A monastic order open to all castes: the Dharma Sangham Sree Narayana Guru founded, and the Gurukulam his disciple built

Background

The Sivagiri trust that chose a new president this week goes back to the Sree Narayana Dharma Sangham, an order of monks Sree Narayana Guru set up himself in 1928. Membership was open to people of any caste, to non-Hindus and to foreigners; the test was renunciation, not birth. The Guru handed his institutions and properties to these sanyasis and wrote the work 'Ashramam' to set out some of their rules. He insisted the Sangham must never shrink into a sect of Hinduism. His disciple Nataraja Guru later founded the Narayana Gurukulam, which first worked from the Nilgiris in Tamil Nadu. Because Nataraja Guru saw the Sivagiri Mutt as a model, the Gurukulam's main office is at Sreenivasapuram, Varkala.