Sixty Years, Six Continents: The Quiet Scale of a Guru Who Never Sought the Spotlight

He was born in Mumbai on 26 September 1966 to Rekhaben and Dilipbhai Jhaveri, a devout Jain couple. They named him Rakesh, lord of the full moon. By four he was sitting in meditation for hours at a time, and holding conversations on subjects he had neither been taught nor overheard. At eight he came upon a picture of Shrimad Rajchandraji, the nineteenth-century Jain poet-philosopher, and remained in a trance for three days.

Accounts of this kind are common around spiritual figures. This one has an unusual sequel: the boy grew up and enrolled to study Philosophy.

He took an M.A. in Philosophy with a gold medal, then began a doctoral treatise on Shri Atmasiddhi Shastra, the 142-verse composition regarded as Shrimad Rajchandraji’s finest work. He wrote more than three thousand pages. The mission’s own account of it is the most telling sentence in his biography: he had not finished, he had only stopped. The University of Mumbai conferred the doctorate in 1998. The Claremont School of Theology later added an honorary Doctor of Divinity.

In India, scholarly credentials and large religious followings usually run on separate tracks. Having both is rare, and it shows in the character of the organisation he went on to build, which argues where others assert. He follows the Jain path, but his insights are not bound by any single tradition. The mission’s term for what he teaches is the spiritual universal.

Shrimad Rajchandraji, whose work he spent years studying, is honoured as the spiritual guide of Mahatma Gandhi. The two met in Mumbai in 1891, after Gandhi returned from England, and corresponded for years while Gandhi was in South Africa. Pujya Gurudevshri Rakeshji advances that line, and behind it the path of Lord Mahavir, the twenty-fourth Jain Tirthankara.

Shrimad Rajchandra Mission Dharampur was formed in 1994. In 2001 he established the Shrimad Rajchandra Ashram at Dharampur, in South Gujarat, which is now the international headquarters. The mission works through 136 centres across six continents, and the line printed beneath its name carries the whole argument: realise one’s true self and serve others selflessly.

The institutions at Dharampur are easier to assess than any philosophy. Shrimad Rajchandra Hospital and Research Centre runs 250 beds as a charity facility serving more than 500 villages; the mission’s standard for it is that those with less than nothing should receive nothing less than the best. Shrimad Rajchandra Sarvamangal University is rising on a 27-acre campus. The mission’s Animal Care initiatives have tended to more than 500000 animals, and reports no euthanasia performed. There is also an upcoming state-of-the-art 150-bed Animal Hospital coming up. An eleven-acre Centre of Excellence for Women opened in December, and a charitable hospital at Surendranagar in February.

The social arm, Shrimad Rajchandra Love and Care, runs ten care programmes and holds Special Consultative Status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council. Its Africa work spans sixteen countries. A separate arm runs more than 250 value-education centres for children.

Because he gives so few interviews, the outside assessments tend to come from other spiritual leaders. Morari Bapu has said that while most of us stay confined in our pigeonholes, this saint has broken down the walls. Sri Sri Ravishankar has called him invaluable to this world. Swami Chidanand Saraswati of Parmarth Niketan describes him as a walking, talking pilgrimage. Three of the most recognisable figures in Indian spiritual life, from three traditions, none of them part of his mission.

Those close to him call him Bapa. The phrase the mission has used since his fiftieth year is the Unmoved Mover, and the life it describes is not a restful one: days often running twenty hours on as little as four hours of sleep, and a dharmayatra resumed four days after an angioplasty.

Access is nonetheless simpler than the scale suggests. The ashram keeps an open hour on weekdays, half past eleven to half past twelve, when one may come and meet him.

The celebration runs at the Jio World Convention Centre, Mumbai, on 25 and 26 September, with roughly twelve thousand people expected each day from some 23 countries. Sixty landmark initiatives will be announced across the two days, thirty spiritual and thirty in service, including a vision care campaign committing to screening and free spectacles for millions of people, and a national anaemia mitigation programme. Several youth from various parts of the world will take Atmarpit Diksha and dedicate their life to spiritual pursuit and service. The closing evening carries a musical on his life, written and performed by around six hundred devotees, and the worldwide release of a commemorative volume.

Mumbai opens a year-long calendar travelling through Ahmedabad, Dubai, London, Pune, Chennai, Bengaluru, Toronto, Los Angeles and Dallas and many more cities, closing in September 2027.

Ten years ago the fiftieth was marked with a single gathering. The sixtieth needs thirteen cities. For someone who has spent all his life declining the camera, it is a conspicuous way to mark a birthday, and the programme has been arranged so the attention falls on the commitments rather than the man.