Our Bureau

Munger : April 11 was a red letter day in the history of Munger when a chief minister walked from a distant state to felicitate Swami Niranjananand Saraswati of Bihar School of Yoga (Munger).

Chhattisgarh chief minister Raman Singh and his wife Veena Singh arrived Munger by a helicopter to express their gratitude to Swami Ji  who was recently awarded Padma Bhushan for his contribution in the field of yoga. Chhattisgarh chief minister came Munger to honour the Swami who was  born at Rajnandan village in Chhattisgarh on February 14, 1960. “It’s the privilege of Chhattisgar that it produced such person like Swami Ji and on behalf of the people of the state I honoured him for receiving Padma Bhushan and also for his outstanding contribution in the field of Yoga,” Singh told.

Raman Singh at Munger on Tuseday.

Swami Ji is the successor of Satyananda Saraswati, founder of Satyananda Yoga, who passed on the worldwide coordination of Satyananda Yoga to Niranjanananda in 1988.

Swami JI was only four years old when the founder of Bihar School of Yoga, Swami Satyanand Saraswati brought him to the yoga school at Munger and named him Niranjan. He is considered by his followers to be a yogi from birth. He was named ‘Niranjan’ (the Untainted One) by his guru Satyananda. His training  was started at Bihar School of Yoga, Munger at the age of four through the use of yoga-nidra and practice of other yoga techniques. At the age of ten, he was initiated as a sannyasi and thereafter for eleven years he travelled abroads, mastering skills in various areas, acquiring an understanding of various cultures and the way in which yoga could be accessed and understood by people in the West.

After that he was busy in extempore touring from 1971, he visited Europe and North and South America. His experiences help him to  understand the Western mind and society. In 1983 he returned to India and was assigned to look after Bihar School of Yoga. He extremely engaged in next eleven years with different works like  research and development activities at Ganga Darshan, Shivananda Math and the Yoga Research Foundation.

In 1990, he was initiated in the tradition of Paramahamsa and in 1993 he was chosen as the spiritual successor of Satyananda. In 1993, he organised a World Yoga Convention on the occasion of the golden jubilee of the sannyasa of his guru. In 1994, he established Bihar Yoga Bharati as the centre for higher studies in the field of yoga. He found Yoga Publication Trust in 2000.

In 2009 he received the command to embark on a new phase of sannyasa life and relinquished all administrative and public duties.

Author of many classic books on yoga, tantra and the Upanishads, Swami Niranjan is a magnetic source of wisdom on all aspects of yogis philosophy, practice and lifestyle. Although he never had a formal education, but he can converse and write in over a dozen languages and has deep knowledge of various cultures and languages. He ably combines tradition with modernity as he continues to nurture and spread his guru’s mission from his base at Munger.

“Swami Ji has followers and disciples across the global, he recently named as one of this year’s Padma Bhushan recipients, believe he is a born yogi. But this award is too small a thing for a personality like him,” said Raj Kishore, a resident in Munger.