Devraha Baba

Devraha Baba

Devraha Baba (died 19 May 1990), also spelled Deoraha baba was an Indian Siddha Yogi saint who lived beside the Yamuna river in Mathura. He was known as "ageless Yogi with a secular image".He was known as a sadhu who preached harmony between religious communities. 

Life

Little is known about the early life of Devraha Baba, beyond that in the first half of the 20th century he visited Mael, a town 20 km. south west of Salempur, Uttar Pradesh. 

Here he started living atop a Machan, a high platform made of wooden logs, situated 3 km from the town on the banks of Sarayu river. The place was near Dewar in Deoria district, thus local people started calling him Devraha Baba or Deoria Baba, with Baba being an honorific for saints or old men. Thereafter he shifted to Vrindavan, where again he lived atop a machan on the banks of Yamuna river for the rest of his years.

Devraha Baba was a hermit from Vrindava. He was considered to be a "spiritual guide to everyone from a pauper to the most powerful ... above narrow confines of caste and community. "Village people as well as important personalities waited for hours to have a glimpse or darshan of him. He received visits from politicians seeking his blessings at the time of general elections, including Indira Gandhi, Buta Singh, and Rajiv Gandhi. Rajiv Gandhi and his wife Sonia Gandhi visited his ashram on the eve of the 1989 elections. He used to bless the devotees with his feet.

He lived on a 12-foot-high (3.7 m) wooden platform near the river and wore a small deerskin. A barricade of wooden planks hid his semi-naked body from his devotees, and he came down only to bathe in the river.

-साभार