Inner Metamorphosis

On this occasion of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Jayanti, celebrated today, February 19, let us reflect on the enduring legacy of an empire-builder who rose against formidable odds to forge a sovereign Hindu state after centuries of foreign subjugation.  Renowned historian Sir Jadunath Sarkar, in his seminal work Shivaji and His Times (first published in 1919), captured the profound significance of Shivaji's achievements in these stirring words: "Before his rise, the Maratha race was scattered like atoms through many Deccani kingdoms. He welded them into a mighty nation. And he achieved this in the teeth of the opposition of four great Powers like the Mughal empire, Bijapur, Portuguese India, and the Abyssinians of Janjira. No other mediaeval Hindu has shown such capacity. Before he came, the Marathas were mere hirelings, mere servants of aliens. They served the State, but had no part in its management; they shed their life-blood in the army, but were denied any share in the ...

As we near the prana prathistha of Ram Mandir at Ayodhya, the usual suspects are wailing hoarsely and unabatedly. It’s pointless to argue with those wearing ideological blinkers.  However, for the sake of fence-sitters and believers, I would like to respond to some of the rhetoric doing rounds.  BJP has strategically placed the inaugural date to win Elections 2024.  An observation so brilliant that even a school kid can guess that!  Everything a political party does is motivated by the desire to win elections. They build roads, infrastructure, and public facilities for this very reason. They promise subsidies, and free bus transport (eg, Karnataka and Telangana) to win elections.  Are you going to condemn these welfare schemes just because they’re politically motivated? Are you going to stop using roads built by a party you dislike?  BJP is dividing the nation for political gains. It’s the other way round. People used BJP to achieve their goal of Ram Mandir...

“If you think that your culture is being unfairly portrayed in news, books and movies, why don’t you produce them yourself?” I’m old enough to remember how leftists used to the taunt Hindus who complained of biased representation of their religion in the popular media. At the height of their cultural monopoly, they didn’t anticipate a day when Hindus could escape their choke-hold. Enter, 2014. Leftists assert that it’s BJP’s ascendance to power that radicalized people. They’ve got it upside down. It’s the new breed of aware Hindus, energized and educated by literature on the internet (which left didn’t set its eyes on yet) that made BJP’s rise possible. Without the ideological support of these self-educated people, angry at the systematic injustice meted to their lot for decades, BJP could still have been a marginal power. Certainly not the juggernaut it has become today. No more monopoly For his seminal work on Veer Savarkar, its author Vikram Sampath got elected as a Fell...

It’s hardly a secret. We know the day will come. Yet, when it announces its arrival, we’re in denial. At some point, we begrudgingly accept it: the middle age. It’s difficult to pin the middle age. It’s probably when we experience what it means to be parents of rambunctious children and to be children of overbearing parents. When stray sprains and headaches show no signs of budging for days. When your memory fails you at the most inopportune time. During one of my long morning walks, it stuck me: what if I had misinterpreted the script of my life so far? Did I allow myself to be sentenced to silence too long? Did I willingly forfeit my right to defend myself and let others' judgment to prevail upon me? Could it be possible that guilt blinkered me from seeing how debilitating circumstances forced my hand as much as my own incapacity. The middle age, for all its attendant decays, provides one extraordinary compensation in bargain: perspective. All these years there was no data to und...

Of the many reasons we celebrate Diwali, one of the chief is the return of Shri Rama to His home after 14 years of exile. Consider our good fortune that we will see Him back home, back to his Ayodhya, after over 500 years of exile. This is the story of unyielding persistence against insurmountable odds. This is a saga of civilizational yagna against repeated assaults, two waves of Abrahamic attacks, and then from a 'secular' state that has been as much a stranger to its roots as its foreign rulers were.  I shudder to think about the kind of upbringing that results in statements like: " Shri Rama wouldn't have wanted to build his temple this way". "This is not my Hinduism". "Shouldn't we focus on economy instead of a mandir?". "Why rake up the unpleasant past? Let's look at future." It cuts a sorry figure that many of our own think this way. It only reflects how poorly conversant they are with the epics. Consider the stratagems...

Life happens between “what if” and “what is”. The chirping of winged angels at dawn wakes you up a tad too early. You’re jolted out of your dreams, but don’t have the heart to awaken into reality yet. In that chasm slip memories of yore. Some sweet, some sour. You look at your younger self with nostalgic yearning. Then, something hits you hard: the missed opportunities . What if in that critical crossroad of life you took a different path? What if you persisted a bit longer instead of yielding to circumstances? What if you had given up on that futile endeavour and focused on something worthwhile? But, that road is long gone. You can’t go back. You must wrestle with “what is”! The mind, stealthily, begins to rein the heart gone haywire and reasons: things could have been worse . Indeed, you second that; though amused. Could it be because man is a rationalizing animal and not the rational one we've prematurely assumed? Slowly, the mental fog is dispersed by the warm t...