HH Bhakti Charu Swami Maharaja was born into an aristocratic Bengali family on 17th September 1945 in Kuti, Brahmanbaria District, Bengal Presidency (now Bangladesh). He spent most of his childhood in urban Kolkata. Leaving India in 1970 in pursuit of further education, he attended university in Germany to study Chemistry. However, after some time he felt rather dissatisfied with Western culture and so he returned to India in search of a spiritual teacher. After an extensive but fruitless search in the Himalaya region of Northern India, he returned to Kolkata in 1976. Upon receiving a visit from his old friend Prasun who had joined the ISKCON temple in Kolkata and become Sarvabhavana Dasa, they attended the temple together. After a few visits to the temple Maharaja wanted to purchase a copy of Bhagavad-gita, but since the temple did not have a copy on hand, he accepted a copy of Srila Prabhupada’s English translation of Srila Rupa Goswami’s Nectar of Devotion (Bhakti-rasamrta-sindhu). Maharaja himself recounted on many occasions how this book completely changed his life.
After reading Nectar of Devotion and feeling that he had found his spiritual teacher, he dreamt of Srila Prabhupada and His Holiness decided to join ISKCON in Sridham Mayapura in the second half of 1976. His first contact with Srila Prabhupada was during the Kumbha-mela festival in January 1977 and when Srila Prabhupada left the festival by train Bhavananda Maharaja arranged his first personal meeting. In that meeting Srila Prabhupada asked His Holiness to translate all his books into Bengali. From that time onwards Maharaja became part of Srila Prabhupada’s personal entourage and Prabhupada appointed him his secretary for Indian affairs. During the Mayapura Gaura Purnima festival in March of 1977 His Holiness received first and second initiation and soon afterwards, during the Snana Yatra festival in Vrindavana, Srila Prabhupada awarded Maharaja sannyasa initiation.
His Holiness remained a member of Srila Prabhupada’s personal entourage until his departure in November 1977. After Srila Prabhupada’s disappearance Maharaja took on a leading role in establishing the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust in Kolkata and Mayapura and continued to translate Srila Prabhupada’s major works into Bengali. In 1987 he became a member of the Governing Body Commission and an initiating spiritual master. Thereafter he travelled extensively around the globe and became a leading exponent of Vedic wisdom in the line of Gaudiya Vaishnavism. In 1995 Maharaja began work on his multi-episode serial Abhay Charan depicting the life and teachings of Srila Prabhupada. In 1996, Srila Prabhupada’s centennial year, he completed the translation of Srila Prabhupada’s books into Bengali and arranged for the screening of the Abhay Charan serial on Indian television reaching an audience of several million.
In 2005 Maharaja began work to establish a centre in Ujjain, India, and in just 10 months completed the temple structure which houses beautiful Deities of Sri Sri Radha-Madana-mohana, Krishna-Balarama and Gaura-Nitai. Maharaja also established temples in Panihati, Northern Kolkata and Kuti, Bangladesh. Most recently Maharaja established a farm community in Deland, Florida in the United States.
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