the dissemination of disinformation.
