Khushwant Singh On Jagadguru Sri Kripalu Ji Maharaj

Online Tribune edition--27January,2007

ON January 14, which happened to be Makar Sakranti, about 10 million people took an early morning dip in the chilly waters at the Sangam of the Ganga and Yamuna at Allahabad. Further downstream at Varanasi, Kripaluji was formally installed as the Fifth Jagadguru. The media did not cover the event. I mention it as of the two dozen men and women who appear regularly on TV channels to give discourses on spiritual matters I find what Kripaluji has to say makes more sense to a non-believer like me than others.

All of them have the gift of the gab but he is more forthright, logical, lucid and gives chapter and verse of the sacred texts he quotes from: his memory is truly phenomenal. He draws large crowds which listen to his discourses in rapt attention.

He was born in 1922 in an affluent Brahmin land-owning family of Mangarh, a village 60 miles from Allahabad and given the name Ram Kripalu. He received his preliminary education in Hindi and Sanskrit in the local school. To the best of my information he speaks no other language besides these two. He went on to study advanced Sanskrit and Ayurveda in Indore and Varanasi and spent a year or more around Chitrakoot — evidently studying the Vedas, Upanishads, the epics and Bhakti literature.

When he emerged from his self-imposed banbas and began to take part in meetings of Sanskrit scholars in different cities including Varanasi, people were amazed by his perfect pronunciation of slokas and the facile way he quoted sources without referring to any books. When he read something, it remained etched in his memory. He began to acquire admirers in increasing numbers. Today his devotees number go into the thousands across the Hindi-speaking heartland of India.

In the 80s, Kripaluji is a tall, ram-rod erect figure with curly hair and aquiline features. He is a married man with sons and daughters. Besides giving discourses he has set up two modern well-equipped hospitals: one in Mangarh and another near Vrindaban. Despite preaching the divine power of healing, he provides all that modern methods of diagnosis and medicines to the poor free of charge.

Despite the esoteric terminology of what Kripaluji has to say about the existence of God, purpose of life and after-life, he is down to earth and comprehensible to the skeptic and the non-believer.

It is summed up in Philosophy of Divine Love, published by the Sadhna Bharan Trust, Mangarh.