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Swadhyaya Movement

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Swadhyaya Movement
Pandurang Shastri Athavale
Born(1920-10-19)October 19, 1920
Roha, British India (present-day Maharashtra, India)
DiedOctober 25, 2003(2003-10-25) (aged 83)
Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
Other namesDadaji [5]
OccupationPhilosopher
SpouseNirmala Tai
ChildrenJayshree Talwalkar
ParentVaijnath Shastri Athavale

The Swadhyay Parivar is a socio-religious movement based in Maharashtra, India. It claims to have over 50,000 study centres and 200,000 followers in India, the USA, the UK and the Middle East who carry out various activities of self-development, social welfare activities and socio-economic development in the areas of water management and agriculture. [1]

Swadhyaya means study of self for a spiritual quest.

Pandurang Shastri Athavale was the originator of this movement that promotes a particular interpretation and reading of the Vedic scriptures like Bhagavad Gita, Vedas and the Upanishads. His followers is still active with missionary work. For his efforts he was awarded the Templeton Prize in 1997, the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership and India's second highest civilian honour, the Padma Vibhushan in 1999.[2]

History

In his early twenties, Athavale began to deliver discourses on the Bhagavad Gita in Mumbai, India. The movement's aim is to better the human condition by fostering an understanding of Vedic scriptures.[citation needed] The largest community of followers is located in the state of Gujarat.[citation needed]

The Swadhyay Movement movement was founded in Mumbai in 1954 after Athavale had been inspired by his visit to the 1954 Second World Religious Conference in Japan. Here he expounded on the Vedas and the Bhagavad Gita and linked them to modern life. He discussed the idea of an in-dwelling God and contended that the ego is a gift from God and thus, rather than being removed, should be sublimed with God.[citation needed]

When Athavale was speaking on the Gita and its application to modern life, he was asked whether there was a single village in India practising the ideals of the Gita. Athavale could not answer this question.[3][page needed] This made him determined to return to India to rejuvenate the ancient concept of Swadhyay. At the conference, Athavale met Arthur Holly Compton, the 1927 winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics. Impressed by Athavale, Compton invited the young man to the United States and suggested that the concepts of the Gita could solve their problems [4] Athavale politely declined and suggested that he would rather put the ideas to use in India before the West, and hence started The Swadhyay Movement.

Overview

Swadhyay literally means the study, knowledge, and discovery of the self. According to proponents, it is a "journey to work out a unity in a multiverse of cultures and world views, of harmonizing the self with a network of relationships, of creating and maintaining vital connections between self, society, and God, of knowing and enriching human action with sacredness."[5][page needed] The understanding of an in-dwelling God imbibed into Swadhyayees (practitioners of Swadhyay) by Athavale is claimed to motivate them towards true expression of devotion (Bhakti).[5][page needed] The concept of devotion has two important aspects in Swadhyay: one of self-exploration, with a view to becoming closer to God (Bhav Bhakti), and an active and creative principle of devotion to promote communal good (kruti bhakti). Athavale taught that a series of practical steps and programs facilitates the awareness that God is in-dwelling.[citation needed]

Athavale introduced educational institutions, developed wealth redistribution measures and social welfare projects.[5][page needed] Athavale has shown that individual transformation eventually can lead to wider social change.[5] Devotion, he says, can be turned into a social force. "Since God is with us and within us, he is a partner in all our transactions. Naturally, he has his share..."[6] God's part of our wealth, Athavale suggests, can be redistributed among the poor and needy.[5] [page needed]

Athavale also presented the idea of Yogeshwar Krishi (divine farming) to the farming community. In this social experiment, a Swadhyayee gives a piece of land for use for a season as God's farm. Thereafter each person subsequently, one day a month, works on cultivating that particular plot of land.[7][page needed] Seen as God's plot, the income thus generated is called "impersonal wealth" and belongs to no one but God. The wealth is consecrated in the local temple (called Amritalayam) and later disbursed to those in need as prasad or divinely blessed food. Swadhyay emphasizes "graceful giving" where "the help to the needy family's house is taken in the middle of the night so that others may not know that the family concerned has received help from the community."[5]

In the year of 2010, in Khargar, Mumbai, about 3 million Swadhyayees gathered to celebrate the 90th birthday of Pandurang Shashtri Athavale in the presence of his daughter Jayshree Talwalkar.[citation needed] This program is commonly known as Namasthubyam. In the year of 2011, 25,000 Swadhyayees gathered for the same reason in Rutherford, New Jersey for the celebration of Aaptavandam.[citation needed]

Activities

Swadhyay says its activities differ from social development projects due to the incorporation of bhakti, or devotion to God, in its work. Swadhyay teaches that no human being is superior or inferior to any other.[5][page needed] As each individual make a progress in integration of self, he/she strives to create universal brother hood under the divine Father hood.

Athavale has also set up a range of educational institutions. In the Bal Sanskar Kendras, children are taught Indian culture and values through stories and tales, and in the Tatvadnyana Vidyapeeth (philosophical university) at Thane students are taught Indian and western philosophy, comparative religion, logic, Sanskrit, Vedic rites and rituals. Athavale has also taught Sanskrit in the form of verses to illiterate villagers and trained many people of all castes in the Vedic thoughts.[5][page needed]

Criticism

Swadhyay Parivar is sometimes accused of raising resources for common good may be at the cost of the poor. There are instances of Swadhyayees taking over parts of village commons used as grazing lands, for Yogeshwara Krishi, which could hit the poor hardest. There are instances of Swadhyayees encroaching upon village commons for private cultivation too. It appears to be insufficient concern among Swadhyayees for poverty eradication in their single-minded pursuit of moral development. This may be regarded as the basic weakness of the movement.[8]

Swadhyay Parivar also attracted criticism when Dadaji named his adopted daughter (respectfully called as Didiji) as his successor, which was not acceptable to several Swadhyayees who had served the organisation since long.

There were brutal assaults on dissenters, including the murder of a staunch critic Pankaj Trivedi on June 15, 2006,[9] which led to 10 arrests. Trivedi had expose the group for collecting millions of dollars, including the non-distribution of aid money following the Gujerati earthquake, but not distributing it. Trivedi was reported to have feared for his life and experience harassment from fanatical followers.[10][11][12] [13] [14]

A UN report suggested that only about 10 per cent of the money collected by the group after the disaster had actually been spent on aid. A non-resident of india, Trivedi had written to the US Secret Service in Dayton, Ohio seeking protection for himself and his family from "the leader and fanatic followers of 'Devotional Association of Yogeshwar' also known as 'Swadhyay', whose unethical and illegal activities I have exposed" and reported being threatened at Newark airport in New Jersey by four individuals who had threatened him to stop his activities exposing the groups unethical activities.

Trivedi found that after the 2001 Gujarat earthquake, about 4.2 million dollars was collected from the US but only about 10 per cent of the money collected was spent, from the UK, the organisation had collected about £310,097 pounds but, again, only about 10 per cent of it was transferred to India, that it forcefully closed the ‘‘Bhavnigar Temple’’ in Ahmedabad claiming it was a property of the trust and on March 8, 2006, the High Court of Gujarat threw away many nuisance cases started by the group against him and instructed the followers to stop harassing him. [15]

Reference and notes

  1. ^ The Other Gujarat, Takashi Shinoda, Popular Prakashan, 2002, ISBN 8171548741,
  2. ^ Padma Vibhushan Official listings Govt. of India website.
  3. ^ 1. Vital Connections: Self, Society, God : Perspectives on Swadhyaya, 1998; Weatherhill, ISBN 0-8348-0408-5.
  4. ^ Biography Ramon Magsaysay Award website.
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h Vital Connections: Self, Society, God : Perspectives on Swadhyaya, 1998; Weatherhill, ISBN 0-8348-0408-5.
  6. ^ Vital Connections: Self, Society, God : Perspectives on Swadhyaya, 1998; Weatherhill, ISBN
  7. ^ Vital Connections: Self, Society, God : Perspectives on Swadhyaya, 1998 Weatherhill, ISBN 0-8348-0408-5.
  8. ^ http://www.freepatentsonline.com/article/Journal-Social-Economic-Development/213956977.html
  9. ^ Six years later, court frames charges in NRI murder case, Times of India [1]
  10. ^ WHO KILLED NRI PANKAJ TRIVEDI IN AHMEDABAD, GUJARAT, India Times [2]
  11. ^ Cop stalling murder probe, Times of India [3]
  12. ^ http://www.freepatentsonline.com/article/Journal-Social-Economic-Development/213956977.html
  13. ^ http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2009-06-11/ahmedabad/28204826_1_sessions-court-magisterial-court-murder
  14. ^ http://www.ahmedabadmirror.com/index.aspx?Page=article&sectname=News%20-%20City&sectid=3&contentid=200906162009061602464354026f39e4b
  15. ^ NRI Pankaj Trivedi wrote letter to US secret service for help, VADODARA, June 16, 2005 [4]
  • Swadhyay Movement Living Religions: An Encyclopaedia of the World's Faiths, by Mary Pat Fisher. Published by I.B.Tauris, 1996. ISBN 1-86064-148-2, Page 109.
  • Swadhyaya: A Movement Experience in India - August 2003 Visions of Development: Faith-based Initiatives, by Wendy Tyndale. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2006. ISBN 0-7546-5623-3. Page 1.
  • Self-Development and Social Transformations?: The Vision and Practice of the Self-Study Mobilization of Swadhyaya, by Ananta Kumar Giri. Lexington Books. 2008. ISBN 0-7391-1198-1.
  • Role of the swadhyaya parivar in socioeconomic changes among the tribals of Khedasan: A case study, by Vimal P Shah. Gujarat Institute of Development Research, 1998. ISBN 81-85820-53-8.
  • Vital Connections: Self, Society, God : Perspectives on Swadhyaya, by Raj Krishan Srivastava. 1998; Weatherhill, ISBN 0-8348-0408-5.

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