The Hindu : This day tha age: dated May 17, 1959

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, May 17, 2002

Miscellaneous

Miscellaneous - This Day That Age

This day tha age: dated May 17, 1959

Millionaire's Son Turns Sadhu

A nineteen-year-old youth, Indravadan, son of a Jain multimillionaire of Bombay was, on May 15, declared Bagavati Bikku at Sri Santi Matji Temple, Byculla. His mother and two sisters stood by his side sobbing and over 15,000 people watched the ceremony with adoration. Business in the city's stock and bullion market was suspended for the day and transactions in the oil seeds market were closed for two hours in honour of the youth entering into holy life. Large crowds outside the shrines clamoured for the young Bikku's darshan, but he went into meditation for six hours soon after the ceremony. Late in the evening he left the Byculla temple with his Guru, Acharya Vijaya Prem Singhji, who performed the consecration to the Jain Upakar (monastery) at Lalbaugh. A procession of over 8000 persons, mostly Jain merchants, followed Indravadan from his house to the temple. The Bikku took five oaths of the Jain Bikku order: Never to kill any animal, never to tell a lie, never to keep money, never to touch a woman and forever to dedicate his life to service.

"I want to find out my real spirit," Indravadan had told a gathering of devout Jains before the ceremony. The gathering heard him say: "I am in search of truth in this unhappy world."

Churchill denies a report

Prime Minister Winston Churchill told the House of Commons that it was absurd to suggest that the British Admiralty passed a report to the French newspaper Le Monde in which Admiral William Fechteler, United States Chief of Naval Operations was alleged to have said war was inevitable by 1960. "I am assured there has never been a document of the kind referred to in the French Press," Mr. Churchill said.

Population Problem

In Geneva, delegates to the Fifth World Health Assembly stood divided into two groups — Roman Catholics and Non-Catholics — on the controversial question of the world's over-population and the suggested methods of birth control and family planning to meet this problem. After a two-hour discussion, the meeting was adjourned.

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This day tha age: dated May 17, 1959

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