At the age of 7, Sadhvi Balika Saraswati had decided that she wanted to become a 'sadhvi' so that she could narrate the 'Ram Katha', and “awaken people”. She says she will serve the cause of the Hindu rashtra as long as she lives.

The 18-year-old sadhvi is the star speaker of the Virat Hindu Samajotsava organised in Mangaluru on the occasion of the golden jubilee of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad on Sunday.

Speaking to The News Minute ahead of the samajotsava, she said that she had begun to recite the Bhagawad Gita at the age of seven, inspired by her grandfather who used to tour different places from her native Rewa, in Madhya Pradesh. 

But when she was 9 years old, her grandfather died in a train accident; after that, it was her father, a doctor, who took her on tours to places where she would narrate the Bhagwad Katha, the Ram Katha and the Gau Katha in the Ramanandi tradition as taught to her by her grandfather.

However, Saraswati's father could only do this for two years, and that was when she decided to take the sadhvi deeksha; at the age of 12, she was inducted into the Chaitanya Peeth ashram in Rewa by Nagendra Bhrahmachari. She says her guruji is mahamantri of the Akhil Bharati Sant Samiti in Madhya Pradesh. 

Since then, Sadhvi Sarawati has narrated the Katha in many states including Maharashtra, Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and has even been in Bengaluru in 2011.

Sadhvi Saraswati says that the main objective of the Peeth is not to spread the Bhagwad Katha or the Ram Katha, but the Gau Katha. “We also relate the Gau Katha in the Bhagwad Katha because the manner in which cows are being slaughtered today, it is our duty to stop it. If gau hatya is stopped in Bharat desh, then a new revolution will occur,” she says.

“We explain to people that our mother gives milk to a child for two years or three years… but the gau mata gives us milk for life - how great is such a mother! We are repaying the debt to this mother by killing her, we think this is a crime. So we explain to people that the cow is our mother and that we must worship her.”

Posters of the Hindu Samajotsava project Sadhvi Balika Saraswati as the main speaker of the event, in the city.

Since she decided to become a sadhvi at the age 12, in hindsight, did she never wish for the life of a citizen?

Saraswati says she took the decision to become a sadhvi at the age of seven, and said that she lived like a “normal person”.

“I talk like you, I eat like you. Everything is the same. I want everyone to be like us. (But) it doesn’t mean that everybody takes up sanyas. Janakji Maharaj, Ramji’s father-in-law, was a ghrihast (family man), but he was called a great sanyasi. Just because you are a ghrihast, doesn’t mean you can’t be a sanyasi. In our inner life must sacrifice worldly things. Anybody can become a sanyasi…”

“Sadhvi ka matlab hai, apne jeevan ko sadhana, which direction you want your life to go. It doesn’t only mean wearing saffron robes. In Sanskrit, sadhvi for women… it is (used to refer to a person) who is learned, “sanskari” , and religious. You can also be a sadhvi,” she says.

Asked how she saw herself some years from now, she said she would dedicated her whole life to the cause of the Hindu rashtra, and would serve “in any manner possible”.

Saraswati says that she had studied up to Class III, but she was put off by it because it interfered with her ability to travel to narrate the Katha. 

Her association with the VHP and the Rashtriyaswayam Sevak Sangh began in childhood. She says her father was the Vidharbha convenor of the Bajrang Dal. It was in the last five or six years that she began to be associated with the VHP and participated in the programmes it organised.

Although she spoke a chaste, highly Sanskritised Hindi and the audience did not appear to get the full force of her words, the audience was mesmerised by the provocative and aggressive nature of her speech.  Towards the end of her speech which lasted around half an hour, the sadhvi said that the men of Mangaluru should give swords to the women of their houses and behead anyone who dared to look at them. (in the context of Love Jihad)