Swami Sivanand was born on the 8th of September, 1887, to pious parents, Sri Vengu Aiyer and Smt. Parvati Ammal, in the serene and peaceful village of Pattamadai, District Tirunelveli, Tamilnadu. He was imbued with the spirit of service and a very compassionate heart from early boyhood. After a period of work under enior British doctors, young Kuppuswami set up his own medical practice in the city of Johorebaru, Malaya. His daily close contact with pain, suffering, desease and death stirred up intense feeling of dispassion and a great longing to solve the mystry of life and death. Answering an inner call in the year 1922, Dr. Kuppuswami renounced his lucrative medical practice and turning away from the life secular, he returned to Idia, as a spiritual seeker keenly longing for ilumination and enlightment. He reached Rishikesh on the bank of the holy river Ganga in early 1924.

There he met the venerable monk, Sri Swami Viswananda Saraswati, who initiated him into the PAramhansa Sannyasa Order, giving him Jnanopadesa and the monastic name of Swami Sivananda which has become a name familiar to milions the world over. He founded the Devine Life Society in 1936 to bring about global spiritual awakening throught the nationwide and worldwide propagation of Yoga and Vedanta as also the spreading of Dharma by expounding the high ethical ideals and principles of India's sublime culture.

There was no distinction of race, religion, nationality, caste or sreed. Thus the membership was all-embracing and universal. He took up enthusiastic preaching and teaching of the invaluable ancient science of Hatha Yoaga. He authored more than three hundred books, covering every aspect of human culture, and the Divine Life Society which he founded in 1936, stood for the revival of bharatiya-samskriti and the universality of the spiritual essentials of all the world religions. Two years later in 1938, he started the monthly English Journal "The Divine Life".

In 1953 April, he convened a PArliament of World religions at Rishikesh. His books have been translated in most Indian vernacular and several foreign languages. He had created a band of dedicated Sannyasins to cary forward his good work before he atained Mahasamadhi on 14th of July, 1963.

The Department of Posts is privileged to issue a stamp in honour of Swami Sivananda.

Source : Information Folder issued by Indian Posts & Telegraph Department, Government of India