TUMAKURU:Usually, 108-year-old Shivakumara Swami, the head of Siddaganga Mutt, who is known as walking god, conducts the age-old practice of taking to the streets to raise alms—a tradition practised ahead of the mutt annual fair. But this time he desisted from it owing to poor health. It was the mutt’s junior seer Siddalinga Swami who took to the streets.
Shivakumara Swami is doing fine and can walk at the mutt but cannot take out long ‘padayatras’ to raise alms like before and hence the junior seer hit the street this time, said mutt insiders.
Born on April 1, 1908, he Shivakumara Swami is the 13th child of farmer Honnegowda and his wife Gangamma of Veerapura in the erstwhile Bengaluru rural’s Magadi taluk. After he lost his mother at the age of eight, his older brother Kempananjappa shouldered the responsibility of his education and sent him to his older sister Puttahonnamma's house at Nagavalli village in Tumakuru taluk for studies. He cleared the lower secondary in Kannada in 1919 and in English in 1921. He then joined the government junior college here and stayed at a small room at Shettyhalli village.
Shivanna, as he was known then, joined the Siddaganga Mutt after an epidemic plague spread in the village. It was during this time that he caught the attention of a junior pontiff Sri Marularadhya. He graduated with mathematics and physics honours from Central College in Bengaluru. The untimely death of Sri Marularadhya on January 16, 1930 brought him back to the Mutt.
The then head of mutt Sri Uddhana Shivayogigalu recognised him and insisted him to take ‘sanyas’ as his junior for which Shivanna agreed without a second thought. He was initiated in to ‘viraktashram’ as Sri Shivakumara Swamiji. At the age of 33 he had to take the entire responsibility of the five century old Mutt as its head after Sri Uddhana Shivayogigalu passed away on January 11, 1941.
His undeterred acumen shaped the mutt from serving a few children to providing food, shelter and education to over 10,000 students. The Siddaganga Education Society runs over 125 schools and colleges across the state, including an engineering college.