As well as addressing the United Nations Millennium Peace Summit in 2000 at the UN General Assembly in New York and meeting political and religious leaders around the world, he is estimated to have visited more than 17,000 towns and villages in India and further afield. Pramukh Swami Maharaj became the fifth spiritual guru of BAPS in 1971 and spent much of his time travelling to Hindu communities around the world, promoting the organisation’s spiritual and social agenda and working for interfaith dialogue. As of 2009, the BAPS Swaminarayan movement in Britain was said to number around “5,000 families”. One journalist has described its million or so followers around the world as the “Methodists of Hinduism, practical, puritanical, evangelical”, who actively engage in projects aimed at spirituality, character-building and human welfare. While members of the movement, firmly within mainstream Hinduism, pay homage to popular Hindu gods such as Lord Krishna, what distinguishes BAPS Hinduism from other forms is the worship of its founder and subsequent gurus as manifestations of God and its focus on helping the poor and addressing the erosion of moral and spiritual values in society. The Swaminarayan sect (known since a doctrinal split in 1907 as the Bochasanwasi Shri Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan branch of Hinduism, or BAPS) is the offshoot of a Hindu sampraday, or tradition, that traces its routes to the Indian state of Gujarat in the first half of the 19th century, and the life and teachings of its founding guru, Swaminarayan, an ascetic opponent of lax religion. Pramukh Swami Maharaj, who has died aged 94, was the spiritual head of the Hindu Swaminarayan sect and founder, among other things, of the Shri Swaminarayan Mandir, also known as the Neasden Temple, in the London borough of Brent – which was, when it was built, the largest traditional Hindu temple outside India.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |