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Pandit Sriram Sharma Acharya As I Knew Him

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Pandit Sriram Sharma Acharya As I Knew Him Pandit Sriram Sharma Acharya as I Knew Him …Memoirs of a Civil Servant By J. C. Pant Pandit Sriram Sharma Acharya As I Knew Him …............................An interesting story of how a biographical piece on the Guru who demanded “the full report” every time the shishya met him, became in addition……..gradually an autobiographical account of the disciple. Do all genuine biographies have an element of the author’s autobiography? By J. C. Pant Published and Distributed by REACHA http://www.reacha.org If you like this book and would care to contribute to REACHA's work for child development, education, environment protection, and eco-restoration - please consider ordering a hard cover copy of this book from: http://www.reacha.org/pandit-sriram-sharma-acharya-as-i-knew-him Published: August 15th 2013 ISBN: 978-81-910318-1-2 Disclaimer The views expressed in this book are those of the author and do not represent those of any other individual or organization. This Book is dedicated to REACHA Gurudakshina To GURUDEV Table of Contents Foreword................................................................................................................................1 From The Author....................................................................................................................3 Chapter I – The First Encounter ............................................................................................8 Chapter II – A Peep into the Indian Society of the Day ......................................................26 Chapter III – The Persona of Gurudev.................................................................................38 Chapter IV – Face to Face with Education..........................................................................61 Chapter V – Passing away of Babuji & Taking Leave of Gurudev ......................................78 Chapter VI – Passing Away of Gurudev & Krishi Bhavan ..................................................90 Chapter VII – Shanti Kunj After Gurudev & Passing Away of Mataji.................................110 Chapter VIII – Beginnings of Dadagiri & Retirement ........................................................134 Chapter IX – The Years Before I Met Gurudev .................................................................163 Appendix............................................................................................................................204 (i) REACHA’S Strategy for Social Change....................................................................204 (ii) MANAV BHARATI – down the memory lane............................................................209 (iii) The Parsi Community Of India.................................................................................212 (iv) Celebrating the Girl Child Also ...............................................................................220 (v) Education for the future............................................................................................227 (vi) Letters of Shri Sudarshan Agarwal & Comments of a few friends .........................230 About the Author................................................................................................................238 Foreword Sudarshan Agarwal Former Governor, Uttarakhand & Sikkim Mentor, Him Jyoti School I write these few lines with unpretentious humility about this book of great depth and vision on Pandit Sriram Sharma Acharya, an enlightened spiritual soul, who devoted his entire life in the moral, social and spiritual upliftment of the people of India. But more than a biography of Pandit Sriram Sharma, it is an autobiography of Shri Jagdish Chandra Pant, the writer of the book, a bureaucrat of exemplary moral standard, who is equally a great spiritual soul completely dedicated to bring about fundamental social change in the country in a most non-violent manner through the power of love and compassion, hard work and personal example. Pandit Sriram Sharma Acharya was his Guru and a divine presence in him and also the guiding spirit in his life. Shri Pant as a civil servant served the country in different capacities and used his each and every assignment to serve the country and its people and bring about creative change in the society. The book presents very interestingly, on the one side, the philosophy of life of his Guru, Pandit Sriram Sharma Acharya, a holy person of prophetic dimensions and explores the hand that guided, encouraged and protected the writer at every critical juncture of his life and describes in detail the overflowing compassion which was the most prominent streak in the personality of Acharya ji. Religion for Acharya ji was one of the basic inner urges of every human being and a force for bringing peace and tranquility to every sphere of life. Renunciation was not giving up or leaving the mundane world but was transcendence of earlier attractions in life. Hardships for one self and comforts for others was a true sign of simplicity and self-abnegation was what he advocated. Acharya ji believed that poverty is our ornament; it is wretchedness which is our enemy. He was against vulgar display of wealth. On the other side it is a life story of an upright civil servant with high moral commitment and devotion, who worked ceaselessly for the sake of public good with exceptional spiritual zeal. All his governmental and non-governmental projects were planned and executed within the 1 parameters of the Constitution of our country primarily for social and spiritual awareness of the people and for their welfare and also for inculcating values of Indian heritage and peaceful coexistence among people of different regions, castes and creeds. He took pains to describe the story of progressive mis-governance in India which, according to him, is of our own making and failure. But Shri Pant is a man full of optimism whose life mission is to find a way to success through all failures and obstacles. This could be possible because of his spiritual strength and moral integrity and faith in hard work or the theory of Karma and the divine guidance of his Guru, Shri Acharya ji. This is a book worth reading by every public servant, social activist and conscientious citizen of India. August 29, 2009 Sudarshan Agarwal 2 From The Author I had never entertained any idea about writing an autobiography even when a few friends prodded me to do so. I always felt it would be too much of an ego trip and hardly worthy of attention and certainly not worth the trouble. Meeting Pandit Sriram Sharma Acharya on March 6, 1979 accidentally changed my life completely and led to a great deal of a sense of fulfillment within me, and I came to adopt Yug Nirman as my life’s goal, something which Gurudev as I called him, had bequeathed unto me. Yug Nirman implied “euq”; esa nsoRo dk mn; ,oa /kjrh ij LoxZ dk vorj.k” – expressed in roman script “manushya main devatva ka udaya aivam dharti par swarg ka avataran” ie, meaning “Igniting the spark of the Divine within humans and the descent of the Suprament on Earth”; and I felt that I and my entire family would strive to bring this about, within our own life times if possible, and through succeeding generations and our later lives, God willing. This resolve took the shape of founding a voluntary agency REACHA standing for Research and Extension Association for Conservation, Horticulture & Agro-forestry in New Delhi in March,1992 and dedicating our house at Dehradun – “Shraddha Kunj” to evolve into “REACHA PRAGYA SANSTHAN” “_pk izKk laLFkku” in good time, a name given by Shail ji of Shanti Kunj. In the year 2007 while I was in the process of winding up my work as Chairman, Administrative Reforms Commission of Uttarakhand, an idea occurred to me that I must tell the whole world in the English language about Gurudev as I saw him and knew him and as I thought he really was, because his life had an eternal message for all, which had fulfilled my life and had made it worth living to the full. There was plenty of material on him in Hindi in addition to his voluminous writings and his authoritative biography by Dr. Pranav Pandya, reading which was mostly confined to the parijans of the Mission. My wife Abha and our sons Lalit and Nikhil too wanted me to come out with my experiences with Gurudev for they too were wonder-struck with the essential persona of Acharyasri. That is how this book was born, and lo and behold, the thumbnail of a biographical sketch of Pandit Sriram Sharma Acharya gradually became a narration of how he demanded “the full report” whenever I met him as well as how he had influenced me and what he made of me. I later felt that 3 this was, perhaps Gurudev’s way of prodding me on to write my autobiography, knowing full well that I would never dream of doing so, left to myself. He may have felt that such an account had some message of worth for other seekers of truth and may be who knows, for other civil servants who too may be seekers of truth and may feel for India the same way as I do. It must however, be borne in mind that this is an autobiography with a difference, in as much as through it I am only attempting to narrate those parts of my life, which I am able to interpret as having been influenced by Acharyasri or those events which had a bearing with some extraordinary experience that could be related, may be to his influence before I met him in March 1979. I must thank Abha who was patient enough to read through what I was scribbling from time to time and was discreetly making her own suggestions
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