Swami Chinna to Daaji:  Meet Telangana’s spiritual heroes who were conferred with Padma Bhushan

President Draupadi Murmu conferred Padma awards to 106 distinguished personalities. It includes three duo cases (in a duo case, the award is counted as one). The list comprises 6 Padma Vibhushan, 9 Padma Bhushan, and 91 Padma Shri Awards. Nineteen awardees are women. The list also includes 2 persons from Foreigners/NRI/PIO/OCI. Seven people were awarded posthumously.

A Vedic scholar:

Chinna Jeeyar Swami is also known as Sri Tridandi Srimannarayana Ramanuja Chinna Jeeyar Swami. He is known for his spiritual discourses on Sri Vaishnavism. Chinna Jeeyar Swami is a follower of the Thenkalai tradition of Sri Vaishnavism and operates spiritual centers in the US.

Chinna Jeeyar Swamy is the designer and planner of the Statue of Equality, a statue dedicated to Ramanuja in Hyderabad. He has also guided the Telangana government in the renovation of the Yadadri Temple.

The 66-year-old was born in Arthamuru, East Godavari, to a Tamil-speaking family. He was mentored by his grandfather, Tridandi Srimannarayana Ramanuja Jeeyar. Trained in the Vaishnava tradition, he took the oath to become an ascetic at 23. Since 1994, Chinna Jeeyar Swamy has been visiting the United States to teach many people and many countries to perform Yagnas.

In December 2013, Jeeyar endorsed the Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) student organization to instill patriotism in students and encourage them to learn about Indian culture. Jeeyar Educational Trust (JET), with branches in Hyderabad, Chennai, and the United States, was established to help educate students in Vedic tradition. He believes that students play an important role in the country's development.

Recently, the Vedic scholar laid the foundation stone for a stupa at the sports ground of Andhra University College of Engineering. A mound-like structure, the stupa will be built to mark the ground as a spiritual place of education and social activities.

Heartfulness leader:

Popularly known as Daaji, Kamlesh D Patel is a spiritual leader, author, and the fourth in the line of Raja yoga masters in the Sahaj Marg system of spiritual practice. A leader of the `Heartfulness Movement’, he is known for his value-based self-development programs offered to students and faculty in over 2,500 schools, universities, and colleges.

Daaji believes in approaching spirituality with scientific methodology. He often says: “You are the experimenter, the experiment, and also its result.'

Born in Gujarat, Daaji was trained as a pharmacist in Ahmedabad. As a pharmacy student, he started practicing the Sahaj Marg system of Raja Yoga meditation in 1976 under the guidance of Ram Chandra of Shahjahanpur. At 19, he started `Heartfulness Meditation’ while being trained as a pharmacist. Soon after, he met his first Guru, Babuji, the second guide in the Heartfulness lineage. He did his PG degree in pharmaceutical business in New York.

Daaji played an active role in the Heartfulness Movement, both organisationally and by spreading its message and teaching its method. He devotes much of his time to his research in the field of spirituality and consciousness and regularly shares his findings through public speaking engagements, his website, and social media platforms, and in broadcast, print, and digital media.

In 2018, Patel received an honorary doctorate from Sri Venkateswara University, and the Priyadarshini Academy awarded him the Ramakrishna Bajaj Memorial Global Award in 2020. Patel's new book 'The Wisdom Bridge' was released in 2022.