About Pandurang Shastri Athavale
Pandurang Shastri Athavale (19 October 1920 – 25 October 2003), also known as Dada /Dadaji ("elder brother"), was an Indian activist, philosopher, spiritual leader, social revolutionary, and religion reformist, who founded the Swadhyaya Parivar (Swadhyaya family) in 1954. Swadhyaya is a self-study process based on the Bhagavad Gita which has spread across nearly 100,000 villages in India, Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Oceania and other Asian countries with five million adherents. Noted for his discourses on the Bhagavad Gita, the Vedas and the Upanishads. == Early life == Pandurang Shastri Athavale was born on 19 of October 1920 in a Chitpavan Brahmin Family in the village of Roha in Maharashtra (Konkan), India. He was one of five children born to the Sanskrit teacher Vaijanath Shastri Athavale and his wife Parvati Athavale. When Athavale was twelve years old, his father set up an independent course of study for the young boy. Thus, Athavale was taught in a system very similar to that of the Tapovan system of ancient India. In 1942, he started to give discourses at the Srimad Bhagavad Gita Pathshala, Madhavbaug, Mumbai, a center set up by his father in 1926. Athavale read diligently in the Royal Asiatic Library for a period of 14 years; at a young age, he was well known to have read every piece of non-fiction literature (ranging from Marx's philosophy to Whitehead's writings to ancient Indian philosophy). In 1954, he attended the Second World Philosophers' Conference, held in Japan.
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