The unveiling of the statue of the great Adi Shankaracharya, today on 5th of November, 2021 in Kedarnath, by Narendra Modi, is nothing short of a historic commemoration of an eventful event pertaining to India’s raison d’etre and its summum bonum.
Vivekanand Jha Ranchi: It was in 2017, I had paid my visit to Arrah to meet Jagatguru Shankaracharya of Puri Math. He was on a sojourn to that place. In fact, my surprise knew no bounds when a neighbour enquired of Jagatguru. Small wonder then, in order to explain him about the contemporary Jagatguru of Govardhan Peeth, I tried to dig into its illustrious antecedent: The moment I alluded to great monist, the man, to my utter discomfiture, if not panic, expressed his ignorance about the man who was instrumental behind preserving Sanatan Dharma, the Hinduism, in its current manifestation. Significantly, Diwali, we celebrated yesterday, with such enthusiasm and fanfare, owes its genesis from great Adi Shankaracharya. Had the great monist not stood up as the sentry of Sanatan Dharma, especially in such cataclysmic times when Jainism and Buddhism had unleashed its tyranny upon the sacred land of Jamboo Dwipa. During such delicate times when Sanatan Dharma was at its nadir, Shankara rose in staunch defence of it; defeating Jain and Buddhist scholars, across the length and breadth of Jamboo Dwipa, the current Bharatvarsha, and re-converting the geographical entity of erstwhile Bharatvarsha into the land of Sanatanis. But then I fell into an enigmatic silence, not uttering a word about the great monist; my heart and soul cried inconsolably, refusing to believe what my eyes beheld and ears just heard: Should an educated man, if expressed his ignorance about the man, for whose grace, we all continue to be Hindu today, what about the vast chunk of illiterates and unfettered fellow compatriots?
India, indeed is the land of wonder of all wonders. The land of Sanatanis, whose progenies, Hindus, despite being the numerical majority of Bharatvarsha and Nepal, ironically stand nationless today: Both India and Nepal have been treacherously converted into no -man’s land: India, since independence; and, Nepal, since 2008. Regrettably, whereas there are scores of nations for Christians; there are almost 57 countries for Muslims, yet, unfortunate Hindus have none. Notwithstanding the lofty claims galore, the biting reality is this: Hindus, both in India and Nepal are spineless; they have no strength to declare their own countries as theirs, and even if some dare do it, there are bloodhounds to shout them down. Why the state of the nation is so pathetic today that, until few years ago–Modi government, irrespective of its myriad omissions and commissions –the Hindus, apprehensive of publicly identifying themselves as such, at least now, can assert their identity of being a Hindu in public. No wonder the sacred land of Jamboo Dwipa, which had the divine blessings to discover and realise God, unequivocally ended up as the casualty of its own internal contradiction: The divided Hindus was the biggest curse for this eternal deprivation of Hindus being nationless. Evidently, those who were trusted with governance; those who were believed to do good for the nation, became the formidable spoil sport for alienating Hindus of their congenital right: The right to call India as Hindu Rashtra. And who did this humongous damage to the strategic interest of Hindus: Those trusted with the collective destiny of the nation.
In fact, since independence, the Machiavellian efforts were engendered to appease Muslims (the infinitesimal proportion of 7 percent, now menacingly has graduated to almost 25 percent) at the expense of furthering the interest of majority Hindus. The syllabus was recalibrated to erase the facts and to create fictions: The invaders and barbarian Malik Kafur and Khilji were mischievously depicted as the saner elements; the Goebbelsian propaganda was orchestrated to teach us that our forefathers were: From Babur to Bahadurshah Jafar, and even the remnants of our ancient and past glory of Hinduism, was obliterated from the pages of history. The conspiratorial collaboration between the unscrupulous faces of Communists, in cahoots with the cunning secularists, unleashed the venomous design to further splinter Hindus, making them feel inferior of their past; an orchestrated campaign was set in motion to demoralise Hindus of their dark past; to make them feel repentant of their heritage; to make them revulsive of their superstitious and orthodoxy, so much so that, far from evincing an iota of pride in their prized heritage, they began to swear expletives on it; revile and disparage their own antecedent. Little wonder then, in the maze of this humongous conspiracy emanating from all sides, the overwhelming glory of Hinduism was overshadowed by the avalanche of propaganda to vilify the great Aryan race and its priceless heritage.
Significantly, with benefits of hindsight, the pressing needs for Hindus is to re-discover its moorings; to retrieve its own civilisational values from the ruins of times and ravages of history. It is the high time that Hindus shake off the shackles of all the orchestrated design to perpetuate its misery through the overdoses of hyperboles of the glory of other religions while excoriating and undermining the pristine purity of its own civilisational past. Thus, the past anomalies need to be corrected; the historical distortion to suit the vested interest, needs to be adequately remedied. The great glory of Adi Shankaracharya, who was not only the one to have persevered for sustaining the great Sanatan Values but, by propagating and interpretingvthe Upanishadic teaching of non-dualism, the great monist had illuminated the universe for all time to come. Little wonder then the portrayal of his glory, from Swami Vivekananda to Nani A Palkhivala, and from the greatest of western philosophers to that of the well known mystiques–both oriental as well as occidental–the glory of the great monist remains priceless. Hence in this backdrop, even though belatedly, but nonetheless highly desirable, the unveiling of the great Adi Shankaracharya’s statue to the nation by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a welcome sign. It was long overdue; in fact, it should have been done soon after India’s independence; the fact that hitherto it was not done, indicts India’s political system in no ambiguous terms. All said and done, the government of India, all state governments, on war footing should take the initiative to teach the children the glory of Adi Shankara and non-dualism, for teaching Shankara tantamounts to revisiting India’s glorious past. Moreover, it would amount to unraveling India in its pristine past, the uniqueness of which the so called advanced Western civilization is overwhelmingly enamoured of. Thus, next time when I stumble upon someone, he or she should not ask me: ‘ Who was Adi Shankaracharya? Significantly, to restore the glory of Adi Shankaracharya, is equivalent to unraveling the raison d’etre and the summum bonum of Bharatvarsha.
