Sri M

Sri M, born Mumtaz Ali in 1948 (some sources give 1949) in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, occupies an unusual and deliberately significant place among contemporary Indian teachers: a spiritual master raised in a Muslim family who, without formally converting or renouncing his birth name, went on to become deeply immersed in Hindu yogic tradition, initiated into the Nath lineage of Kriya Yoga, and is today widely regarded as a living bridge between India's religious communities.

A childhood drawn to mysticism across traditions

From an early age, Mumtaz Ali showed a pronounced interest in both Hindu ascetics and Muslim mystics, an inclination his biographers trace to a formative early encounter with a figure the tradition holds was Mahavatar Babaji himself, the same reputedly deathless Himalayan yogi described in Paramahansa Yogananda's "Autobiography of a Yogi." This encounter is said to have set in motion a spiritual calling that eventually led the nineteen-year-old Mumtaz Ali to leave home and travel into the Himalayas in search of a teacher, initiating the journey he would later recount in his bestselling 2010 memoir, "Apprenticed to a Himalayan Master."

Three and a half years with Maheshwarnath Babaji

In the Himalayas, near Pandukeshwar in present-day Uttarakhand, the young seeker encountered Maheshwarnath Babaji, who accepted him as a disciple and initiated him into the Nath sampradaya, giving him the spiritual name Madhukar Nath — the origin of the single initial "M" by which he is popularly known today. Over the following three and a half years, Babaji guided him through an intensive regimen combining hatha yoga asanas and pranayama, Kriya Yoga techniques for channeling prana and awakening kundalini energy, and tantric ritual and study of Nath sampradaya texts emphasizing the underlying unity of all existence. This period also included an arduous journey to Tholingmutt in Tibet, where, according to his account, he met a figure the tradition refers to as the Grand Master, deepening his training before Babaji eventually instructed him to return to ordinary life in the plains and prepare for a wider public mission.

A mission built on interfaith understanding

Rather than withdrawing into a purely monastic role, Sri M chose to marry, raise two children, and live what he describes as an entirely ordinary householder's life — declining to wear special robes or adopt visible markers of renunciation, and continuing to use his birth documents and legal name, Mumtaz Ali, alongside his adopted teaching name. He founded the Satsang Foundation as a meeting point for spiritual seekers across religious backgrounds and as a vehicle for educational initiatives, framing his core teaching around going, in his own words, to "the core" of religious traditions rather than debating their outer forms — a message he has carried through extensive public talks, including a notable 2015-2016 walking pilgrimage across India, the Walk of Hope, explicitly organized to promote communal harmony.

Teaching Kriya Yoga alongside Sri Vidya and Upanishadic study

Sri M's formal spiritual teaching centers on Kriya Yoga in the Nath tradition alongside study of the Upanishads and Sri Vidya Upasana, a Tantric worship tradition centered on the goddess as supreme reality. While acknowledging that Kriya Yoga forms his own personal lineage, or parampara, he has been notably flexible in his public teaching, emphasizing satsang — the practice of keeping company with sincere seekers and one's own inner truth — as valuable even outside formal initiation, and cautioning against total withdrawal from ordinary social life, insisting that the world itself remains a necessary touchstone for genuine spiritual practice rather than an obstacle to be escaped.

Recognition and continuing public role

In 2020, Sri M was awarded the Padma Bhushan, one of India's highest civilian honors, for distinguished service in the field of spirituality, formal recognition of a public role that has increasingly extended into commentary on education, social reform, and interfaith relations, alongside his continuing publication of books recounting further experiences from his spiritual journey. His biography — a Muslim-born Kerala boy transformed through Himalayan apprenticeship into a Nath yogi who never renounced his given name — remains central to his public message that the deepest truths of India's spiritual traditions are not the exclusive property of any single religious community.