Shuddhananda Bharati

Presentation of Dr. Shuddhananda Bharati 11th May 1897 – 7th March 1990

The wise one to the cosmic age.

Although more than 90 years old, in his school in the south of India, Kavi Yogi Maharishi (great divine visionary, wise poet), Dr. Shuddhananda Bharati worked like a young man of twenty. When he was asked his age, he answered: “My age is Courage!”

The Yogi wrote several hundred works in English, French, Tamil, Hindi, Telugu and Sanskrit: five thousand songs, and fifteen hundred poems in French. The magnum opus of the man conscious of the presence of God in him, Bharata Shakti, (in 50,000 verses) described his ideal: only One Humanity living in communion with only One God in a transformed world! Bharata Shakti is a monumental and unique work. The Yogi depicts the essence of all the religions, of all the prophets and saints, all the approaches of Yoga and all the cultures on an allegorical table. It is a book for any age which all spiritual researchers and all nations should read and meditate on. This work was completed and appreciated by Sri Aurobindo, the Mother, Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, Romain Rolland, Annie Besant, Bertrand Russell, George Bernard Shaw and so many others. It installs the author among the great, men such as Dante, Homer, Racine, Shakespeare, Vyasa, and Valmiki.

Dr. Shuddhananda Bharati is one of the greatest Tamil poet, having translated into this language: Gita, Upanishads, Veda, the Bible, the Koran, Avesta, the Buddha-Dhamma-Sangha and Tattvartha Sutra, the life and teachings of Lao-Tseu and Confucius. From their original languages, he also translated into Tamil The Divine Comedy of Dante, the tragedies of Racine, the comedies of Molière, the dramas of Corneille, Shakespeare, Goethe and the novels of Anatole France, Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas and others.

Shuddhananda’s works are innumerable. Malcolm Macdonald, who chaired the Congress on the Unity of the Conscience in Singapore, said in his short speech about him: “He is such a remarkable man, having such a diversity of raised gifts, that it is difficult to know where to start and where to finish when one speaks about Kavi Yogi Dr. Shuddhananda Bharati. Few men have achieved as many things in only one human life.” His name appears moreover in the Encyclopaedia of the World’s Great Men, which says: “Dr. Shuddhananda Bharati is the author of literary works of varied styles: works epic and lyric, melodramas, operas, comedies, pastoral, romance, novels, biographies, commentaries on famous works and texts. Bharata Shakti is his magnum opus.” He had a presentiment that he would receive the Nobel Prize for Peace or for Literature but did not live to see it. His commitment is summarized in his book celebrating his life, “Experiences of a Pilgrim Soul (Expérience d’une Âme de Pèlerin)”.

God I loved and lived in him,
Making His commandment
Leave to Man his entire talents
This is my will! Dr. Shuddhanananda Bharati

Editions ASSA, Christian Piaget