Pant Balekundri Heritage Site
Samadhi and ashram of Pant Maharaj (1855-1905), a Datta-tradition saint of the Belagavi region, whose shrine and eternal flame draw a multi-day pilgrimage procession from the city each October.
Pant Maharaj, born Dattatreya Ramchandra Kulkarni in 1855, spent 23 years teaching at the London Mission School in Belgaum before devoting himself fully to spiritual life; his followers regard him as an incarnation of Dattatreya, the Hindu deity combining Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. He spent much of his life in his family’s ancestral village of Balekundri on the outskirts of Belagavi, which was later informally renamed Pant Balekundri in his honour.
The ashram and temple built around his samadhi houses the wooden padukas (sandals) he wore in life, and just behind the shrine stands an akhand jyot — an eternal flame kept burning continuously since his cremation there in 1905 beneath a fig tree. Each October, thousands of devotees from Karnataka, Maharashtra, and Goa mark his punyatithi (death anniversary) with a three-day observance, including a roughly 15 km procession carrying a holy flag from Belagavi city to the shrine.
Getting there: Pant Balekundri is about 5 km from central Belagavi. The post office serves the Balekundri locality directly.
The site itself
Where to get your stamp cancelled
This may not be next to the site itself — some post offices serve several nearby landmarks.
- Post office
- Balekundri Post Office
- Pincode
- 591103
- Address
- Balekundri Post Office, Pant Balekundri, Belagavi Taluk, Belagavi District, Karnataka
Sources
- Project maintainer transcription of the physical Philately Passport booklet (district/landmark/post office list)
- Panth Maharaj — Wikipedia