Chinmaya Vidyalaya, Pallavur

Swami Chinmayananda Saraswati (IAST: Svāmī Cinmayānanda Sarasvatī), also known as Pujya Gurudev Swami Chinmayananda Saraswati (born Balakrishna Menon; 8 May 1916 – 3 August 1993), was a Hindu spiritual leader and a teacher. In 1953, he founded Chinmaya Mission, a worldwide nonprofit organisation, in order to spread the knowledge of Advaita Vedanta, the Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads, and other ancient Hindu scriptures. Through the Mission, Swami Chinmayananda spearheaded a global Hindu spiritual and cultural renaissance that popularised these spiritual texts and values, teaching them in English all across India and abroad.

Swami Chinmayananda was originally a journalist and participated in the Indian independence movement. Under the tutelage of Swami Sivananda and later Tapovan Maharaj, he began studying Vedanta and took the vow of sannyasa. He gave his first ''jñāna yajña'', or lecture series about Hindu spirituality, in 1951, starting the work of the Mission. Today, Chinmaya Mission encompasses more than 300 centres in India and internationally and conducts educational, spiritual, and charitable activities.

Swami Chinmayananda's approach was characterized by an appeal to the English-educated Indian middle class and Indian diaspora; he gave lectures and published books in English. Swami Chinmayananda also helped found the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), an Indian right-wing Hindu organization that is considered a member of the Sangh Parivar. In 1964, he convened delegates to create the VHP at Sandeepany ashram and served as the organisation's first president. He aimed to "awake(n) the Hindus and to make them conscious of their proud place in the comity of nations," saying that, "Let us convert Hindus to Hinduism, then everything will be all right."

Swami Chinmayananda authored 95 publications, including commentaries on the major Upanishads and Bhagavad Gita. He was a visiting professor of Indian philosophy at several American and Asian universities, and he conducted university lecture tours in many countries.

Biography

Indian independence movement and imprisonment

Approaching August 1942, in the midst of a wide-scale attempt by Indian activists to make the British " Quit India," Balan was one of the students to join in writing and distributing leaflets to stir up national pride. A warrant was issued for his arrest. When word of this reached him, he went undercover spending the next year moving around in the state of Abbottabad, out of range of British officials, and then moved to Delhi.

In 1944, almost two years after the British had issued his arrest warrant, believing his case was long forgotten, Balan arrived in Punjab and associated himself with several freedom groups. He advised students on distributing leaflets and organising public strikes but was arrested and imprisoned."Chinmayananda Commemoration Days", ''Religious Celebrations: An Encyclopedia of Holidays, Festivals, Solemn Observances, and Spiritual Commemorations'', (J. Gordon Melton, ed.), ABC-CLIO, 2011
/ref> He spent several months in unhygienic conditions in prison and caught typhus. This caused him to be among those who were carried out into the night and tossed beside a road on the outskirts of the city, where he was found by a passing Indian Christian. Reminded of her son serving in the army, she took him to her home and called for a doctor, who insisted that he be taken to a hospital.

Career in journalism

Balan slowly recovered his health. K. Rama Rao gave Balan his first job, as a journalist at ''The National Herald'', a young newspaper that had been founded a few years back by Jawaharlal Nehru. He wrote a series of articles on the imperative of socialism in a society where the vast majority of people were poor. He covered subjects ranging from history and culture to social and political issues. Articles such as "In Praise of the Postman," and "The Mochi—Symbol of Craftsmanship," gained him a reputation as a controversial character. In 1947, he began a new series of articles for ''The Commonweal''.

Study of Vedanta

It was while working as a journalist that he travelled to Sivananda's ashram in Rishikesh for this purpose of writing an exposé of the sadhus. He later said, "I went not to gain knowledge, but to find out how the swamis were keeping up the bluff among the masses."

In the summer of 1947, Balan arrived in Rishikesh, by the banks of the Ganges and made the one-mile hike to the Divine Life Society, the ashram of Swami Sivananda. The sages opened his eyes. Balan extended his stay from a week to a month, then more and more. At the age of 31, he went from being a sceptic to an enthusiast, finally becoming a renunciate monk. He began reading more about Hindu scriptures and reviewing spiritual books. Sivananda recognised Balan's latent talents and entrusted him to organise a Gita Committee.

Having returned to the Divine Life Society ashram, on 25 February 1949, the holy day of ''Mahashivratri'', Balan was initiated into ''sannyasa'' (Hindu vow of renunciation) by Sivananda, who gave him the name ''Swami Chinmayananda'', or "bliss of pure Consciousness."

With Sivananda's blessing, Chinmayananda sought out one of the greatest Vedantic masters of his time, Tapovan Maharaj of Uttarkashi, and devoted the next few years of his life to an intensive study of Vedanta under his tutelage.

Launch of spiritual movement

In 1951, flying in the face of orthodox Hindu traditions but with the blessings of his guru, Chinmayananda decided to bring the teachings of Vedanta to the masses. In May of that year, he left the Himalayas with a plan to set out on an all-India tour and to visit places of worship to see how Hindu religious heritage was being handed down. He said of that time: "I was miserably disillusioned and disappointed about ... the stuff doled out as the best in Hinduism. ... My experiences during those five months of roaming only strengthened my conviction that I must execute ... Upanishad ''Jñāna Yajña'' sessions (lecture series) all over India, in all the great cities."

Chinmayananda held his first lecture series at a Ganesha temple in the city of Pune in December 1951. His audiences soon swelled from a handful into thousands. Army officers from the Southern Command attended and the audience overflowed into the lanes near the temple. Everyone in the audience, man and woman, across all social strata, was asked to participate in the rituals.

Chinmaya Mission

At the end of the second ''jñāna yajña'' in Madras in 1953, a handful of people expressed the desire to create a forum for the study and discussion of Vedanta. Chinmayananda agreed in principle, but he said, "Don't start any organization in my name. I have not come here to be institutionalized. I have come here to give the message of our ancient sages, which has benefited me. If it has benefited you, pass it on."

The Madras group insisted that the best way to "pass it on" was through the support of a forum. They wrote back pointing out that the word "Chinmaya" did not have to indicate Chinmayananda's name, since, in Sanskrit, the word itself means "pure Knowledge," which they were seeking. He conceded. On 8 August 1953, the Chinmaya Mission was formed.

Before long, hundreds of study groups were set up all over the country for people to get together in small batches to study religion and philosophy in a systematic manner. Devi groups were organised for women to take up regular spiritual study and social work.

In 1956, the 23rd ''jñāna yajña'' in Delhi was inaugurated by the President of India, Rajendra Prasad. He spoke highly of the work Chinmayananda was doing to restore India's cultural glory. In a span of five years, Chinmayananda had instructed over 50,000 of his countrymen through 25 ''jñāna yajña''s across the country.

On 6 March 1965, Chinmayananda set out on his first global teaching tour, covering 39 cities in 18 countries: Thailand, Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, United States, Mexico, Spain, United Kingdom, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, Denmark, France, Switzerland, Italy, Greece and Lebanon. Over the next 28 years, he continued these international discourses, staying only a week or so in each place, delivering a minimum of two lectures a day, and handling numerous meetings, interviews, discussions, and programs. He wrote scores of letters a day.

It soon became necessary to co-ordinate the growing spiritual movement in the United States. Chinmaya Mission West was formed in 1975 for this purpose.

Chinmayananda's message resonated with heads of other faiths. One of his ''yajña''s in Bombay was inaugurated by Cardinal Valerian Gracias, a prominent Catholic archbishop of the time. The Dalai Lama, head of the Tibetan Buddhist order, visited with him at the Chinmaya Mission ashram in Sidhbari in 1981.
Chinmayananda was a supporter of interfaith dialogue and participated in many interfaith events.

In 1992, he undertook a lecture tour of twelve US universities to establish an international library and research center, the Chinmaya International Foundation, in Kerala, India.

Vishva Hindu Parishad

In 1963, Swami Chinmayananda wrote an article airing the idea of calling for a World Hindu Council, inviting delegates from throughout the world to discuss the difficulties and needs concerning the "survival and development of Hindu culture." This attracted the attention of RSS ''pracharak'' S. S. Apte, who was airing similar ideas at that time.

In the same year, Chinmaya Mission collected ₹10,000 to fund the construction of the Vivekananda Rock Memorial, which the RSS was building at the time in Kanyakumari. Additionally, in August 1964, the Pope announced that the International Eucharistic Conference would be held in November in Bombay, and stated that a specific number of Hindus would be converted to Christianity; Chinmayananda announced in response that he would convert an even greater number of people to Hinduism.

Apte and Chinmayananda jointly organised such a conference at the Sandeepany ashram in August 1964, which resulted in the founding of the Vishva Hindu Parishad. Swami Chinmayananda was elected as president and Apte as general secretary of the new organisation.

According to Chinmayananda, the VHP was founded in order to

awake(n) the Hindus and to make them conscious of their proud place in the comity of nations. Once we have made every Hindu conscious of his own identity, the Parishad has done its job and we shall feel fully rewarded... ...

Let us convert Hindus to Hinduism, then everything will be all right.

He also believed that the VHP should be focused on educating members of the Hindu diaspora

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