Swami Kalyandev
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Swami Kalyandev | |
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| Born | 21 June, 1876 |
| Died | July 14, 2004 |
Swami Kalyandev was born to Bhoi Devi, wife of Pherdudatt. He was allegedly born on 21 June, 1876 in the village of Kotanae in the Baghpat district, Uttar Pradesh, India. This was the village of his maternal grandparents. His own village was Mundbhar in the Muzaffarnagar district, where he spent his early childhood.
Kaluram travelled to Ayodhya and Haridwar, barefoot and begging along the way to sustain himself. At Haridwar he heard of Swami Vivekananda's visit to Khetri. He travelled to Khetri to meet Vivekananda.
On his return from Khetri, he became the disciple of Swami Purananda of muni-ki-reti, rishikesh. Purananda gave him the name of Swami Kalyandev. Kalyandev did tapasya in Himalayas for a few years but then decided to help the poor people of his region.
Swami Kalyandev established slightly less than three hundred institutions for spreading education as well as medical facilities for poor villagers. His work covered western Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan, Delhi and other places. The institutions include technical and vocational schools, an ayurvedic medical college, middle schools, high schools, girls' schools, junior high schools, primary schools, clinics and dispensaries, eye clinics, Sanskrit schools, workshops, students' homes, dharmashalas, schools for the deaf and dumb, blind schools, yoga instruction centers, old age homes, asylums for old cows, orphanages, martyrs' memorials, and other religious and spiritual centers.
Swami Kalyandev also helped rebuild dilapidated and neglected religious and historical sites. For example, he renovated a monument in Shuktal, sixty kilometres north of Meerut, associated with the great sage Shuka, the son of Veda Vyasa and the narrator of the Bhagavata. There the swami also established the Shukadeva Ashrama and Seva Samiti. At Shuktal there is an 80 foot statue of Hanumanji.
He also had parts of Hastinapur renovated, the old capital of the Pandavas and Kauravas. Many places of pilgrimage in Haryana too have received his attention.
Swami Kalyandev met Mahatma Gandhiji in 1915. He was acquainted with luminaries like Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and Dr. Sampurnanand.
In 1982, he received the Padma Sri award, and in 2000 the prestigious Padma Bhushan. He was also awarded an honorary D.Litt. by Meerut University. In the late 1980s, Vishwanath Pratap Singh came to Shukatal to pray along with his wife and Swamiji told him to do his first rally near Bhayla. VP Singh's career had taken a nosedive and Swamiji's advice essentially brought him back to political centrestage culminating in his becoming the Prime Minister of India.
In 2002, Sri Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the then prime minister of India, released in his presence the momentous volume The Seer of Three Centuries: Swami Kalyan Dev, compiled in his honour.
A reporter of Amar Ujala, a popular Hindi daily, while interviewing Swami Kalyandev for the paper's October 14, 2003 issue, enquired, 'Where did you get the inspiration to go from village to village and do social service?' The swami replied, 'In 1893, I met Swami Vivekananda in Khetri. He said to me, "If you want to see God, go to the huts of the poor. And if you want to attain God, then serve the poor, the helpless, the downtrodden and the miserable." To attain God through service of the poor is the mantra I received from Swamiji. I have never been able to forget it.'
Swami Kalyandev attained eternal samdhi on July 14, 2004 at the claimed age of 128.