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As dusk hovers over Maroli, a fishermen's hamlet in Gujarat, the
villagers gather in a temple by the seashore for their evening
aarti. But this is no ordinary temple. For, alongside the
ubiquitous paintings of the gods hangs a photograph of a man. His
name is Pandurang Shastri Athavale. And for 30 lakh people across
India, he has assumed the same status as God.
God? Godman? No, says the 76-year-old, bespectacled Athavale.
Social reformer, philosopher, spiritual teacher, yes. Not godman,
he insists. These are labels, he says, inspired by politicians and
religious preachers who envy his popularity. Sitting in his modern
office in a bustling Mumbai locality, clad in a khadi dhoti and
kurta, he says: "I do not like that people worship me. In fact,
when I visit these temples, they remove my photograph."
Athavale is answering questions he is not used to being asked. For
he has been an invisible force, his work-L.K. Advani calls his
swadhyaya (self-awareness) movement "India's most revolutionary
movement for social transformation" - touching millions of lives
but out of the glare of publicity. All that has suddenly changed.
Last week he won the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, an
award for those who show "extraordinary originality in advancing
humankind's understanding of God and spirituality". It is worth
#7,50,000 (about Rs 4.2 crore) but Athavale, be sure, will not
pocket it. When he received the Magsaysay Award in 1995, he used
the $50,000 award money for a trust for building huts for tribals
in Gujarat and Maharashtra. And he lives in a rented house
himself.
Yet the simple-sounding saint is a complicated man. On the one
hand, he's the preacher: "I just tell people that God is within
them and until they realise that, social transformation cannot be
achieved." And so wide has been the transformation-80,000 villages
across India-that Rajiv Vora, of the Gandhi Peace Foundation,
gushes: "After Gandhi, he is the first in modern India to
demonstrate that spiritualism can be a strong weapon of social
change."
On the other hand, this Gandhi enjoys luxury cars, ACS in offices
and bridge on Sunday afternoons. Indeed, contradictions abound:
while he sits in a high, ornate chair, his devotees must squat on
the ground. Yet, he escapes censure simply because he says: "I
have no such pretensions (of being a saint). I am just another
family man."
Born into a family of Brahmin religious scholars in Maharashtra's
Raigad district on October 19, 1920, Athavale mastered Sanskrit,
Hindu scriptures, logic and philosophy, and was delivering
discourses on the Gita when just 22; then, for the next 12 years,
he closeted himself in Mumbai's Asiatic Library to understand
western thinking. "I have not seen a library since then," he says.
But enlightenment would arrive only during a religious conference
in japan in 1954. In the midst of explaining that the Gita held
the perfect solution to all modern problems, he realised that there
was no single group in India which lived by these ideals. Back
home, he formed the swadhyaya group in 1957, calling upon his
handful of disciples to devote a portion of their time to acts of
devotion to God. Soon his middle-class disciples started venturing
into rural areas and a movement had begun.
But this was no mere spiritual movement; no, it would bring social
and material benefits as well. Drawing upon the ancient Hindu
concept of devansh (gods' share), Athavale propounded the thesis of
impersonal wealth. So, once every fortnight, his devotees work for
a common cause: one-third of the resulting income is kept for local
use and the rest goes to the central office in Mumbai. The effect
has been stunning: fishermen in Gujarat and Maharashtra have
acquired 71 boats, worth Rs 3 crore, and a 600 tonne cargo ship;
there are 5,000 community farms and 2 50 orchards-whose income is
again used for the villages; and four hospitals, where 1,000
doctors converge to take turns in treating patients. Relaxing at
his 12-acre ashram at Thane, Athavale says with quiet pride: "I am
happy with whatever I have achieved. " And indeed, in the villages
he has preached, change is evident: drinking, gambling,
untouchability and wife-beating are vanishing.
Inevitably, reaching so many villages has required
impressive-critics call it slick-organisation. Like the 3,000
video cassettes-recordings of his Sunday sermons-that are passed on
from one centre to another. Everyone listens to him; opportunistic
politicians want to embrace him. In the '60s, Indira Gandhi's
emissary failed to enlist him; today Athavale, despite being
politically inclined towards the BJP, has rebuffed the party's
numerous attempts to woo him. "A favourable state can help my
work, but it cannot transform the man."
More important, will his movement be transformed? For with a heart
bypass already done and his health precarious, time is running out.
Succession is always an ugly issue, and he now stands charged with
nepotism, of grooming his adopted daughter Dhanashree Talwalkar as
successor. He denies it, his movement acknowledges it.
Perhaps it does not really matter. For, in the autumn of this
patriarch's existence, in the final summing, the good so truly
outweighs the bad. Forty years ago, Sarvepallai Radhakrishnan told
him his Vedic institute in Thane would never survive without
outside funds. It did, it does. At the Magsaysay ceremony,
members of the Rockefeller Center in America, who rarely attend,
flew down specially to meet him. So what if he sits in a chair
while others sit on the ground. He's a man of faith on a higher
plane, isn't he?
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