Manu Chandaria's encounter with Queen Elizabeth and Dolly Parton

When Manu Chandaria met with Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom. [Courtesy]

The instruction was terse and final. Do not speak unless you are spoken to. He was not to speak to Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom unless she spoke to him. He was, of course, not going to. But little did he or her courtiers know that the Queen’s question would trigger a conversation.

 “Where do you come from?” she asked.

 He does not say he thought about how to frame his answer. But the way it was put was bound to excite her. Indeed, it appeared designed to remind her of an important milestone in her life.

 “The country Your Majesty visited as a Princess and returned to the UK as the Queen.” 

And remind her, it did.

 Her face lit up as she smiled and exclaimed. “Oh, Kenya! Sagana! Is the Treetops still there?”

 The waiting recipients of the Queen’s New Year Honours behind the 5’ 4” brown man, and those discretely attending to her, both watched and listened in awe as the monarch, who stood at the exact height as her guest, inquired about Kenya.

 During her February 1952 visit as a 25-year-old, her father, King George VI, died. She became the Queen while in her upstairs bedroom at the Treetops Hotel in Nyeri. And the memory of her filming rhinos, warthogs, and elephants at a watering hole about 10 yards away, must have fleeted through her mind’s eye. 

The man who was turning heads with his banter with the Queen at Buckingham Palace is a Kenyan by birth, Indian by origin and a Briton by adoption. In 1952, he was 23 years old and must have remembered the royal visit vividly. His name is Manilal Premchand Chandaria, better known in Kenya as Manu Chandaria, or simply as Manu among family, peers, and fellow captains of industry in East Africa and beyond. 

The year was 2003 and Manu was being invested with an Order of the British Empire (OBE). The communication from the British High Commission in Nairobi inviting Manu to the investiture said the OBE was in recognition of his work for the British community in Kenya and for the promotion of Kenyan and British economic interests. 

When he received the letter from the High Commission asking him if he would accept an OBE from Queen Elizabeth II, Manu says he was confused. 

“I found it hard to believe that the British community in Kenya, and the High Commissioner, would have recommended me for an honour by the Queen.”

 In 2017, in a foreword to a book by RTS Partners, who specialise in publications about family businesses, Manu wrote thus about the investiture: “In 2003, my efforts were recognised because of the family’s reputation and track record of social work, and it was a humble pleasure to be awarded the Order of the British Empire (OBE) by Queen Elizabeth II.”

 It was a great moment for Manu to have the insignia pinned on his coat lapel by Queen Elizabeth II.

However, 19 years later, when he had retired and retreated to the quiet of his Muthaiga residence in Nairobi, a letter landed on his desk that brought both surprise and elation to the 94-year-old. He had been nominated for the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy.

That was a special moment. As a young postgraduate student of engineering at the State University of Oklahoma between 1948 and 1951, Manu had admired the philanthropy of the Ford, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, and Carnegie foundations.

On October 13, 2022, Manu was in New York to receive a medal of philanthropy from an organisation, whose founder he counts among those who inspired him to set up his family’s Chandaria Foundation in 1956.

Manu should not have been surprised at his nomination for the medal and he was rightly elated because the criteria for selection were themselves a tribute to his work. It had taken 20 years for the organisers to nominate him as the first African, but it was worth the wait to become the first Kenyan, first African and only the third Indian to be awarded the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy. 

Even though Manu had been honoured many times locally and overseas, he was still surprised that the selection committee could have settled on him for the Carnegie Medal. He, therefore, called and asked if, indeed, it was he who was the nominee and that they had not made a mistake.

He was assured that he was the nominee. This was not the first time he had done this for when he was awarded the OBE, he had called the High Commission to reconfirm that the letter was addressed to him.

 There were only five honourees for the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy and Manu was the first on the list. The others were Americans Lyda Hill, a promoter of science and science-based solutions to challenges, Dolly Parton, one of the entertainment world’s most generous givers, and Lynn Schusterman and Stacy Schusterman, supporters of Jewish causes.

The organisers were effusive in their praise of Manu, calling him “a celebrated advocate for service to society” and as committed to “providing essential human services to long-overlooked communities in Africa”. And referring to the five honourees, the organisers congratulated them for “helping to make the world smarter, cleaner, healthier and more equitable”. 

“The criteria for selection are threefold: Medallists must have a vision of philanthropy that reflects the philosophy of giving set forth by Andrew Carnegie; the philanthropists must have a sustained record of giving, and the medallists must have made a significant impact on a particular field, nation, or group of people, either nationally or internationally.”

The honourees may not have known one another before they met in New York, but back in Kenya, many were bemused by the fact that Manu did not know who Dolly Parton was before he met her in New York.

 The committee had done its homework on Manu. The citation read in part: “In addition to funding academic scholarships, Manu was instrumental in endowing the Chandaria School of Business at the United States International University-Africa and the Chandaria Centre for Performing Arts at the University of Nairobi, among numerous other educational initiatives.”

 ‘‘The Chandaria Foundation also invests in the strengthening of health-care infrastructure in Kenya, including support for the Chandaria Accident and Emergency Centre at the Nairobi Hospital, the Chandaria Cancer and Chronic Disease Centre in Eldoret, and the Chandaria Medical Centre at Gertrude’s Children’s Hospital in Nairobi”.

 It concluded that the committee believed that Manu’s “farsighted generosity will continue to inspire and empower people in Kenya and across the African continent for generations to come”. Importantly, it applauded “Chandaria’s many philanthropic achievements” because they align beautifully with our founder’s philosophy of philanthropy.

Parton’s story reads like a fairy tale. The fourth born in a family of 12 children in impoverished Sevier County in Tennessee, she rose to become a global success as a singer-songwriter, actress, and businesswoman and as one of the entertainment world’s most generous philanthropists.

 According to the programme notes, she was instrumental in “providing career opportunities for the citizens of Sevier County. Dollywood Theme Park has become Parton’s most valuable asset and is now the state’s most popular, attracting three million visitors annually.”

 Parton founded the Dollywood Foundation in 1988 to inspire the children of her home county with the aim of “achieving educational success and decreasing high school dropout rates’’.