Swami Omkarananda

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Swami Omkarananda Saraswati (December 25, 1929 in Secunderabad (Hyderabad) - January 4, 2000 in Winterthur) was an Indian monk and disciple of Swami Sivananda Saraswati, the founder of the Divine Life Society in Rishikesh, India. Swami Omkarananda established the Divine Light Zentrum in Winterthur, Switzerland in 1967, the Omkarananda Ashram in Rishikesh, India, in 1982, and the Omkarananda Ashram Austria in Langen bei Bregenz, Austria, in 1986.

Swami Omkarananda was born in Secunderabad, a suburb of Hyderabad, on 25th December 1929. He was inspired by a vision of Shirdi Sai Baba when a boy of thirteen. Then at the young age of 16 years, he joined the Shivananda Ashram in Rishikesh, and was initiated as a Swami of the Advaita Order a year later. At first closely associated with Shivananda, and doing various services for him, manual and then also literary and printing services, he was yet independent and there came a kind of parting of the ways as he was led on the path of worship of God as Divine Mother (Shri Vidya), associating with the Swamis Nityananda and then Durgananda. While in Rishikesh, in the 1950's, as Westerners started visiting Shivananda Ashram, Swami Omkarananda was invited to come to the West. Finally in 1965 - after the Mahasamadhi of Shivananda in 1963 - Omkarananda came to Switzerland, to stay in the house of the elderly Swiss lady who had invited him, in Winterthur.

Among his disciples were several well-known personalities, such as the chairman of the large company Alusuisse,^[1] who later published a series of books on Shankaracharya's hymns (e.g. Das Kronjuwel der Unterscheidung), inspired by his life with Swami Omkarananda.^[2]

Several well-known Swamis visited the Centre in Winterthur, and were full of praise for the place, for example Ganapati Sacchidananda, the Sufi Inayat Khan, and many others. Shiva Bala Yogi gave his support in a letter.^{[citation needed]}

In May 1979 Swami Omkarananda was sentenced to fourteen years of prison by the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland. He and some of his devotees were charged for strikes on the lives of supposed adversaries of the Divine Light Centre.^[3]^[4]^[5] The evidence against the Swami himself is disputed, however, and in a later series of articles published in the Swiss newspaper Tages Anzeiger an investigative journalist presented certain facts which supposedly had been suppressed at the time of the trial, such as involvement of Belgian and Zurich police.^[6]^[7] One of the Zurich police officers - who led the investigation and the one who is accused of signing a letter ordering that these facts be suppressed - was later charged with corruption.^[8]^[7]

Notwithstanding these challenges portrayed in a Swiss TV documentary, the work of the Centre continued and has made a decisive contribution to the knowledge of Vedic culture in the West.^{[citation needed]} There is now an Ashram in Rishikesh, which is doing a lot of charitable work in the foothills of the Himalayas, giving education to the local Indian children, with dozens of subsidized schools set up by Swami Omkarananda.^{[citation needed]}