Malaviya was born in Prayagraj, India on 25 December 1861, into a Brahmin family to Pandit Brijnath malviya and Moona Devi. He was born in a locality known as Lal Diggi (now Malviya Nagar) in a small house of Sawal Das of Saryakund. His grandfather, Pandit Premdhar Prasad Srivastva, was the son of Pandit Vishnu Prasad Srivastva. Originally, a Kayastha family from Malwa who had settled in Prayagraj, other members of the family had moved to a nearby city named Mirzapur in Uttar Pradesh. Since they hailed from Malwa (Ujjain) in the present-day state of Madhya Pradesh, they came to be known as 'Malaviya'. For his ardent love to the Malwa region, where his family belonged to, he adopted the surname as "Malaviya" instead of "Chaturvedi". His great-grandfather Vishnu Prasad had five sons - Sadhodhar Prasad, Murlidhar Prasad, Vansidhar Prasad, Baldhar Prasad and Premdhar Prasad. His grandfather Premdhar Prasad had four sons - Lalji, Bacchulalji, Gajadhar Prasad and Brijnath Prasad. His father Pandit Brijnath had six sons and two daughters - Bihari Lal, Manohar Lal, Shayamsundar Lal, Jaykrishna, Madan Mohan, Lakshmi Narayana, Shubhardra and Sukhdaei. Malaviya was the fifth son of his parents. He married Kundan Devi, daughter of Nand Lal Srivastva of Mirzapur at the age of sixteen. His ancestors were highly respected for their learning and knowledge of Hindu scriptures and Sanskrit scholarship. His father was also learned in Sanskrit scriptures, and used to recite the Srimad Bhagavatam.
