TIRUCHY: A pall of gloom descended on the Premananda ashram in Mela Patchakudi near Fatima Nagar in Pudukkottai, 20 km from Tiruchy, even as disciples were busy making preparations for the funeral of their spiritual guru, who died in a hospital on the outskirts of Chennai on Monday.
Though entry into the 120-acre ashram for ‘outsiders’ is not allowed and the inmates do not communicate with outsiders, sources said that all the activities, both spiritual and social, were continuing even after Premananda was imprisoned at the Cuddalore jail after he was sentenced to undergo a double life term.
The sources said that the sprawling ashram houses the Premanada High School, aided by State government, that has 754 students, including 394 girls, on the roll.
While, all the students reside at separate boarding halls on the ashram premises, most of the 21 staff, including teachers, are outsiders. Premananda’s neice (daugther of his brother Kamalananda, who was also sentenced in the case) is the headmistress.
It is said about 40 disciples live in the ashram in separate houses and about 20 foreign devotees still live in separate huts exclusively constructed for them.
All the devotees and the school children are served food prepared from the produce of the farm inside. About 40 acres of land is under cultivation and the ashram has its own dairy.
Meanwhile, construction of a huge temple is in progress replacing the house in which Premananda was living.
Ever since he was arrested in November 1994, and sentenced double life by the then Pudukkottai Principal Sessions Judge Banumathi in 1997, Premanada used to come on parole and perform pooja along with the devotees of the ashram during which the whole ashram would adorn a festive mood.
In the initial stages, the swami, having earned the wrath of the local people, used to face their displeasure as they shouted slogans and threw eggs and slippers on him when he visited the ashram.
So his arrival was kept a secret. However, the passage of time saw the locals mellowing down or rather forgetting the swami’s past.
Premananda has set up the ashram after he came down from Sri Lanka in 1983, in the wake of the ethnic unrest in the island nation.
He had earlier established an ashram in Matale, his birth place in Sri Lanka, in 1972 but it was destroyed during the violence.
Some of his devotees and the orphans he had been taking care of in Sri Lanka, who came along with him, moved into the ashram when it was inaugurated in 1989.