My India – A Poem by Paramhansa Yogananda

The Last Smile, from a photograph taken an hour before Yogananda’s mahasamadhi

Paramhansa Yogananda left this world on March 7th, 1952, at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, California at a banquet held in honor of Ambassador Binay R. Sen of India. At the banquet, he gave a talk honoring the Ambassador and spoke of the unity of India and America. He then read from a poem he had written, My India.

At the end of the poem, he looked up with a beatific smile and slid to the floor in mahasamadhi (a yogi’s final conscious exit from the world).

Years before, Yogananda had said, “When I leave this earth, I want to go speaking of my America and my India.”

Attendees at the banquet honoring the Indian Ambassador, at which Yogananda left this world. He is circled in red.

Swami Kriyananda recounted that momentous event in The New Path:

Master was scheduled to speak after the banquet. His brief talk (recounted here in full) was so sweet, so almost tender, that I think everyone present felt embraced in the gossamer net of his love. Warmly he spoke of India and America, and of their respective contributions to world peace and true human progress. He talked of their future cooperation. Finally he read his beautiful poem, “My India.”

Throughout his speech I was busy recording his words, keeping my eyes on my notebook. He came to the last lines of the poem:

Where Ganges, woods, Himalayan caves, and men dream God.
I am hallowed; my body touched that sod!

Sod became a long-drawn-out sigh. Suddenly from all sides of the room there came a loud cry.

Here we share the poem in full.

My India, by Paramhansa Yogananda

Not where the musk of happiness blows,
Not where darkness and fears never tread;
Not in the homes of perpetual smiles,
Nor in the heaven of a land of prosperity
Would I be born
If I must put on mortal garb once more.

Dread famine may prowl and tear my flesh,
Yet would I love to be again
In my Hindustan.
A million thieves of disease
May try to steal the body’s fleeting health;
And clouds of fate
May shower scalding drops of searing sorrow –
Yet would I there, in India,
Love to reappear!

Is this love of mine blind sentiment
That sees not the pathways of reason?
Ah, no! I love India,
For there I learned first to love God
and all things beautiful.
Some teach to seize the fickle dewdrop, life,
Sliding down the lotus leaf of time;
Stubborn hopes are built
Around the gilded, brittle body-bubble.
But India taught me to love

The soul of deathless beauty in the dewdrop
and the bubble –
Not their fragile frames.
Her sages taught me to find my Self,
Buried beneath the ash heaps
Of incarnations of ignorance.
Though many a land of power, plenty, and science
My soul, garbed sometimes as an Oriental,
Sometimes as an Occidental,
Travelled far and wide,
Seeking Itself;
At last, in India, to find Itself.

Though mortal fires raze all her homes
and golden paddy fields,
Yet to sleep on her ashes and dream immortality,
O India, I will be there!
The guns of science and matter
Have boomed on her shores
Yet she is unconquered.
Her soul is free evermore!
Her soldier saints are away,
To rout with realization’s ray
The bandits of hate, prejudice, and patriotic selfishness;
And to burn the walls of separation dark
Between children of the One, One Father.
The Western brothers by matter’s might
have conquered my land;

Blow, blow aloud, her conch shells all!
India now invades with love,
To conquer their souls.

Better than Heaven or Arcadia
I love Thee, O my India!
And thy love I shall give
To every brother nation that lives.
God made the earth;
Man made confining countries
And their fancy-frozen boundaries.
But with newfound boundless love
I behold the borderland of my India
Expanding into the world.
Hail, mother of religions, lotus, scenic beauty,
And sages!
Thy wide doors are open,
Welcoming God’s true sons through all ages.
Where Ganges, woods, Himalayan caves, and men dream God –
I am hallowed; my body touched that sod.

Read the story of Master’s Last Days from a talk by Dr. M. W. Lewis, Yogananda’s first American disciple, on March 10, 1952, just three days after Yogananda’s mahasamadhi.