PM Modi opens Chinmaya Mission's 75th-year sammelan, ties its 2047 centenary to a developed Bharat

Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the Chinmaya Amrit Mahotsav Global Sammelan at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi on Friday, marking 75 years of the Chinmaya Mission, Hindustan Times reported. The three-day gathering, from 23 to 25 October, has brought together more than 9,000 participants from India and abroad, according to the PMO.

Modi linked the Mission's centenary in 2047 to India's goal of becoming a developed nation the same year, and urged spiritual and cultural organisations to work for national development and social unity. At the event he interacted with a holographic recreation of the Mission's founder, Swami Chinmayananda.

"It felt as if I had gone back 33 years in time," Modi said. He recalled meeting the Swami in February or March 1993 to invite him to the centenary of the World's Parliament of Religions in Chicago; the Swami accepted, but died in San Diego on 3 August, weeks before the 11 September gathering.

Modi said the Upaniṣadic description of human beings as children of amṛta, the immortal, points to an enduring consciousness and cultural continuity rather than physical immortality. He credited the Swami's Gītā Jñāna Yajñas with taking the teachings of the Vedas and Upaniṣads to ordinary people, and said more than 100 institutions run by the Mission combine modern education with Indian values.

He also recalled that Swami Chinmayananda made the first financial contribution to the Vivekananda Rock Memorial in Kanyakumari. The anniversary year included the Chinmaya Gita Samarpanam, in which over one lakh people chanted the Gītā's 15th chapter online, and a youth yātrā that covered about 40,000 km in roughly 300 days.