Venkataraman Shastri (IAST: Veṅkatarāmaṇ Śāstrī) was born on 14 March 1884 to a resolute Tamil Brahmin family.
Due to his knowledge of the language, he was conferred the title "Saraswati" at the age of 16 by the Madras Sanskrit Association in July 1899.
[4] Venkataraman worked under Gopal Krishna Gokhale in 1905 for the National Education Movement and the South African Indian problems.
However, his spiritual practice was interrupted when he was pressured by nationalist leaders to head the newly-started National College at Rajamahendry.
[6] Returning to Sringeri, Venkataraman spent the next eight years studying Advaita Vedanta and Sastra (scripture) under Jagadguru Sankaracarya Satcitananda Sivabhinava Nrisimha Bharati.
Mohammad Ali Jouhar, Shaukat Ali, Saifuddin Kitchlew, Maulana Hussain Ahmed, Pir Ghulam Mujaddid, Maulana Nisar Ahmed, and Bharatikrishna were charged with preaching in favor of a fatwa issued by the Muslim religious heads of India advocating all Muslims to not cooperate with the government.
[9][10] As Shankaracharya of Govardhana Matha, Bharatikrishna toured several countries in thirty-five years to promote Dharma and Indian culture.
[8] He wrote a number of treatises and books on religion, science, mathematics, world peace, and social issues.
[11] In February 1958, Bharatikrishna went to Britain and the United States to speak on Vedanta, staying for three months in Los Angeles, California.
In 1965, a Chair of Vedic Studies was founded at Banaras Hindu University by Arvind N. Mafatlal, a generous Mumbai business magnate and devotee of Bharatikrishna.
[13] Bharatikrishna's book, Vedic Mathematics, is a list of sixteen terse sūtras, or "aphorisms", discussing strategies for mental calculation.
Bharatikrishna claimed that he found the sūtras after years of studying the Vedas, a set of sacred ancient Hindu scriptures.