RM1 million fund started to rescue Ashram

College co-founder offers to start a RM1 million rolling fund to save the historical building.

KUALA LUMPUR: Brickfields Asia College co-founder Raja Singham plans to save and restore the century-old Vivekananda Ashram in Brickfields, which is under threat from development, back to its glory days.

The ashram has been earmarked for redevelopment as a 23-storey residential tower with 264 units and an eight-storey car park.

Although the Vivekananda board of trustees had assured the public that the building’s 110-year-old structure along with the bronze statue of Swami Vivekananda would be preserved, news of the proposed development invited a backlash from MIC, Hindraf, PKR and Gerakan.

The Edge Financial Daily reported that Raja had offered financial help upon hearing that the ashram management had cited financial problems as the reason for redeveloping the land.

“I will start the ball rolling with a RM1 million fund and hopefully it will attract other corporate sponsors. But the trustees must accept this first,” he said explaining that he was not trying to pick a fight with the trustees but was trying to help them.

The trust owns and manages four schools – SJK (T) Vivekananda, Brickfields, both the Vivekananda primary and secondary schools in Kuala Lumpur and SJK (T) Thamboosamy Pillai, Sentul and is focused on developing the youth and education.

Raja was eager to save the ashram which he said was an education centre in its heyday and the early 1990s where various dance and vocal music classes, yoga lessons and spiritual activities were organised.

Swami Vivekananda, of which the ashram is named after was a philosopher who inspired his followers to build the ashram in Brickfields.

The ashram started off as a reading group and opened its first Tamil school in 1914, followed by the country’s first Tamil kindergarten in the 1920s and continues to be recognised as a place of learning.

So far, 25,000 signatures have already been collected and Raja hopes to see this number increase to 100,000 before presenting them to the various government agencies, ministries and the prime minister.