Dr Kiran Seth, 73 year old Founder of SPIC MACAY, Padma Shri awardee and former Professor Emeritus I.I.T.- Delhi is cycling from Kashmir to Kanyakumari. He started cycling on 15 August 2022 from Srinagar and is expected to reach Kanyakumari 6 months later on 19 February 2023. He entered Tamil Nadu via Hosur on 06 January 2023, and currently is in Vellore 14-17 January 2022 at Vellore Institute of Technology and exits on 18 January 2023 via Ranipet towards Chennai. On the way, he meets students, faculty, principals, educationists, ministers, donors, and the media to spread his message. Please see the detailed Tamil Nadu schedule in Annexure-1.
Dr Seth is cycling to:
- Spread the message that CYCLING is good for health – physical, mental and spiritual and for helping the
environment. - Spread the message of SPIC MACAY, enrol new volunteers and to encourage people to preserve Indian
heritage. - Promote MAHATMA GANDHI’s vision of simple living and high thinking. He cycles on a basic bike with no gears, no fancy branded accessories and no GPS!! Traveling with limited pairs of clothes and personal items with minimal stuff.
About SPIC MACAY: Society for the Promotion of Indian Classical Music And Culture Amongst Youth is a 45-year old nationwide, non-political, people’s movement and a registered society that has been organising programmes of classical music & dance, folk music & dance, meditation, yoga, cinema classic screenings, talks by eminent persons, heritage walks, craft workshops inside school and college campuses to inspire students to take an active interest in Indian heritage. Volunteers from all walks of life organise 5000 programmes every year in 800 towns of India and abroad. It promotes the spirit of giving and nishkaam seva among people.
Like India’s independence movement, got us freedom from the British and gave us our country India. SPICMACAY is a large people’s movement that brings us closer to our Indian–ness. Like the independence movement taught us an important lesson of non-violence, SPICMACAY teaches an important lesson of nishkaam seva. We called Mahatma Gandhi the Father of the Nation, today, SPICMACAY works for the children of this country.
About Dr. Kiran Seth:
Kiran Seth (born 1949) is an Indian academician and former Professor Emeritus in the department of Mechanical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology (I.I.T.) Delhi. He is most known as the founder of SPIC MACAY (1977), a non-profit organisation which promotes Indian heritage and the spirit of volunteerism.
In 2009, he was awarded the Padma Shri by the Government of India for his contribution to the Arts. Dr Seth says, that he is able to take up this challenge at the age of 73 years because of YOGA which he has been doing since his childhood. Also, he takes cycling as meditation and not just physical exercise. He wants to convey the same message to youngsters about how ability to appreciate Indian culture and Heritage makes him the invincible man that he is today. When asked why he picked cycling and not mountaineering or walking or something else, he said that nowadays cycling is more like a trend among youth rather than an exercise so he is using this trend to attract the youth to make them aware about SPIC MACAY and its purpose to “have every child experience the inspiration and mysticism embodied in Indian and World heritage”. Of course, they will realise the physical and environmental benefits of cycling.
On India’s 75th Independence Day, 15th August 2022, he started from Srinagar, Kashmir and cycled through various states stopping at villages, small and big towns, meeting different people to spread his message –
- Kashmir – Srinagar, Anantnag, Udhampur, Jammu, Kathua …
- Punjab – Pathankot, Jalandhar, Ludhiana …
- Chandigarh
- Haryana – Ambala, Yamunanagar…
- Uttarakhand – Dehradun, Rishikesh, Haridwar, Roorkee …
- Uttar Pradesh – Muzaffarnagar, Meerut to reach Delhi on 2nd October – Gandhi Jayanthi.
- He then left Delhi to cycle through …
- Uttar Pradesh – NOIDA, Khurja, Aligarh, Agra …
- Madhya Pradesh – Dholpur, Gwalior, Datia, Jhansi, Bhopal, Hoshangabad, Itarsi, Betul …
- Maharashtra – Nagpur, Sevagram Wardha …
- Telangana – Adilabad, Nizamabad, Hyderabad, Kurnool, Pamidi, Anantapur …
- Karnataka – Bagepalli, Tumkur, Bengaluru ….
- He entered Tamil Nadu on 06 January 2022 from Bengaluru (Karnataka) to Hosur and will be proceeding via many towns and cities in Tamilnadu & Puducherry including Vellore, Kanchipuram, Ranipet, Chengelpet, Chennai, Trichy, Madurai & Tirunelveli to reach Kanyakumari.
Jayashree Kannan State Coordinator SPIC MACAY Tamil Nadu- 9841816134, jsriknan@gmail.com
