Modi recalls 1993 meeting with Swami Chinmayananda as he opens Chinmaya Mission meet

Prime Minister Narendra Modi opened the Chinmaya Amrit Mahotsav Global Sammelan at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi on Friday, and spent the first part of his speech remembering the man who founded the mission.

Before he spoke, the organisers staged a “Holobot” interaction with a hologram of Swami Chinmayananda. Modi said it carried him back 33 years, to the time he met the spiritual teacher in Vadodara in 1993. “For me, this is a very emotional experience,” he said.

A meeting before Chicago

Modi said he had gone to invite Swami Chinmayananda to Chicago in February and March 1993 for the centenary of the Parliament of the World’s Religions, held to mark 100 years since Swami Vivekananda’s address there. Chinmayananda went across America rallying people for the event but died in San Diego on 3 August, and his absence was felt at the Chicago gathering on 11 September, Modi said.

Their last conversation, he said, was about young people. “Its main essence was the building of youth power, and building a strong and capable India through youth power!”

He praised the young volunteers of the Amrit Mahotsav, who he said had travelled 40,000 km over 300 days and reached more than one lakh young people.

Education and heritage

Modi said more than 100 Chinmaya educational institutions were teaching lakhs of students. “They are getting modern education in these institutions, and they are also imbibing Indian values,” he said, and linked this to the National Education Policy’s stress on Indian knowledge traditions and teaching in the mother tongue.

He recalled that Chinmayananda backed Eknath Ranade’s plan for the Vivekananda Rock Memorial at Kanyakumari and gave the first donation for it. From there he moved to his government’s record on heritage, listing the rebuilt Kashi Vishwanath Dham, the Ram temple in Ayodhya, Mahakal Mahalok in Ujjain, and work at Kedarnath and Badrinath.

“In the past 12 years, we have also brought back more than six hundred and fifty such ancient idols,” he said, referring to antiquities taken out of the country.

“Unite society”

Towards the end, the Prime Minister said each generation had to face the problems of its own time, as Chinmayananda had done in his. “Today, we have to unite society against divisive forces,” he said, adding that people should be connected with self-reliance and the goal of a developed India by 2047.

He noted that India’s centenary of Independence in 2047 will fall in the Chinmaya Mission’s own centenary period. “Meaning, the centenary journey of the Chinmaya Mission and the journey of a Viksit Bharat will move forward together,” he said.

On X, Modi wrote that the mission “has spent decades serving communities and sharing India’s spiritual wisdom with the world.”