Opening Speech by Rohit Viswanath at the 6th Tattvāloka 'Onward March to Rāma Rājya' Distinguished Lecture on December 15, 2018

"महारत्नपीठे शुभे कल्पमूले सुखासीनमादित्यकोटिप्रकाशम् ।

"सदा जानकीलक्ष्मणोपेतमेकं सदा रामचन्द्रम् भजेऽहं भजेऽहम् ॥

"Hariom! Namaste!

"Good Evening! It is indeed an evening we are all eagerly looking forward to. For today’s ‘Onward March to Rāma Rājya’ distinguished lecture promises to amplify our campaign for an enlightened society, which is but our birthright.

"In the five lectures we have had since the launch of the campaign, we have broadly developed the path to redeem ourselves from the mundane and illogical rat-race we seem to be trapped in.

"We saw how, being in our worldly career itself, we advance towards freedom by blending competence with character. This blend is crucial for our sustained career success too.

"While competence is easier to acquire, character is tougher to acquire and even harder to retain in the face of temptations. Therefore we must leverage dharma which is an indispensible tool to achieve sustained success not only in our career but also in life in general. “Dharma is like tonic which is bitter to take,” our first distinguished speaker, Padma Bhushan Dr. Mrityunjay Athreya, the first Indian to earn a PhD in Management from Harvard University, had said, adding, “but as one progress, the tonic produces favourable, honey like sweet outcomes.”

"Leadership plays an important role in shaping an orderly society. Śrī Rāma is the supreme ideal. Smt. Vishakha Hari, the second distinguished speaker, in her presentation highlighted dharma from the story of Sri Rama that could help usher Rāma Rājya in today’s society.

"The first condition for an ideal rule, she said, was a state in which its citizens are joyful. The state must be self-sufficient. There was no poverty under Śrī Rāma’s rule since the rich donated liberally to support the poor. The society supported and encouraged talent of different genres. The ministers were always engaged in the welfare of citizens.

"“They, the ministers, should be spiritually rooted and should have good preceptors,” she had emphasized, “They must not hanker after power, but rather, they must be so good that power chases them.”

"The third distinguished lecture, titled, ‘Organisational Dharma of Human Society: Lessons from Human Biology,’ by Dr. Sudha Sehayyan underscored the importance of a structured framework for humanity to have a useful existence.

"Nature, she said, has its own dissimilarities. But these dissimilar components complement each other. Every cell and structure in biology is interested in only doing its work and one does not confront other cells or structures. The variable smaller units in the biological organism jointly form a large structure, the one comprehensive whole. “This is the organisational dharma I find in biology,” Dr. Seshayyan concluded, and suggested, “similarly, smaller units in society have the responsibility to collectively work towards a harmonious whole.”

"That initiating a grand temple project, which brings together the entire society is the way forward for India to regain herself in these times of great social and intellectual ferment was the conclusion, we at Tattvāloka drew, from the fourth distinguished lecture by Dr. Chithra Madhavan.

"Our ancestors had envisioned a temple-centric society. “The temple was the sacred space which portrayed everything, from the arcane to the apparently mundane; just so as to make us realise the divinity of life,” Dr. Madhavan said.

"History teaches us that when temples were built on a grand-scale, at the same time, education, literature, music, dance, all these took great strides. A beautiful aspect of this advancement was that it was not merely a case of the building of temples going on on the one side and culture growing on the other. It was with the Lord as the base, with the temple as the centre, that both education and culture developed.

"The supremely refined dance, bharatanāṭyam, is verily a product of this temple culture. The last ‘Onward March to Rāma Rājya’ distinguished lecture by Dr. Padmaja Suresh clarified the real purpose of this dance.

"The basic element, which invokes emotions in the performer and also that which links the audience with the performer, is one and the same. “The magical web called rasa connects us all together,” she declared.

"A true practitioner of dance, a nāṭyopāsaka, she said, aims to immerse herself in that Dance which scales the heights of nāda and attain perfection or nādānta. Nādānta, the climax, is the removal of all ignorance. Just like the Vedāntic seeker pierces through the pañca koṣas or the five sheaths, a dancer progresses from the physical to the emotional to the psychical and finally to the metaphysical sheaths. He then sees that his dance on the stage is the same as the vibration of the tiniest particle of matter and also as the cosmic dance of Śiva. This is the ānanda of nādānta realised within by the practitioner of nāṭya.

"To awaken India through Harikathā, it is an honour for us, at Tattvāloka, to be partnering with the multifaceted genius Śrī Dushyanth Sridhar. He is a man of conviction. His efforts to use his skills to make Sanātana Dharma appealing to the younger generation are particularly laudable. Steeped as he is in the timeless wisdom of our land, his Harikathā presentations make us realise how every moment of life is a celebration of freedom.

"He is a leader I look up to. His gracious presence here today portends our readiness to take the campaign to next level.

"As we continue marching ahead, I urge you all to join the campaign by subscribing to Tattvāloka, which is a monthly magazine published in English and Hindi on behalf of the glorious Śrī Śāradā Pīṭhaṁ of Śŗñgerī, established by Jagadguru Ādi Śañkarācārya. Tattvāloka is dedicated to spreading knowledge of the Truth and the real values of life.

"I now invite Śrī Dushyanth to take his rightful place on the stage and also call upon Ma’am Sarala Panchapakesan ji and Śrī R. Krishnamurthy ji to come up to the stage and honour and welcome our esteemed speaker with a bouquet."

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