Dear Friends,
Shrimat Anirvan (8 July 1896—31 May 1978) had mastered the Astādhyayi of Pānini at a very early age. After completing his formal education he renounced the world and joined the Kokilamukh Ashram at Jorhat (in Assam) founded by his Guru Swami Nigamananda Paramahamsa where he was given Sannyasa and he became Nirvanananda Saraswati. But after a few years he dropped the ochre robes and changed his name to Anirvan by which he became known to the world at large. He spent a number of years in Lohaghat (Almora) where Madame Lizelle Reymond, a Swiss spiritual seeker, joined him and literally took him to the West through her books My Life with a Brahmin Family and To Live Within. He later shifted to Shillong in Assam and finally to Kolkata where he spent his last years. His first book was a Bengali translation of Sri Aurobindo’s The Life Divine which was described as a “living translation” by Sri Aurobindo himself and was published in two volumes between 1948 and 1951. Another sister-publication, Yoga-Samanvaya-Prasanga, based on Sri Aurobindo’s The Synthesis of Yoga, was published in 1961. According to Ram Swarup: “In translating Sri Aurobindo’s works, he was paying his debt to an elder brother and old friend from another life, as Shri Anirvan once said.” But the centre of his studies was the Vedas on which he acquired a rare mastery over the years. His other published works include his magnum opus, Veda Mimāmsā, (published in three volumes), Upanisad-Prasanga (eight volumes), Gitānuvacana (three volumes), Vedānta Jijñāsā and Pravacana (four volumes) to name a few.
On Tuesday, 31 May 2022, on the occasion of Shrimat Anirvan’s 44th Mahasamadhi Day, his sacred relics were enshrined at Overman Foundation. Mrs. Suchitra Mukherjee, a direct disciple of Shrimat Anirvan, gifted to Overman Foundation Trust the great savant’s relics and a sweater which was knitted by her late husband, Dr. Suprakash Mukherjee, a noted nuclear physicist who was also a disciple of Shrimat Anirvan.
Shrimat Anirvan’s Relics.
A sweater used by Shrimat Anirvan and a bag (gifted to Overman Foundation by Shri Rajesh Sanghai on 8 July 2017) is on permanent display at the office of Overman Foundation.
In the evening, Mrs. Suchitra Mukherjee gave a talk in Bengali at Overman Foundation and recounted her memorable moments with Shrimat Anirvan and how her entire family was spiritually guided by him. Her two elder sisters, who are also disciples of Shrimat Anirvan, graced the programme as special guests.
My memory of Srimat Anirvan takes me to my boyhood days in Allahabad. It would be years around 1950s. In winter months inthose days he would come down from his Ashram (I guess the name was Haimanti ) in Almora district. He used to stay at the place of a gentleman, whom we knew as “Dhiru Babu” , in the locality known as Lukergunj. After my father, Promode Kumar Sen, passed away in 1952 , our Allahabad living was disrupted and those Darshan of Srimat faded. However, my mother, Jyotirmoyee Sen, had lots of correspondence with him on spirituality and Sri Aurobindo’s yoga. Unfortunate of me those letters have not been preserved.