Swami Pranavananda

Founder

Swami Pranavananda is the founder of Bharat Sevashram Sangha (1917)[1], an Indian non-profit working on faith-based service, disaster relief, healthcare, tribal welfare and education from Kolkata.

Swami Pranavananda (29 January 1896 – 8 January 1941), born Binode Bhuiya, was an Indian Hindu monk and yogi who founded Bharat Sevashram Sangha in 1917. The Sangha is a religious and spiritual organisation devoted to humanitarian work, with its headquarters in Kolkata and branches in India and abroad.

He is formally styled Acharya Srimat Swami Pranavanandaji Maharaj by the organisation he founded.

Early life

Pranavananda was born in 1896 at Bajitpur in the Faridpur district of Bengal, now in Bangladesh, into a Bengali Kayastha family. Accounts of his life describe him as devout from childhood and known locally for helping others.

Career

He founded Bharat Sevashram Sangha in 1917, during the colonial period, with the twin aims of spiritual awakening and social service. The organisation combined monastic discipline with organised relief work, and it continues to run disaster relief, medical, educational and welfare programmes.

He sought to bring Hindu society into the modern age without discarding what he regarded as the essential values of its older spiritual traditions, and taught universal compassion and social reform.

Death

Pranavananda died in Calcutta on 8 January 1941, aged 44.[2][3][4]

Bharat Sevashram Sangha

Founded in 1917 by Acharya Swami Pranavananda, Bharat Sevashram Sangha is a charitable monastic organisation running disaster relief, hospitals and dispensaries, free schools for rural students and tribal welfare programmes. It reports around 346 branches served by over 500 monks and brahmacharis.

Bharat Sevashram Sangha reports the following, on its own site: