Cebturies old wisdom of theyester years can be amazingly relevant today. The website www.tukaram.com is a pointer to this.Tukaram
was a poet of the 17th century India. He was born in the lowliestcaste of the Hindus but because of his unwavering devotion (bhakti) and compositions, rich inliterary as well as human values, he acquired the status of a saint-poet. He isworshipped not only in Maharashtra where he was born and in whose languageMarathi he composed, but also throughout India.This site,wholly devoted to
Tukaram, is available in several sections including inEnglish, Hindi, Marathi, Telugu, Tamil, Bangla, French, German, Russian,Spanish, Esperanto, Netherlandsand Argentina.Every section has its own speciality. Like the Argentinasection gives Tukaram Pedagogical Centre; the Gujaratone tells about the translations of Tukaram’s compositions done by MahatmaGandhi and Kishorilal Mashruwala; the Sindh section details the book Sant Tukaramji Abhangvani and Tamil Nadusection traces the saint’s influence in various areas and the Telugu sectiontells about the Tukaram temple in Mugalpura of Hyderabad. Every year a ‘vari’ is held where thousands ofpilgrims (varkari) walk hundreds ofmiles chanting and singing. It is an experience of a life time. HenningStegmuller joined the
pilgrimage in the company of Dr. Gunther Sontheimer in1987. Thoroughly impressed and moved to the core he filmed it the followingyear. This 90 minute cinema titled “Vari– An Indian Pilgrimage” and also its 60 minute television version arelinked in the site. The site is enriched by contributions from many famed andaccomplished personalities. Like Nobel Laureate Ravindranath Tagore’s Bangla translation,Mahatma Gandhi’s foreword that pays tributes to Tukaram and one of India’s mostadmired singer M.S.Subba Laxmi reciting a Tukaram’s composition. This site is dedicated to Tukaram scholarlate Barrister Babaji Ganesh Paranjape.