The Master and Manav Kendra

by Robert Redeen

One hundred and fifty miles north of New Delhi along Indian Route 45 an unusual community is beginning to take shape. Just outside the Himalayan Valley town of Dehra Dun a man centre, or Manav Kendra as it is known in the Hindi language, is in the process of being constructed.

Work on the 35 acres of Manav Kendra is being done by initiates of the Master Kirpal Singh Ji Maharaj primarily with their hands, but helped out with a tractor on occasion. When finished three to four years from now, says the Master, the man centre should accommodate 500 to a thousand persons – mainly Indian retires – on a regular basis. Additionally, there will be room for many thousands of persons to sit on the lawn during Satsangs.

The Master recruits workers for the project, which He announced last February, by stating the need at the monthly Satsang in Delhi. If seventy-five workers are required, invariably twice that number will appear prepared to work twelve to eighteen hours a day for a ten-day stretch, to sleep in the out-of-doors or in temporary residential buildings and to pay their own expenses; overjoyed to render some selfless service to their Master.

The Master’s lieutenants include S.P. Chopra, a retired raiIways officer from Bombay who serves as works manager, and three architects. Bhagwan Singh, regularly employed by the Government of India, is one of them; he is the grandson of Master’s elder brother. J.S. Dethe, one of the town planners who constructed the modern state capital at Chandigarh, is another. And the man who spends four days a week there is R.L. Kalyan, a private architect who lives a block or so from Sawan Ashram in Delhi.

Tai Ji (Madame Hardevi),

said the Master,

is also one of the architects.

Mr Kalyan recalls that in 1958, before Manav Kendra was ever thought of, he had asked the Master what he could do to be of service. Kirpal Singh replied that the time was not yet ready but that eventually he would get a lot of work out of the Delhi architect.

Adjit Singh, an electrician from Amritsar, said that he had come 300 miles by train to serve the Master ‘as long as He desires’ and didn’t care if he lost his regular job with the Government or not. Mrs Krishnadevi travelled from a town near Ludhiana on the train to Dehra Dun and then rode on a motor scooter out to Manav Kendra. She said she had been ill but had recovered with Master’s Grace in time to make the trip. She and her husband are thinking of buying a second home in the area to be near Master.

In the month of September, when my wife Kira and I were there, perhaps three hundred initiates were working at one time on Manav Kendra. The Master, we learned on our departure, was about to send the women workers back home. Some of the people were building culverts; others were placing stones in roads; while still others were constructing a water tower and a series of temporary buildings.

Working up to eighteen hours daily, they reported, in many instances, that they didn’t get tired. A professor of mathematics mixed cement. A businessman and farmer ran a tractor for twenty hours a day. Many workers sang constantly, such verses as Master is our only hope and We have found our True Master. The youngsters fought to do additional work:

Put eight more sticks of wood on my head.

As an Indian visitor from Panama observed,

All those working here are full of Love.

Mr Kalyan said that Master had suggested to him that it would be a good idea if one job were completed every day.

So that’s what we do,

he said.

No matter how long it takes at night under the lights.

One day a culvert wall was completed by two men who laid two thousand bricks in six and a half hours. The entire culvert was finished in two and a half days. Ordinarily, it would take fifteen. A water tank was raised in four days by initiates who tied themselves to every third rung of a ladder and passed bricks over their heads to the person above them. Forty Satsangis filled one of the roads with stones in four to five hours. It was pouring rain and the Master stood there with them till the job was finished.

Manav Kendra, the Master noted, was the principal reason He had postponed His Western tour.

If I am here,

He explained,

we get twelve months’ work accomplished in one.

Thirteen varieties of trees have been planted in Manav Kendra’s orchard to grow in ascending order of height as well as in contrasting colours to provide blossoms all year round.

A dairy farm is planned, a hospital, living quarters and a large central man centre which will be landscaped, have fountains and bathing facilities. However, the architects have not yet drawn the plans for the buildings but are all set to do so when the other work is finished.

The hospital is to be constructed in units so that it may be expanded if needed. Allopathic, homoeopathic, ayurvedic and other forms of the healing professions will practise here to give the poor people of the area their choice not only of individual doctors but also of the nature of the treatment they want. One rumour has it that Gobind Singh, the tenth Sikh Guru, had camped on the site three hundred years ago for thirteen and a half hours.

Some day,

He reportedly said,

a Great Saint will build here.

When apprised of the rumour, the Master, while neither denying nor confirming it, said merely that the climate of the location at three thousand feet above sea level had been the primary reason for the site’s selection.

Living in Manav Kendra should be idyllic some day. The Master referred to it as ‘a campus, a place to start with.’ He was undoubtedly thinking of the other man centres which will follow in other parts of India.

This first centre will offer a breathtaking view of the Himalaya Mountain foothills, freedom from air and water pollution, work on the dairy farm, the chance to learn and teach languages, places to meditate, books to read, and best of all, the occasional physical presence of the Master Whose retreat is just sixteen miles north on Highway 45.

Will citizens of the United States be permitted by the Government of India to live in Manav Kendra?

the Master was asked.

The only way to find out,

He replied,

is to have some American apply and make a test case of it.