Dwarka peeth Shankaracharya Swami Swaroopanand Saraswati was laid to rest on Monday with state honours amid the chanting of Vedic mantras on the campus of his ashram in Madhya Pradesh's Narsinghpur district. Swami Swaroopanand, who was the Shankaracharya of Dwarka-Sharda Peeth (in Gujarat), and Jyotish Peeth (in Uttrakhand), was given "bhoo samadhi" on the campus of the Paramhansi Ganga Ashram in the presence of thousands of people, including seers and devotees, who came from various parts of the country.
The Shankaracharya, 99, died of cardiac arrest at the Ashram on Sunday afternoon. A galaxy of leaders, including Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Union ministers Prahlad Patel and Faggan Singh Kulaste, former MP chief ministers Kamal Nath and Digvijaya Singh, former Union minister Suresh Pachouri and others, paid their last respect to the seer. The Shankracharya was not keeping well for well over a year.
He was once known as a "revolutionary sadhu" for participating in the freedom struggle and often spoke his mind on religious and political issues. He had also questioned the "deification" of Saibaba of Shirdi. Swaroopanand Saraswati was born as Pothiram Upadhyay in Dighori village in the Seoni district of Madhya Pradesh in 1924. He had left his home in pursuit of God at the age of 9. He became a freedom fighter in the Quit India movement in 1942 and was called a "revolutionary sadhu". He was jailed twice, once for 9 months and another for six months. He became Shankracharya of Dwarka Peeth in 1981, his followers had said.
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