PONDA: Shrimat Sadyojat Shankarashram Swamiji, the spiritual head of the Chitrapur Saraswat Brahmin (CSB) community inaugurated ‘Aranya Kutir’, the community’s wellness and meditation centre at Kundaim, Ponda.
The Aranya Kutir project of the Shree Chitrapur Math Charitable Trust (SCMCT) will conduct courses in yoga, including yogic breathing and meditation. The constructed area of the centre includes a small 500 sq metres residential area and a large plantation which has more than 1100 different medicinal, aromatic, flowering and fruit trees. Besides greening the rocky terrain, the plantation will arrest soil erosion.
The project has adopted rainwater harvesting and drip irrigation system for optimum water consumption.
Significantly, the CSB community which numbers only 23,000 people across India and the world has its roots in Goa.
The CSBs were previously, Gaud Saraswat Brahmins and had settled in Goa (formerly Gomantak) in the 10th century. A large majority of this community migrated to the Kannada-speaking provinces after the Portuguese began the forcible conversion of Hindus to Christianity in the early 16th century. And while the CSBs founded their Math in the Shirali village of north Karnataka, the community is permanently linked to their kuldevatas (family deities) through the temples of Mangeshi, Shantadurga and Mahalaxmi in Ponda taluka of Goa.
