Swami Mahamandaleshwar Santosh Puri Gita Bharati was born in Delhi in 1944. Before her birth her parents had been devotees of Swami Hariharanand. Once they asked him what gift they could give him. He said that he did not require anything, but they insisted, so he asked for their first child. Gita Bharati was born soon thereafter, and she was taken to live with Hariharanand in Varanasi at the age of three. She showed remarkable talents at a young age, delivering discourses on the Bhagavad Gita at the age of seven or eight. It was because of her impressive sermons on the Gita that she was dubbed Gita Bharati by Rajendra Prasad, who was then the President of India.
MAHAMANDALESHWAR GITA BHARATI
After Swami Hariharanand's death in 1962, Gita Bharati moved to Kankhal outside Hardwar. Here she founded an ashram, which is also the site of a highly regarded private school. Gita Bharati is a Mahamandaleshwar of the Nirvani Akhada. Traditionally the akhadas have been communities of celibate males, but in recent years women have joined, too. The Nirvani Akhada is made up of about two thousand renouncers. Of those less than 10 per cent are women. Gita Bharati is the first woman in history to be awarded the honor of being selected a Mahamandaleshwar. Only the leaders of the akhadas attain this post. At present there are twenty-four Mahamandaleshwars in the Nirvani Akhada.
SWAMI SHARAD PURI AT A TEMPORARY SHIVA SHRINE AT THE ASHRAM
As the head of the Hariharanand Ashram, Gita Bharati and her disciples oversee a good deal of property in Kankhal. The Hariharanand Ashram will be host to sixty or seventy renouncers during the course of the Kumbh Mela. The festival is an important event for the akharas, because then the leaders can meet and discuss the future direction of their community. Gita Bharati will also be delivery religious discourses to the public every afternoon at the Ashram, beginning on 2 April 1998.
Sources: Interview with Gita Bharati's disciple Swami Sharad Puri at the Hariharanand Ashram, Kankhal on 22 March 1998.
Copyright J. E. Llewellyn 2001. Updated 4 September 2002.