LIFE AND BIOGRAPHY OF SHRI MATAJI NIRMALA DEVI(A LIFE DEDICATED TO HUMANITY)

Life and Biography of Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi.

 
Nirmala Srivastava (Nirmala Salve) (21 March 1923 – 23 February 2011), also known as Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi, was the founder of Sahaja Yoga, a meditation technique. She said "You cannot know the meaning of your life until you're connected to the power that created you". She claimed to have been born in a fully realised and spent her life working for peace by developing and promoting a simple technique through which people can achieve their own self-realization.
    Shri Mataji was born in Chindawara, Madhya Pradesh, India to a Hindu father and a Christian mother Prasad and Cornelia Salve. Her parents named her Nirmala, which means "immaculate". She said that she was bornself-realised .  Her father, a scholar of fourteen languages, translated the Koran intoMarathi, and her mother was the first woman in India to receive an honours degree in mathematics. Shri Mataji descended from the royal Shalivahana/Satavahana dynasty. The former union minister N.K.P. Salve was her brother and the lawyer Harish Salve is her nephew.The Salve surname is one of a number included in the Satavahana Maratha clan.

Shri Mataji passed her childhood years in the family house in Nagpur. In her youth she stayed in the ashram of Mahatma Gandhi. Like her parents, she was involved with thestruggle for Indian independence and, as a youth leader when a young woman, was jailed for participating in the Quit India Movement in 1942. Taking responsibility for her younger siblings and living a spartan lifestyle during this period infused the feeling of self-sacrifice for the wider good. She studied at the Christian Medical College in Ludhiana and the Balakram Medical College in Lahore.

Shortly before India achieved independence in 1947, Shri Mataji married Chandrika Prasad Srivastava, a high-ranking Indian civil servant who later served Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri as Joint Secretary, and was bestowed an honorary KCMG by Elizabeth II. They had two daughters, Kalpana Srivastava and Sadhana Varma. In 1961, Nirmala Srivastava launched the "Youth Society for Films" to infuse national, social and moral values in young people.