Transcript of the guest lecture delivered by Rohit Viswanath, Deputy Editor, Tattvāloka, at the Oriental Institute of Science and Technology, Bhopal, on August 3, 2018.

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"Śrī Gurubhyo Namaḥ

"I am honoured to be standing before you today, in this hallowed auditorium of the Oriental Institute of Science and Technology. I can feel here the presence of the Divine Mother, Śāradā. With all humility and reverence, I invoke her grace. May she guide us all on the true path.

"Esteemed Rajesh Sahni ji, Jaya ji, other dignitaries present and my dear young friends,

"When I was invited to speak here on my life’s trajectory, I was deeply embarrassed. However, when I thought over it, I decided not to shy away from this opportunity. There is something different about the way I live. And if sharing my story is going to help you, my dear young comrades, there isn’t a greater reward I can ask for.

"I take the liberty, therefore, to introduce myself.

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"I belong to the sect called the Palakkad Iyers. Palakkad, as you know, is a district in Kerala. Iyers are Tamil speaking Brahmins. My ancestors, who perhaps hailed from the Kumbhakonam-Tanjavur regions of Tamil Nadu, migrated to the Chera kingdom or Kerala, centuries ago, in pursuit of better livelihood. From the Palakkad agrahāram or village, my grandfathers moved to the city of Calicut, again in the pursuit of wealth. My maternal grandfather was even more adventurous. He went all the way up to Delhi. My father moved to Bombay from Calicut for employment.

"So, my mother being a Dilliwali, I was born in Delhi and I grew up in Mumbai.

"Since my parents were working professionals, I had great freedom as a child. I used to loiter after school, play all sorts of pranks and even smoked cigarettes as a 11 year old. It was the time when India had just initiated liberalisation. The internet revolutionised the media space and it was exploding with all sorts of content. This exposure coloured my perception of the world.

"For obvious reasons, I was a flunk in school. My roll number and rank were the same always; my father’s name starts with the letter ‘V,’ you’ll all understand! When I finished my 10th, I had no clue of what to do next. People suggested that I should take up Commerce, ‘there’s scope in it,’ they said. Blindly, I followed their advice.

"Soon I realised that I didn’t understand a thing of what was being taught. I failed my 11^th and my parents were worried. Some suggested that I be sent away to a military or a vocational school. I was utterly depressed.

"I wanted to be in the mainstream and somehow I managed to convince my parents to allow me to study the Arts and Humanities. I fell in love with the discipline.

"As luck would have it, I got admitted to one of the most reputed Arts colleges in the country. And there, I happened to major in Ancient Indian Culture or what is called Indology. Indology is the study of Indian religion and philosophy, art and architecture, music, dance and literature. I even happened to participate in the archaeological excavations in Gilund in Rajasthan, the significant site of the Ahar-Banas chalcolithic culture. Thus you see that, while in college, I gained understanding of how our ancestors lived and the profound wisdom they have bequeathed to us.

"By the time I was finishing college, I had made up my mind to pursue journalism as my profession. But Indology, I thought, was too niche a field to enable me to make a mark as a journalist. Therefore, I went abroad to England to study Politics. I returned to India with a Master’s degree in International Relations.

"In the brief career as a journalist that followed, I realised that I was blessed with the providential gift of being a communicator of the truth. But the realisation also led me to frustration, since there is no platform available in ‘mainstream’ media where I could express myself freely. The frustration prompted me to move out of journalism. After spending a few years as a public policy researcher at a Delhi based think-tank and then in the corporate world, I decided that the gift I was endowed with was too precious to be wasted in senseless pursuits.

"My last assignment for which I moved to Chennai was at the office of a prominent politician of Tamil Nadu. My role there as a public relations consultant to his election campaign, exposed me to the complexities of Dravidian politics and to the seeming impasse leaders were struggling with. I quit as soon as I realised that it was impossible for my feeble voice to get to the top-most rung of hierarchy. There was no point wasting time.

"Consequently, I embarked on a journey of self-discovery. The learning was valuable. In the course of my journey, I made friends who helped me understand myself and society better. I value my association with a humble panwala in Chennai. He and I shared much in common, including our veneration for Mahatma Gandhi that inspires our own quest for the truth and our commitment towards society. The two of us dreamt of lifting society from the despicable depths it has reached. We concurred that reminding people of the lofty message of Lord Rāma would be a good starting point.

"It is with this in mind that we planned a Rāmalīlā in Chennai. A journalist friend helped us get some initial publicity for the idea and his report appeared in The Times of India. Subsequently, we launched an online social media campaign for which we received good response. I am happy to tell you that the Rāmalīlā we organised, was the first ever such celebration of Lord Rama in the Dravidian heartland and, it was a grand success.

"Subsequently, I spent time consolidating my thoughts and in writing. It helped me gain clarity of how I should live and how an ideal modern society should be. Based on the insights I gained, I have initiated the 'Parallel Government Movement' with the aim of empowering society with absolute freedom.

"Divine grace soon led me to Tattvāloka, a unit of the glorious Sri Sharada Peetham of Sringeri, established by Jagadguru Ādi Śaṅkarācārya, in the 8th century. It is the best possible platform I can ever dream of.

"Tattvāloka is a magazine, published in English and Hindi, dedicated to spreading knowledge of the Truth and real values of life as explained in the Upaniṣads and other scriptures. Each issue is a showcase of our timeless culture and wisdom, with articles covering yoga, mudras, meditation, self-management, family values and techniques of leading a stress-free life. There is a children’s section that seeks to inculcate basic ideals in growing minds, including puzzles on epics and moral stories. There is also a section relevant to modern management and working executives to underscore the values of good leadership as taught in the Bhagavad Gītā and other texts.

"In addition to our monthly magazine and other activities, Tattvāloka has recently launched a Distinguished Lecture Series called, 'Onward March to Rāma Rājya'. It is aimed at enabling civil society to accelerate on the road to enlightened citizenship.

"Coincidentally, this campaign 'Onward March to Rāma Rājya,’ is a culmination of my own learning from life. You must be curious to know what ground-breaking facts I have gathered in my brief and speckled life that I have just described that endows me with the confidence to attempt to change the world.

"Let me try to explain to you briefly.

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"You will all agree that modern science, pioneered by the west and accepted by the world, is chasing infinity. It has achieved some great successes. Scientific enquiry is integral to contemporary culture. Modern science helped society defeat superstition. It has emerged as the cornerstone of modern civilisation.

"A culture based purely on modern science is, however, incomplete because it is limited by human perception. Modern science is based on the western paradigm which is defined by its outward looking world-view. Central to it are the five sensory organs of the human body viz. the ears, eyes, nose, tongue and skin that enable the mind to look outward. As soon as one takes this approach to life, he plunges into a malicious sequence of divisions. The fundamental rupture that takes place is the sense of disconnect between the viewer and the viewed. The petty ego starts taking shape here.

"The five human senses are assumed to be real because they aid the mind to comprehend. Once there is identification with the mind, identification with the body follows. We think that we exist in space because we perceive the body. Yet space itself is infinite, seamless and beyond mind’s comprehension. We find that once the individual has been isolated, all other dissections of infinity are easy. Thus, the body-mind complex of the individual ego, assumed to be the absolute truth, forms the starting point of this paradigm.

"The inputs received by the mind from the sensory organs are recorded as experiences of the world. The mind categorises these experiences into likes and dislikes, attachments and fears. Likes and attachments are pursued whereas the dislikes and fears are avoided. The body and its pleasure, sensual pleasure, thus, have become the starting point of contemporary culture and of the general public quest.

"Shared likes and attachments at the mass level means a market. Economics evolved in response to this public fixation with the sensual pursuit. By spurring competition among individuals, economics eliminates the economically impoverished from the chase of the 'limited' sensual goods and supports the wily in their abuse of the world.

"Shared fears means space for a powerful guardian. The guardian, which is the government, lends 'legitimacy' to the market economy and protects it from any challenge. The representative democracy form of government, in a neo-liberal set up like ours, thus, is easily the most illicit scheme that has taken shape yet. Claiming to champion the voice of the marginalised and the poor, by design it ensures that the interests of the ignorant rich and powerful are always safe-guarded! No wonder that this puerile ‘paradigm’ is at the root of all the problems we are faced with!

"Most present discourse on public welfare centres on the material. It is a failure of our leadership that public policy seems to lend recognition to this fallacy. No wonder that abject materialism is the order of the day.

"The greatest victim of this approach has been the sheer human potential. Knowledge is wisdom that defines the human. Seeking to bracket knowledge various disciplines of science have rendered the human utterly finite.

"The world is so convinced that it defends the paradigm with missionary zeal. So much so that dominant socio-political theories are based on the idea of materialism. Governments that resist it and their leaders are branded rogues and eventually butchered.

"Humanity is proof that theories based on untruth eventually die. So Communism, once the dominant socio-political theory, died. It is a tragedy that Communism’s successful annihilation was appropriated by the same materialists. Neo-liberal intellectuals celebrated the death of Communism as a shot in the arm to Capitalism. Now Capitalism too is crumbling. It has already caused the unprecedented plunder of nature. It has brought upon man a grave existential crisis.

"Communist leaders enhanced their power in the name of the community. Capitalists aggrandise power in the name of the individual. Humanity is but a market where individuals are mere consumers.

"The machinery employed to sustain contemporary material culture is colossal. It churns out abundant propaganda. Untruths painted with zillion colours saturate every nook and corner imaginable in the world. They capitalise on every possible sphere of the individual life as well.

"The campaign thus, sustained over several generations, has successfully declared a stark untruth to be the ultimate truth.

"The five elements of nature and the most important of them, Mother Earth, are the material. Fashion what you will of it. For fashion is but a construct of the mind. Fashion produces pleasure. The human search for happiness has been reduced to the pursuit of sensual gratification.

"Material culture chases material wealth. Economic activities are touted as angelic opportunities for wealth, and thereby welfare, to trickle down. The linkages, in the manufacturing and marketing chain, are touted as the greatest success in this regard. At every imaginable stage is a middle-man who adds value to the product or service. Take the effort to commercialise the most simple and utilitarian loin cloth as an illustration. By a branding exercise was achieved the transformation of the humble kaupīna, or langot as it is known, to the fancy lingerie. All it needed were a handful of gluttons sourcing fashion from France, manufacturing from China, raw material from Bangladesh and using American marketing. For greater value-add to the lingerie user, the gluttons may even consider setting up a customer care helpline based in India.

"The government plays a crucial role, in the elaborate system, as the catalyst. Its emphasis on getting every individual bound to the economy and by the economy means if one is not part of the market then he is not part of society. It follows then that bondage is a given. Slavery undergoes re-branding every now and then. It was colonialism then. It is neo-colonialism now.

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"But common sense tells us that it is freedom that is our birth-right, not bondage. Freedom is not like the Promised Land of the Communists. It does not require waiting till eternity to eventually trickle down as the Capitalists would like us to believe. Freedom is bliss. Happiness gushes and it does so here and now. Peace is absolute freedom, absolute love and hence absolute happiness. To be in peace is to be in bliss. It is Dharma, the natural order.

"The need of the hour is a new age of enlightenment. Life in such an environment would be one where our spirits are not shackled by insecurities.

"This new age of enlightenment can come only if we turn our focus from the ‘outward’ to the ‘inward’. When I look inward, I realise that I am the perfect being. I am the bravest of the brave. There is nothing in the whole wide world that can make me insecure. Having defeated even the fear of death, I am verily superhuman. I drink the elixir of immortality by contemplating on life and its various stages of childhood, youth and old age. Knowing well that forms are unreal, I see that the corporal form, or the body, undergoes perpetual transformation. Rational enquiry eventually leads me to know myself as manifestation of pure wisdom. My identity, thus, is verily the light that shimmers eternally.

"It was the outward looking paradigm that drove my ancestors away from their roots and it is the inward looking paradigm that has brought me back home, to my own Self.

"The understanding of this Truth alone will lead to absolute freedom and hence happiness, peace and progress. Thus will be the age of enlightenment realised.

"You must all be wondering what will be left to do in such a society, once we have achieved it. History is proof that it is such rational and free-thinking civilizations that have left behind, for us to witness, and to get inspired, creative masterpieces in every imaginable aspect of human endeavour.

"I am convinced that such a world is an attainable goal worth striving for. And a society that supports the pursuit of this goal, to achieve absolute freedom, by its citizens is verily an enlightened one.

"I urge you all to join me in the march forward to realise this dream of Rāma Rājya.

"Glory to Śrī Rāma. Glory to the one who shines in all of us as Atmārāma."

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