A SADHU WITH A DIFFERENCE
—A tribute by Late Sri Anwar Shaikh
“In India, a sadhu is an ascetic who has turned his back on the world and attained Siddhi through this process.
“However, Professor Rangarajan is a sadhu with a difference. Why? Because he is not only a devotee of God but also a lover of Bharatamata, a doctrine close to my heart.
“During the mid-seventies, as India touched its political nadir through fear, frustration and fiasco, starting with the traumatic Chinese invasion, 1962, and subsequent wars with Pakistan, the great Sadhu felt the need for saving Bharat Mata with a programme of patriotic action as dictated by the Vedas. He founded on the auspicious Tamil New Year’s Day, April 13, 1977, the Sister Nivedita Academy,” an organization of patriotic youth inspired by the Bhavani Mandir ideal of Sri Aurobindo. The Academy is dedicated to promoting dharma by creating revolutionary patriots through the zeal of Aggressive Hinduism.” The highly applauded “Vande Mataram” is a brainchild of the Professor Sadhu Rangarajan, who has held several important positions for the last twenty-five years. As an acknowledgement to his national passion for Bharata Mata, Swami Chinmayananda remarked about the Sadhu, “We need such champions of Hinduism, who scream into the ears of the sleeping Hindus reviving and revitalizing them in their hearty consciousness of their proud past.”
“A worthy aspect of the Academy is that it actively promotes the ideal of Spiritual Nationalism. This is true Hinduism for being the righteous and liberal way of life but has been turned into a swamp for lacking patriotic zeal and action. The Spiritual Nationalism of India is not a vice but a great virtue because it does not seek to aggrandize narrow nationalism and this is confirmed by the fact that Sister Nivedita was an Irish and not an Indian lady. The Professor Sadhu Rangarajan quite rightly believes that the Veda is the ambassador of universal brotherhood, thus making Hindu Dharma the religion of mankind. This is why he started the International Ramnam Movement to bring about world peace through message of unity.
“Rashtra Dharma is the true ideal of the Academy. It means that as there is an individual self, there is also a national self and one should seek self-realization through the patriotic service of national self, which is none else by Bharat Mata, the Mother of us all, the Divine Incarnation.
“As a mark of respect, I am pleased to dedicate this article: “Bharat Mata” to this great Sadhu.”
(Introduction to the article, “Bharat Mata” by Anwar Shaikh, published in LIBERTY Quarterly, Volume Two, Issue Nine, July 1995.)