Swami Rama Tirtha

Swami Rama Tirtha ( 22 October 1873 – 17 October 1906 ), also known as Swami Rama, was an Indian teacher of the Hindu philosophy of Vedanta. He was among the first notable teachers of Hinduism to lecture in the United States, travelling there in 1902, preceded by Swami Vivekananda in 1893 and followed by Paramahansa Yogananda in 1920. During his American tours Swami Rama Tirtha spoke frequently on the concept of "practical Vedanta" and education of Indian youth. He proposed bringing young Indians to American universities and helped establish scholarships for Indian students.

Biography Rama Tirtha was born in a Gosvami Brahmin family to Pandit Hiranand Goswami on 22 October 1873 (Deepawali Vikram Samvat 1930) in the village of Muraliwala in the Gujranwala District of Punjab, Pakistan. Meanwhile, he started studying Vedanta, inspired by Sri Madhava Tirtha of the Dwarka Math. A trip to Japan to teach Hinduism was sponsored by Maharaja Kirti Shah Bahadur of Tehri. From there he travelled to the United States of America in 1902, where he spent two years lecturing on Hinduism, other religions, and his philosophy of "practical Vedanta".

He always referred to himself in the third person, which is a common spiritual practice in Hinduism in order to detach oneself from Ego.

Many believe he did not die but gave up his body to the river Ganges. Rama Tirtha predicted: "After Japan, China will rise and gain prosperity and strength. After China, the sun of prosperity and learning will again smile at India."

Legacy

Punjabi Indian nationalist Bhagat Singh uses Tirtha as an example of the great contributions Punjab had made to the Indian nationalist movement in his essay "The Problem of Punjab's Language and Script". The lack of memorials to Tirtha is given by Singh as an example of the lack of respect for Punjab's contributions to the movement.

Indian Revolutionary Pandit Ram Prasad Bismil depicted the character of Swami Rama Tirtha in the poem Yuva Sannyasi. appeared in 1924 and was published in English as well as in Hindi. Narayana Swami's untitled account was published in 1935 as a part of Rama Tirtha's collected works.

Paramahansa Yogananda translated many of Rama Tirtha's poems from Bengali into English and put some of them to music: one, entitled "Marching Light", appeared in Yogananda's book Cosmic Chants, as "Swami Rama Tirtha's Song".

Contribution of Swami ji

The Swami Rama Tirtha Mission Ashram is located at Kotal Gaon Rajpura, near Dehra Dun in Uttarakhand, India.

One of three campuses of Hemwati Nandan Bahuguna Garhwal University, situated at Badshahi Thaul, New Tehri, is known as the Swami Rama Tirtha Parisar (SRTC).

His sister's son H. W. L. Poonja became a noted Advaita teacher in Lucknow, while Hemant Goswami, his great-grandson, is a social activist based in Chandigarh.