Word: ashram
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Bhave's ashram (retreat) is at Puanar in Madhya Pradesh, about six miles from Gandhi's former ashram at Wardha. The main bungalow at Puanar, donated by Gandhi's old benefactor, the late Millionaire Jamnalal Bajaj, seemed so luxurious to the ascetic Bhave that he was tempted to refuse it. Finally he accepted, but stripped the bungalow to its bare walls. Like Gandhi before him, Bhave is an expert spinner and weaver. Unless it is raining, he sleeps outdoors every night, whether on the road or at Puanar...
...September, Prime Minister Nehru sent for Bhave. He set out from his ashram at Sewagram in Central India to walk the 795 miles to New Delhi. On the way, his soft words won him 25,000 acres from 3,000 donors, mostly small landowners having less than five acres. One aged woman, after hearing Bhave, gave him half of her two-acre plot. Another gave him her entire 500-acre estate. The land is distributed to the landless on the basis of one acre for each member of the family. Bhave asks cash donors to buy land for him, present...
...well-built Prithvi Singh, 55. Gandhi, who swears his converts to celibacy, offered to make an exception. But Prithvi Singh refused to marry Miraben. Soon afterwards he split with Gandhi, became a Communist and married another girl. Then Miraben wearied of the jealousies and squabbles in Gandhi's ashram (place of retreat) at Sevagram. She moved to the Himalaya foothills and founded anashram...
Cambridge-educated, 70-year-old Aurobindo keeps to his own room, appears only four times a year to his followers. If they wish advice they write him a letter. He may reply, may not. Active management of the ashram falls on a 66-year-old French woman, Madame Alfassa, known to disciples as Mother of the Universe...
Since the ashram can hold only a handful of followers, many of them, including Margaret Wilson, live in up-to-date houses in the town. Her religion, not concerned with mortifying the flesh, permits her to wear American clothes, read magazines and newspapers, puff an after-dinner cigaret. When she first arrived in India she tried to be a vegetarian, but she lost so much weight that the Mother of the Universe put her back on meat. She spends most of her time trying to acquire "a state of serenity." Each evening she goes to the ashram to spend half...