LIFE OF ASIMANANDA SARASWATI

Short life of Swamiji By Subhojit Samanto

In this world fraught with struggle of life, we are visited upon by great men and women, who show us the way through their own misery. One such stalwart was Swami Asimananda Saraswati. It is wrong to say he was for he is still there, in struggling lives to show the path of salvation. He was in this world but not of it.

He came to this world on 15th February 1904. His parents, father Jugal Kishore Chakroborty and mother Srimati Rajani Devi were no less great on their own accord. He was an offspring of penance. His grandfather Sri Nilkantha Chakroborty was a man whose utterance was never known to be false, such was his greatness.

His birthplace Ramchandrapur is a village situated in the Purulia district of West Bengal in India. A small village, where no man was known to go hungry nor any woman without a covering for her modesty, Mother Nature had endowed with her bounties. People were honest and God fearing.

The place, which later was to become his hermitage, was a dense forest. In this place was a crematory ground, covered by giant trees. Amongst their branches dead bodies were left hanging if the cremation could not be done on the same day. One among these trees was the first place where young Annada got the glimpse of the world; he would later become a part of. Sitting beneath that tree he saw the world which was far away from his present world of carefree childhood days. A world of sages and sannayasins, a world where happiness lay in misery partaken from others.
Not only was this boy filled with spiritual enlightenment, he was as fearless as anyone much greater in age and experience. He knew not the fear of any man or that of any spirit. His fearlessness brought in him a rebellion against the British rulers who had colonised India. In the year 1911, 12th December whole of India was celebrating George the fifths visit to India. They sang:

Victory victory to George the fifth
Victory to India