c. 1997 Religion News Service

NEW YORK _ An Indian Hindu religious activist, who for more than four decades has taught that service to God is incomplete without service to humanity, Wednesday (March 5) was named this year’s winner of the $1.21 million Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion.

Pandurang Shastri Athavale, 76, won the world’s largest annual monetary award for directing a movement that last year alone saw hundreds of thousands of volunteers, at their own expense, spend two weeks or more visiting India’s poorest villages in pilgrimages designed to uplift themselves spiritually while also advancing the self-respect and economic condition of those they visit.”Social work and divine work are the same for me,”said Athavale (pronounced Ah-TAH-vah-lee) in an interview.”Both serve society and God. Giving a day to God by working for society is the kind of worship that is worthwhile,”he said in halting English.

Athavale’s followers _ called”swadhyayees,”a Sanskrit word that roughly translates as”those who seek self-knowledge”_ have, among their projects, established village farms and orchards whose produce is distributed to the needy and have provided boats to poor fishermen who share part of their catch with those even more destitute.

More than 10 million people in over 100,000 Indian villages have been helped by Athavale’s movement.”We use devotion to God as a social force,”he said.

Working with villagers, the volunteers have also constructed temples open to all, a controversial idea in India where caste, class and creed deeply divide the population. Athavale discourages proselytizing and preaches respect for all faiths.”Mr. Athavale’s innovation is that he has taught spirituality not by overt teaching, but by living it daily,”Sir John Marks Templeton, the retired Wall Street investor who established the Templeton prize in 1972, said at a news conference.”He asks nothing of the villages and gets them self-esteem and practical knowledge of God.” Templeton, a Tennessee-born, prominent Presbyterian layman who now lives in the Bahamas, set up the prize to always have a greater monetary value than the Nobel Prize so it would be sure to draw attention to religious achievement.

Past Templeton winners have included Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists and one mathematical physicist, Australian Paul Davies, who espouses no particular faith but who works to breach the gulf separating science and religion.

Other Templeton winners include Mother Teresa, the Rev. Billy Graham, former British Chief Rabbi Lord Jakobovits, Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Campus Crusade for Christ founder Bill Bright.

No restrictions are placed on how the prize money may be spent.

Athavale, who suffers from heart problems and moves about mostly in a wheelchair, said he would spread the prize money among the various projects undertaken by Swadhyaya Pariwar (“family of those who seek self-knowledge”), as his movement is called.

The movement accepts no government funds or private donations, charges no fees and has no formal hierarchy or paid staff. All projects are financed directly by volunteers.”If a businessman comes and says he wants to donate, say, $10,000, Athavale tells them not to give it to him or his organization, but to give it to a particular project,”said Polaniswami, editor of Hinduism Today, an international Hindu magazine based in Kauai, Hawaii.”He would tell the businessman to find the appropriate people in the project and work directly with them. This way he gets everyone personally involved. He doesn’t let people just give money so they can walk away feeling better.” Athavale, born into a high-caste family near Bombay, where he still lives, also has followers in Indian communities around the world, including some in the United States, where there are some 300 Swadhyaya groups meeting in private homes, houses of worship and public halls.

Dr. A.J. Barot, a neurologist in Portsmouth, Va., said he and other Indian immigrants meet on Sundays to study Athavale’s writings and to reach out to their poor neighbors.”When we meet with them we do not talk about God or religion,”said Barot.”We just attempt to meet people selflessly, because to do this is divine service and it changes us and the people we meet. Later, if we are accepted, we see how we can help.” Open-hearted volunteers willing to face rejection by approaching strangers who may be in spiritual and economic need are the key to Athavale’s success. He said it works because”what attracts people is warmth. The downtrodden people only want human warmth.” Athavale, also a scholar and teacher of Hindu scriptures, espouses his faith’s traditional message that God dwells within everyone and that this knowledge both unites and uplifts humanity. But he also eschews the elaborate ritual accompanying much of Hinduism, preferring scriptural study, discussion and meditative self-reflection.”He believes in a rational approach,”said Betty Unterberger, a professor of American foreign relations at Texas A&M University in College Station. Unterberger nominated Athavale for the prize and is writing his biography.”He believes once we discover this great truth of God within, we see ourselves as the living temple of God, and that we are all brothers and sisters under what we might call the fatherhood of God,”she said.

Britain’s Prince Philip will present the award to Athavale at a public ceremony set for May 6 at London’s Westminster Abbey.

The Templeton prize winner is selected by an international board of nine judges. This year’s judges included the Orthodox Christian Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, former President George Bush and Robert John Russell, director of the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences in Berkeley, Calif.

MJP END RIFKIN