Are the Padma Awards acquiring a more dharmic complexion, wonders NARAYANI GANESH
There she was, pretty and glamorous, beaming with pride, sandwiched between Iskcon’s Akshaya Patra leader Madhu Pandit Dasa and molecular biophysicist, Prof Dipankar Chatterji, all Padma awardees. Priyanka Chopra looked radiant and why not? Barely 33, the former Femina Miss India- Miss World is taking the entertainment world by storm even as she extends herself to lend a helping hand to girl children.
But who is Madhu Pandit Dasa? He is the one who created a food revolution of sorts in making midday meals accessible to children in schools, from his location in Bangalore.Aptly named Akshaya Patra,his project is providing succour to school children, even inspiring their parents to ensure their attendance. And so the Padma Awards are given to achievers in their fields of excellence, include sportspersons and academics,entertainers,scientists and engineers,writers,artists,social workers, traders and industrialists and now, increasingly, philosophers, religious scholars and ascetics. The 2015 awards included Jagadguru Ramanandacharya Swami Rambhadracharya of Tulsi Peeth in Chitrakoot; Pandit Vamadeva Shastri (David Frawley), American Hindu and author; Jagat Guru Amrta Suryananda Maha Raja, the Portugal- based yoga guru; Huang Baosheng, Chinese scholar of Sanskrit and Pali known for translating into Chinese many Sanskrit and Pali texts, including the Mahabharata,The Gita and upanishads and Saichiro Misumi, Japanese Indologist.
The 2016 list features the AOL’s Sri Sri Ravi Shankar,Chinmaya Mission head Swami Tejomayananda, Iskcon’s Madhu Pandit Dasa,Swami Dayananda Saraswati, Smt Indu Jain, Times Foundation,Former Nasa engineer and currently President of VivekanandaYoga Anusandhana Samsthana H R Nagendra,Canadian Wai Lana Yoga’s Hui Lan Zhang and Predrag Niki,Yoga Federation, Serbia. Earlier, in 2014, yoga guru and icon, B K S Iyengar was honoured with a Padma award, a lone instance in a category normally described as ‘others’.
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