Unterberger Nominates Athavale For The Templeton Prize

AggieDaily

COLLEGE STATION -- Texas A&M University history professor Betty M. Unterberger has played a special role in this year's awarding of the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion.

Unterberger, the Patricia and Bookman Peters professor of history at Texas A&M, nominated Pandurang Shastri Athavale for the $1.2 million prize. He will receive the award from His Royal Highness Prince Philip at Westminster Abbey on May 6. Unterberger plans to be present at the ceremony when her nominee receives the award.

The Templeton Prize is given annually to a living individual who has shown extraordinary originality in advancing the world's understanding of God and/or spirituality. It was established in 1972 by John Marks Templeton, a pioneering global investor who believed the Nobel Prize unfairly excluded religion from its honored disciplines.

Athavale is founder and leader of Swadhyaya, a spiritual self-knowledge movement in India that, according to Unterberger, "has liberated millions from poverty and moral dissipation."

Unterberger nominated Athavale, often referred to as the Dada, which means elder brother, because of the innovative nature of the movement.

"I believe that the Dada's work is a model and example for personal and communal transformation that can be adapted and modified within the dominant cultures and philosophical bases of people all over the world," she said.

Unterberger, who is writing a biography of Athavale and his Swadhyaya, was the first western scholar to recognize the international significance of Athavale and his religious movement.