Sadhu T. L. Vaswani’s 124th birthday has been celebrated with great enthusiasm for the whole week from 19th to the 25th of November 2003.

The activities performed during this week consisted of daily service programmes to various homes where food, ration, toiletries and a sewing machine were provided. Sleeping mats were donated to a pre-primary school.

For the evening satsang representatives from different religious groups such as Dadi from Anandpur Darbar, Brahmachari Abhaychaitanya from Chinmaya Mission, Mr. Vikas Malkani from Soul Centre, India, enlightened us with spiritual knowledge and devotees from Satya Sai Centre and Iskon intoxicated us with their soulful bhajans and kirtans.

The highlight of the week was a “Meatless Day Mela” held on 22nd November, to create awareness and propagate the International Meatless Day and Animal Rights Day for 25th November.

We began the evening with an hour long kirtan session by the Sai Centre. A representative from the Vegetarian Society of Singapore gave a short talk and video presentation on the benefits of vegetarianism followed by Food & Fun fair.

Pledges were collected to abstain from meat on 25th plus vegetarian cook books were sold. Games for children were also based on animals such as “Save the Animal”, “Animal Race” etc. Children dressed as animals were given special prizes.


As a tribute to Sadhu Vaswani whose compassionate heart perpetually pleaded for mercy to all living beings, a unique “Flight to Freedom” counter was set up where money was collected to release 124 birds for his 124th birthday but this novel idea fascinated the people so much that we are able to release 542 birds in all.

A special guest at the fair, retired Deputy Commissioner of Police was very impressed by the whole event, particularly the posters depicting the facts on the benefits of being a vegetarian and the ill-effects of non-vegetarian food on body, mind, spirit, economy and ecology.

Thoughts on compassion towards all beings by Sadhu Vaswani, Dada J. P Vaswani and by other Great Ones were also displayed in the form of posters.

The 25th of November will be celebrated tomorrow with the release of the birds in the morning followed by the birthday celebration in the evening by the Sadhu Vaswani devotees and friends with bhajan, kirtan, viewing of video cassettes of Sadhu Vaswani and birthday message by Dada J. P. Vaswani ending the evening with a birthday cake and a sumptuous dinner.