Annamalai Swami (1906-1995) is considered an important Indian jnani, a devotee of Ramana Maharshi (Bhagavan).

Annamalai Swami was born in Tondankurichi, a small village of Cuddalore district in Tamil Nadu, south-west of India, and received from her parents the name: Sella Perumal. His father was an important person in the village, working as a farmer, astrologer, painter and builder, who could also fabricate and erect statues gopuram (towers of temples). Perumal was a young man with limited education who at 17 ran away from home and has become a sannyasi.

In 1928, when he was 22 years old, he traveled to Tiruvannamalai to meet Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi who lived near the city along the base of the slope of the holy mountain Arunachala. Perumal became the Maharshi’s personal attendant and given the name Annamalai Swami (Annamalai is another name for Arunachala). Swami Annamalai’s duties, after being directed to do so by Sri Ramana, was to oversee all phases of the ongoing construction, continuing expansion, and positive growth of the Ramana Ashram, including the goshala (cow shed), dining hall, dispensary and other projects.

In 1938, ten years after his arrival in Tiruvannamalai, Swami Annamalai realized the Self, awakening to the Absolute under the grace and light of Sri Ramana. Five or six years later, sometime in the mid-1940s, Ramana instructed him to leave the ashram and engage in intense Sadhana.

Following his departure from Sri Ramanasramam, Annanamalai took up a quiet, austere life in his own hut in Palakottu (Palakothu), an area that borders

the western boundary adjacent to his Ramana’s home. He would occasionally meet Ramana on his walks, but never again in the fifty years that followed did he reenter Sri Ramanasramam nor engage in conversation with him.

A few years after his departure, acting on Ramana’s instructions, he built the Sri Annamalai Swami Ashram which is located near Sri Ramanasramam. He lived there until his death on November 9, 1995.