Pandurang Shastri Athavale

Pandurang Shastri Athavale (19 October 1920 – 25 October 2003), also known as Dada /Dadaji ("grand father"), was an Indian activist, philosopher, spiritual leader, social revolutionary, and religion reformist, who founded the Swadhyaya Parivar (Swadhyaya family) in 1954. Swadhyaya is a self-study process based on the Bhagavad Gita which has spread across nearly 100,000 villages in India, Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Oceania and other Asian countries with five million adherents. Noted for his discourses on the Bhagavad Gita, the Vedas and the Upanishads.

Early life Pandurang Shastri Athavale was born on 19 of October 1920 in a Chitpavan Brahmin Family in the village of Roha in Maharashtra (Konkan), India. He was one of five children born to the Sanskrit teacher Vaijanath Shastri Athavale and his wife Parvati Athavale. saying that he had much to accomplish in his native India, where he planned to demonstrate to the world a model community peacefully practising and spreading Vedic thought and the message of the Bhagavad Gita.

Swadhyaya Parivar

The philosophy of original Vedic Dharma is the base of this movement. Swadhyaya Parivar established itself in India in 1978 with adherents meeting every Sunday, where prayers are sung and a video recording of Athavale teaching about the Vedic dharma is played. Swadhyaya, which closely translates to "study of the self" is a process based upon Vedic philosophy, and the members of the Parivar are called "Swadhyayees". Over the years, Athavale's followers have taken the Bhagavad Gita's concepts of Indwelling God and God's universal love to millions of people, transcending caste, socioeconomic barriers, and religious differences. Athavale personally visited tens of thousands of villages (on foot and rented bicycles), and his brothers and sisters (Swadhyayees) personally go house to house to establish selfless relationships with families and spread the Gita's teachers. Adherents have followed suit to roughly 100,000 villages across India, and at least 34 nations across the globe. In these villages, Athavale started various experiments (Prayogs) to impart social activism by means of a god-centric devotion, including cooperative farming, fishing and tree-planting projects in the spirit of collective, divine labour (Bhakti), somewhat similar to the Antigonish Movement in Canada. Swadhyayees aim to fulfill Athavale's vision of eradicating the world's problems by creating a global family united under the principle of a universal blood maker. He felt that the universality of the Bhagavad Gita allows for it to a guide to all of humanity. As such, its thoughts should reach unto the last person. Today, the millions of adherents can be found on every habitable continent in over 35 countries including the Caribbean, Americas, Asia, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Middle East and Africa. It is the Swadhyaya Parivar's mission to complete Rev. Athavale's vision of a "Universal Brotherhood under the Divine Fatherhood of God."

Death Dadaji died at the age of 83 of cardiac arrest on 25 October 2003, in Mumbai, India. He was cremated on the evening of 26 October at Tattvagyan Vidyapeeth in the Thane district, where hundreds of thousands of mourners had paid their respects to him over a period of 24 hours. Subsequently, his ashes were immersed at Ujjain, Pushkar, Haridwar, Kurukshetra, Gaya, Jagannath Puri, and lastly at Rameshwaram.

Popular culture In 1991, Shyam Benegal created and directed the film Antarnaad (The Inner Voice), based on Athavale's Swadhyaya Movement or Prayogs, starring Shabana Azmi and Kulbhushan Kharbanda, among others. In 2004, Abir Bazaz directed the documentary Swadhyaya, based on the life and works of Athavale.

Works There are multiple books based on Dadaji's discourses (Pravachans) based on Vedic Stotras, the Geeta, and the Ramayana. His well-known books include Valmiki Ramayan, Geeta Amrutam, Homage to Saints, Prarthana Preeti, Tulsidal, Sanskruti Pujan (describing the appropriate definitions of culture and dharma), Vijigishu Jivanvad, The Systems: The Way and the Work (Swadhyaya: The Unique Philosophy of Life) and many more.

Awards and prizes He was awarded the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion in 1997 and the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 1996 for Community Leadership, along with India's second-highest civilian honour, the Padma Vibhushan Award, in 1999. He also won the Rashtrabhusan award given to him by the FIE Foundation for Progress in Religion.