Mansukh Patel is a humanitarian, author and yoga and meditation expert who teaches on retreats worldwide. He co-created the World Peace Flame, an international peace project which runs humanitarian projects across the globe. Mansukh has been the recipient of peace awards including the Howard Thurman Peace Award and the Shanti Ratna, or jewel of peace award.
The idea of giving back to the world is a value which burns brightly for. Since developing the stress-busting yoga and meditation techniques which have made his work so relevant to many people, Mansukh decided to take them to where they were most needed – into conflict zones. This led him to Bosnia and Coatia in 1996, where he and his colleagues offered trauma healing workshops to people affected by the conflict. In Russia, Mansukh taught child psychologists from Chechnya and Ingushetia healing yoga methods which relieve stress and deep-seated trauma. Mansukh’s trauma healing methods are taught today in Nepal, as Mansukh supports the charity ‘Shtrii Shakti’ which has translated some of Mansukh’s books into Nepalese, and which takes these techniques into the civil war-torn country.
One of the areas where Mansukh has developed humanitarian projects is in the land of his parents’ birth – South Gujarat in India, where there is much poverty in the villages and tribal areas, despite the increased standard of living for the better off in the cities. Together with his colleague Thakor Patel, who lives in Gujarat, Mansukh instigated free medical clinics which are held regularly throughout the year. Mansukh and Thakor realised that operations which are taken for granted in the West, like cataract and cleft lip corrections, were way beyond the budget of millions of impoverished people in India.
Mansukh Patel, together with Savitri MacCuish, was also the instigator of the World Peace Flame. In 1999 Mansukh and his colleagues wanted to create a living, universal symbol of world peace for the millennium. They hit upon the idea of an eternal flame, lit by peacemakers on the different continents. During the spring of 1999, Mansukh and Savitri organised for flames to be lit on five continents. The flames were flown to the UK by military and commercial aircraft, where they were united into the World Peace Flame. Today it is estimated that over 5 million people light the world peace flame regularly. The World Peace Flame has opened prestigious events, for example, the Berlin Film festival’s cinema for peace, which was attended by Dustin Hoffman, Bob Geldof and other celebrities. The actor Christopher Lee and Mansukh also participated in the opening ceremony of the cinema for peace. Mansukh has taken the World Peace Flame across the globe, for example to Japan where the flame was united with the Hiroshima flame, which was lit from the burning embers of the Hiroshima bomb. Mansukh has presented to the World Peace Flame to Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Richard Attenborough. In 2003, in recognition of his humanitarian work, Mansukh was presented with the Howard Thurman Peace Award in Atlanta USA, which has been previously presented to Nelson Mandela, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Reverend Jessie Jackson.
In 2004, Mansukh was presented with the ‘Shanti Ratna’ peace award in Hyderabad in recognition for his peace projects, and in the same year, Mansukh, Savitri and the World Peace Flame opened the Barcelona Parliament of World Religions.