The demise of Swami Dayananda Saraswati on Wednesday night at his ashram in Shishamjhadi, Rishikesh has spread a wave of grief especially among the people across India and abroad who got to learn the Vedanta from him or benefit from the varied philanthropic activities initiated by him. The ‘Bhu Samadhi’ ceremony for his body will begin at 7 am in Rishikesh on Friday. Apart from his followers across the world who reached Rishikesh to pay their last respects, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Uttarakhand Governor KK Paul and Chief Minister Harish Rawat also expressed grief as the demise of the stalwart.
A visionary, thinker, author of more than 70 books and one of the foremost masters of the Vedanta in recent times, Dayananda Saraswati had been teaching Vedanta in India and abroad for about 50 years. More than 200 of his disciples are now sanyasis and are highly respected as scholars and teachers of Vedanta throughout India and abroad.
Under Swami Dayananda’s guidance, various centers for Vedic teaching were founded around the world in addition to the Gurukuls he established at Rishikesh, Coimbatore, Nagpur and one in the United States at Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania. At present there are more than one hundred centers in India and abroad that carry on the same tradition of Vedanta teaching through his graduate students. He was also behind the creation of a digital library for the discovery and preservation of manuscripts of ancient scriptures approved by a team of renowned scholars. In addition, Dayananda had initiated and supported various philanthropic efforts for the last 45 years.
The most far-reaching of these is the establishment of All-India Movement (AIM) For Seva which was awarded consultative status with ECOSOC (Economic and Social Council) by the United Nations in 2005. This organisation is devoted to serving people in the remote regions of India in the areas of education, Healthcare, programmes for women, the environment, cultural validation and relief and rehabilitation work during natural disasters. Presently, AIM for Seva has established 96 student homes in 15 States, 10 schools, nine health-care projects, and 10 special projects in these categories.
In 2002, Swami Dayananda had convened the Hindu Dharma Acharya Sabha- a unifying body to provide leadership, guidance and a collective voice for the Hindus. One of its achievements was to hold the Hindu-Jewish Dialogues between the Rabbinate of Israel and the Hindu Dharma Acharya Sabha, resulting in landmark declarations in which the Rabbinate acknowledged that Hinduism is not idol worship, opening the way for a bilateral relationship between these two traditions. The Dharma Rakshana Samiti was also founded to preserve the native spiritual culture of India inherited from the sages and to raise awareness among Hindus of the Vedic Dharma. The annual Thinkers Meet organised by him provided a forum for educationists, journalists, industrialists and political leaders to come together to address Hindu and national issues.