Under Shri Rama’s Gaze - Reclaiming My Roots at Partagali Math

There are some journeys you plan, and some that are planned for you by a higher power. My participation in the 10 day long celebrations commemorating the 550-year celebration of the Shrimad Gokarn Partagali Jeevottam Math felt as if the Math itself had extended an ancient, unseen invitation across centuries, calling me home to my roots. 

The Gokarn Partagali Math is not just a sacred complex on the banks of the Kushavati in South Goa, it is a living testimony to resilience, scholarship, devotion and the quiet, stubborn continuity of Dharma in Goa, a land that has seen so many attacks and assaults on our culture and faith. It is the first Gowd Saraswat Vaishnava Math, rooted in the Dvaita parampara of Shrimad Madhvacharya, and the spiritual gurupeetha of the Gowd Saraswat Brahmana community, the community in which I was born into.

Walking through the massive, recently renovated complex, I felt the weight of 550 years settle around me, not as an unbearable heaviness, but as a comforting shawl of ancestry. The walls painted with Kaavi art, the murmuring river, the venerable trees that have witnessed generations of sadhana, everything felt alive, sentient, whispering stories of past Mathadhipatis, who kept the flame of Dharma going when the darkness of foreign invasions tried its best to snuff out the light.

The Math is currently headed by Paramapoojya Shrimad Vidyadheesh Teerth Swamiji, a 29-year-old sannyasi who carries 24 generations of Guru-paramparā on his shoulders, he is the 24th Mathadipati of Gokarn Partagali Math. Once an engineering student named Uday Bhat Sharma from Belgaum, he answered a very different kind of calling when his Guru, Shrimad Vidyadhiraj Teerth Swamiji, chose him as his successor.

When the responsibility of heading the Math fell on his young shoulders, one of the first things Swamiji did was to involve the entire community into the Math activities. He did that by weaving Bhagwan Ram into the very fabric of the GSB community scattered all over the world by initiating the Nama Japa Abhiyan – an audacious sankalpa, that involved 550 crore chantings of the Shree Rama Taraka Mahamantra in 550 days, across 120 centres in Bharat, starting on Ram Navami 17 April 2024 and culminating on 18 October 2025.  The Abhiyan has now been recognised by the both the World Book of Records and Asia Book of Records for achieving the target of 550 crore japa. But for me, the numbers are not just another statistic. It is the sound of a community rediscovering itself!

The Nama Japa Abhiyan ended with a Rath Yatra that started from Badrinath and traversed across the spine of Bharat to reach the Partagali Math just in time for the ten day long celebrations. The high point of the celebrations is the visual that will stay with all of us, Prime Minister Narendra Modi unveiling a 77-foot bronze murti of Bhagwan Ram, described as one of the tallest such statues in Asia, rising above the lush green landscape of Canacona.

Shrimad Vidyadheesh Swamiji’s community initiatives, from the 550-crore Rama Nama Japa Abhiyan to travelling tirelessly across Bharat connecting scattered GSB families to the Math are not merely events covered and forgotten. They are bridges. Between generations. Between geographies. Between our distracted present and our quietly luminous past. It is good to see someone young lead with so much spiritual wisdom!

When I stood in front of Swamiji with folded hands to take Mantrakshata, I did not just see before me a young monk in saffron, but the wisdom of an entire spiritual lineage, the living Guruparampara that goes back to the 14th century to Badarikashrama, where the original sanyasa Diksha of this tradition was given.

As I walked through the vast Math complex, taking in the newly renovated temple, the many mandaps, the Vrindavans of past Mathadhipatis, the pathways humming with bhajans and chatter, I kept thinking of my own grandparents and before them, their parents and grandparents.

Many of them carried inside their bones the humiliation of the Portuguese rule in Goa, the pain of leaving ancestral homes, the agony of seeing their Deities displaces, temples destroyed, the anxiety of having to rebuild lives in unknown places with nothing in their pockets. The one thing that gave them continuity was this sense of Gurupeetha, this knowledge that ‘our Math is still there, our Swamiji is still guiding us’.

Standing there, 550 years later, with the sounds of Shri Ram Japa in the air, the sanctified smoke from the daily Yagnas and Shrirama’s bronze Murti towering on the skyline, I felt the arc of that journey in my own body.

The 550 year celebrations of the Partagali Math is not just about a religious institution celebrating an anniversary. This is the celebration of an entire community getting together to heal old wounds by going back to its spiritual core.

In the middle of airports, deadlines, outrage cycles on social media and the constant temptation to live only on the surface, my visit to Partagali reminded me of something simple, yet profound, that I am not just an individual with opinions. I am part of a long lineage.

As I left the Math premises after two blissful, Bhakti filled days, the sound of bhajans was still floating in the air. Somewhere behind me, the 77-foot bronze Shri Rama smiled over the forests and the river. In front of me lay the busy, noisy world I was going back to, but inside me, something had changed. I had been blessed with the Mantrakshata of memory, of identity, of grace!