Shree Mota’s Hariom Ashrams and their activities for social uplift.
“I want to arouse the people from its slumber” – (Shree Mota)
Hari Om Ashrams were founded in 1955 at Nadiad and in 1956 at Surat by Pujya Shree Mota, a well-known saint of Gujarat. Before attaining his saintly status Shree Mota was a constructive worker known as Chunilal Bhagat. As he was born in a poor family of cloth dyers he had to struggle through years of acute poverty. This resulted in his genuinely sympathetic feelings for the backward and the oppressed and eminently fitted him as the worker for harijans and later on as the Joint Secretary of Gujarat Harijan Sevak Sangh and enabled him to acquit himself very creditably at the post. During this period of several years he was the inmate of Harijan Ashram, Sabarmati. Through self struggle he studied up to the final year of B.A. degree course in Baroda College which he skipped at Gandhiji’s call of satyagraha. Five time he was sentenced to undergo imprisonment of several months for participating in the satyagraha campaign.
He was inspired for the high ideals of noble living preached by Gandhiji and Thakkar Bapa. For eighteen years at a stretch he rendered service to harijans. His ways of serving the society was unobtrusive, never hankering after name or fame. Though outwardly engaged in his constructive work, he was going ahead on his path of sadhana also, which culminated into the final revelation of the Divine in 1939.
After realization, he started giving guidance to many aspirants who wanted to follow the path of devotion. This terminated into the establishment of Hariom Asharams where “Maun Mandirs” (silence rooms) were started in which sadhaks, desirous of taking vow of silence shut themselves voluntarily inside the rooms in the quest of the Devine. These activities of the ashrams are still continued even after Shree Mota left his mortal body.
Alongwith the activities of maun mandir Shree Mota channelized all his energy and resources towards the neglected fields of the society and uplift of the waker section of the society, because shree Mota was not a saffronclad sanyasi but was a real karmayogi. He implicitly believed in the cultivation of Bhava and Guna noble virtues in our young people both male and female. To put these ideas into practice he started collecting funds from the people and distributed those funds for various causes. Thus, society is the mota’s donor and at the same time beneficiary also. He decided to fight out physical poverty as well as poverty of knowledge which he saw in his life-time. He also wanted to pull out our youth from the mire of lethargy and frustration. “I want to arouse the people from its slumber” were his roaring words. So, he had gone out with message in heart and begging bowl in hand. He had friends, followers and devotees among the people of all classes and conditions. He started collecting funds from them. The rich and the poor have competed to donate for the cause he declared before hand but the bulk of the funds came from the gifts of average middle clas families. Gujarat saw in him a second man first being Mahatma Gandhi-for whom the women of Gujarat formed a queue and by severing their attachment to gold-ornaments offered them as gifts to Pujya Shree Mota.
Shree Mota was once sitting under the large bunyan tree in his Hari Om Ashram at Nadiad. That was one of the places restored by him during his period of sadhana. His initiator in sadhana revered Shree Balyogi was with him at that time. Shree Mota often sat on a swing under the cooling canopy of that big bunyan tree but this time old hallowed memories were suddenly revived and he was lost in reverie. In that mood he again saw his Guru in his human form. The Guru asked him to collect ten million rupees before his life-time ended and spend them on definite objects that raise society form its inertia to healthy activity. Ten million rupees! That was too staggering an amount! He expressed his doubts, but the Guru assured him ‘You can and will succeed.’
From then onwards, i.e. from 1962 to almost the end of his life on earth in 1976, he made strenuous efforts to collect money and spend it after activities of social uplift.
And Shree Mota had the satisfaction of his Guru’s prediction accomplished and his efforts at that end successful. More than ten million rupees were given to him and used after these activities before he breathed his last.