Saints Of India - Their Contribution To Hinduism

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At the outset. let me thank you for this kind invitation given to me. On your behalf and on my own behalf. I offer our humble tribute to the pioneer behind this movement. Revered Swami Chinmayanandaji has been the adored of the adorable, the ideal of the idealist, the model for the perfectionist. His undying zeal to spread Hinduism throughout the world has made him a legend in his own life time.

When a number of topics were offered to me for choice. I choose this for the simple reason you don't need any qualification to talk about the Saints. They are the most qualified ones and all that you can do is hold your plain mirror before them. The "Saints of India" have stood as models for me from my childhood. I listen to their works, to their lives and to the examples that they had set for man, woman and child, all alike and they came back to me.

If I can make a confession without sounding boastful. A couple of years back a Professor of Philosophy in a Jesuit College, Detroit University Campus invited me to address his under-graduates. I think it is a custom not given to Indian Professors to do. This Professor said. "Will you take my class for the under-graduates today?" I was shocked. I was surprised and I was happy too. And I asked him - I am not omniscient- "What is the topic for the day. He said “Religious Experience of Saints in India". I choose that because it was dear to me. But before I entered the classroom. I have students of the Indian kind here.

Your Western counterparts are a little unruly, a little more unruly if I can put it as an understatement. Another colleague said: “Ma'am please be careful. this is not India. You will have beer bottles, you will have coco-cola cans, you will have cigars and you will have students with their feet on the table before you and there is no Gurukula pattern there. You will have to talk about religious experience in this irreligious atmosphere"

I walked in because I had prayed. I knew I was not speaking. My Masters were inspiring me, and as I started to speak on the saints, the beer bottles were down, the cigars were crushed, the coco-cola cans disappeared, the feet were on the ground and the children sat listening with rapt attention, not because I was speaking but because the subject was "Religious Experience of Saints in India". It is the theme that held the children, it is the theme that held the youth because we were talking of men and women inspired by the Lord.

My dear listeners. whenever we talk of Saints, the idea comes to my mind that the saint is one who is particularly relevant to youth and middle-aged - a very advantageous position because I can recover from the follies of youth and prevent the follies of old age. At this time I stand and having been for 23 years a teacher, not a small number of years I think. Two decades are enough to make you understand youth. I have felt that my commitment to youth is very very feminal.

Tolstoy once remarked that we admire age for what it has achieved and we adore youth for what it is going to achieve. So we are looking forward to what you are going to achieve. Youth, I feel, is a mountain stream, fresh and gushing, pure and lively, but to successfully reach the sea of success it needs two banks - one is duty and other is devotion, without which it will inundate and create chaos. Both these concepts have not come down to us through thin air but through the lives of saints and mystics.

About the author

Prema Pandurang

She is the founder President of Samskriti (Home of Culture) and Kshetropasna Charitable Trust and the Founder Trustee of Shree Chakra Foundation. Kshetropasna Trust was founded by Pujya Prof.Prema Pandurang and Dr.P.R.Krishnakumar with the noble purpose of establishing a unique organization to revive the values and ideals of our Indian culture in India & Abroad. This Trust encompasses several activities. She wields a powerful pen and has a God-given gift of magnificent eloquence. She has to her credit a number of articles in various popular journals. Her writing always stimulate thought and inner peace. She speaks on God with fervor and conviction.