thank you so much everyone for waiting so patiently finally all our guests are here and we'll formally start the event any minute now vak mahakaya snar let's start the event by praying uh to vnaa Vay [Applause] a very good evening to everyone I welcome you all on behalf of thinkers Forum Bengaluru uh welcome to this evening of deliberation and discussion on a very important theme of this era J prti Loc which means the people are the rulers of the world and this theme becomes extremely important when we embark on this discussion today about decolonization democracy and Dharma for this conversation uh we have all our guests with us I am uh pleased to invite SRI Mand Das Pai the chairman of RN Capital Partners I request our volunteer GTI to please uh bring the momentto to the states next I invite Shri shrimati Priam Modi Gandhi the author of many successful book and her latest one being what if there is no Congress next we are very pleased to have a guest with us all the way from UK Pandit Satish K Sharma G fellow of the royal Asiatic Society author and dharmic theologian and lastly and most uh excitedly I welcome uh intellectual Superstar and the Supreme Court uh lawyer [Applause] uh I request rajes padmar G to come to the stage to hand over momentos to all our guests uh I request deanan G to come on the stage to hand over the momentos to our guests [Applause] uh I'll not keep you all waiting we'll start uh today's session with uh Priam Modi Gandhi g on her uh talk on her latest book [Applause] good evening everybody a very warm welcome to all of you who have taken the time to come listen to us today so when madam surui sent me the topic for my talk the grand old party making an unmaking of the grand old party which is the congress party very interesting my my latest book is called what if there was no Congress for those uh you know who are not acquainted so this was a very uh this is very interesting for me to speak on so let's begin you see the Apple doesn't fall far from the tree and the apple of the congress party who is running the party today the Shada he's not Fallen very far from the tree he has continued that Legacy of misrule in fact if at all one can say that after having foreign blood mixed in he's become even more hybrid and even more poisonous so I'll explain why Mr you're going to [Laughter] chle no okay so there are many of you you know who are now going to vote we are in election season so I'll just talk about fight points I'll make five simple points and then you guys make a decision about whether it's a more hybrid a more poisonous version of the party or not my first point is on National Security so from the time of Pandit Neu even before partition see you we all know that he called himself the last Englishman to rule India and of course as an English man he structured the country in such a way he made up policies in such a way he compromised National Security in such a way as if he was perpetually trying to please his English Masters which is why even before partition right from Northwest Frontier province which are strategic land for us to during partition also we had so many negotiating chips to negotiate and sort of keep the land to ourselves as much as we could because Muhammad Ali Jenna was willing to accept a matchbox size Pakistan as per British records but Pandit Neu chose not to negotiate he chose to give away that land even before independence in uh 1946 he's written a letter when the Brits asked him can you recommend how we can give you Freedom he said oh I think you should divide this bhatar into multiple parts balcon IE it okay the small princely states that are in the neighborhood should form groups and those groups can function like independent entities the big princely states can function like independent entities Pakistan obviously should be given away so he was willing to balcon IE the country and give away strategic land even during his Teno he gave away half half of Jammu and Kashmir to China and Pakistan half yeah kachu islands we all thought we all know he thought they were small inconsequential pieces of land which were his to give away so the family has consistently given away land as if they own it yeah our mother land and his daughter Indra G carried on that Legacy in The Liberation War we must ask this question why wasn't the Indian flag unfolded on the land that was originally ours why not yeah that would make more sense but however like I said the family has consistently had Masters which were not Indian and now with more foreign blood mixed into them where these Masters are how how many they are and what exactly they do and how exactly they interfere in our country through the congress party is not completely clear and that's where the danger lies the second point that I want to make is on terrorism and violence for India because of Decades of Congress rule we thought violence was okay violence was normal whether it was the khalistan issue even before that during indra's time when the gaak Shak came to the parliament demanding that you please protect the cows she she ordered open fire at them then it is whether it which turned into communal rats then whether it was um you know during her term the khalistan issue that she conceived and created after that the anti-s ri the 93 Bomb Blast in Bombay the whole 2000's era of extreme terrorism we thought it was okay to live in a country where there is this much violence and terrorism that was normal for us it was normal for us to think that okay it's Independence Day and Republic Day maybe there is a red alert maybe either bombast maybe either cooker bomb maybe contrast that to today you know in 10 years we've followed a zero tolerance policy on violence thanks to a very strong prime minister who follows a zero tolerance policy you know here I want to give an anecdote about Prime Minister Modi since you all clapped so much you know when I said his name when he was chief minister of Gujarat he was on a show on National media and uh the interviewer asked him that you take such a strong stand on violence why so then chief minister Narendra Modi said so then the interview followed it up with another question what about the global pressure sir so then chief minister Narendra Modi said consa Global pressure we are 1if of the world population we will create Global pressure and that's exactly what we are doing now my third point out of the Five Points my third point that I want to make is on the economy on poverty once again just like violence we okay before that let's say the Shada of the congress party just a few weeks a week ago I think in his speech he said vote the congress party to power and in all your accounts which by the way Prime Minister Modi has uh enabled in all your accounts we will put in lacks of money katakat katakat katakat katakat huh and poty will go away in one instant you know he has forgotten it and I say that in every family we are all family we all have family we understand there are weak children in every family who need special attention so we must remind him so we must [Applause] remind that that it is his family that ran the garbe hatau slogan for over 60 years it is his family that kept saying and he's still saying with his own katakat logic but the truth lies in the fact fact that in the last 10 years under prime minister Narendra Modi prime minister Narendra modi's government has brought 25 CR people out of multi-dimensional poverty without this Nar [Applause] Bazi that is the contrast right so the choice is clear my fourth point that I want to make is on the economy when Narendra Modi government inherited the economy we were a fragile five economy which means what does fragile five mean a fragile five economy in the world means that is the economy that this government inherited in 2014 but in the last 10 years they have brought us from fragile five to top five economy in the world and in the next two years sir please correct me if I'm wrong Mr P we'll reach top three also in about two or three years two years so that's that is what is that is what we've achieved and of course where money lies businesses lie jobs lie Investments lie so that is your growth map right my last and final point that I want to make in this unraveling of the grand old congress party is on sanatan which is the most important point in my opinion see our minds were so colonized by this last English man who was handed power Pandit Neu when the British left that they enabled this you know continuous thinking thatan way to live life how you eat is not right you know with your hands and all not right what you eat what is this food not right you know how what you wear not right not good enough you talk your local language not good enough you don't talk accented English not good enough you know we've been systematically fed this thinking in our minds by these non- Indians you know finally now you know I think in 2014 a civilization woke up our civilization woke up we realize that there's a reason why bhat was was the most modern was the most uh knowledgeable civilization because of which there were thousands of you know rules of um years of rule of you know thousands of years of invasions and people wanted to come steal our science and people wanted to come steal our wealth Etc so the civilization took it in our hands and said no we we want to achieve that glory and we will achieve that glory and of course Mr de voices like Mr Sai Deepa have a big role to play in that so thank you I think uh the country is obliged sir so before I end we we want I want to make this point how the Congress Legacy continues which is anti-satan once again the Shada few weeks ago in His Infinite Wisdom Mr Rahul Gandhi in His Infinite Wisdom made a comment in my home City Mumbai and I quote him Hindu Shish Madu [Applause] [Music] that is the power of sh so having said that I feel the uh the you know the congress party now that it's fighting against shaki I mean I don't think it can survive anymore I mean it's not in our hands anymore you know it's they they they've lost it it's shaki has taken over and uh so please vote wisely we're in election season and with that I uh end my speech so Sia Ram chandrai thank you j h thank you pram G for finding that we have come a long way and why the congress party seems very redundant today uh next I request Mr Mand Das Pai to uh talk on the importance of fostering dialogue in [Applause] decolonization dignitaries and my brothers and sisters I'm very happy to be here is an intellectual Feast to have such great intellects come and talk to us about a very important topic iPic I'll quote Pandit Neu on the 14th night midnight of 1947 when the Indian Parliament met for the first time as a free country long ago we made a Trice with Destiny and the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge at this hour of midnight and the world sleeps India will awaken to life and Freedom the soul of a Nation long suppressed finds utterance and so on we got our political Freedom then but the soul of a Nation long suppressed did not find utterance one set of imperialistic white rulers were replaced by another set of imperialistic brown rulers and India continues as before Delhi ruled us Lans Delhi came up they shared in the spoils and we remained in poverty and ignorance in 1950 when you got a constitution with the his country in Asia China was destroyed Japan was destroyed southeast Asia was destroyed Great Britain ERS 1.5 billion pounds for the war effort of the five richest families in Asia three were Indian and what did the first Prime Minister do being educated in the UK under the influence of the Fabian socialist and Harrow he suppressed indian private capital and the Indian people he brought in socialism he brought in price controls license Gandhi had warned himar we became bis but in 1950 to 1980 we became poorer relatively in the world than in 1950 remember this remember this we became poorer we more beaten down in 1980 the world has no respect for us because we are poor we are Beggars people in the 60s wrote about how the Indian Nation will St we had famine in 67 68 69 Lenard Johnson under PL 480 much before all of you most of you were born used to send us grain ships of full of Wheat and weed to live Ship by sheep and we had u l bad shastri tell us eat one meal less a day we were a starved country we ate one meal less a day those are bad times and why is that because we were suppressed by bad economic policies the world grew by 4.5% year 1950 to 80 Asia grew by 6.5% India grew by 3.55% population grew by 2.5% and per capita income grew 1% a year for 30 years important for you to understand right and then 1980 to 90 we opened up economy grew 5.5% and people population grew 2.25% per capita income 3.25% but our debt went from 20 billion in8 in 80 to 80 billion in 1991 and we had no foreign exchange we have broke 15 days foreign exchange we mortgage of gold took $400 million took an IMF loan opened up and from that time till now GDP has grown from 532,000 crores to 2 lakh 94,000 crores in 31st of March 202 24 a growth rate of 133% per year in rupees and in dollars from 275 billion to about nearly $3.6 trillion a growth of 8% per year in dollars for 33 years that is the genius of the Indian people remember this never forget you must defend your political Freedom your social freedom and your economic freedom we are free economic creatures government is not our Master they cannot be imperialistic rule in Delhi that NAU did because of his background and because of that family I felt a little bit EMB embarrassed when he spoke about the truth about the family because you know I am part of that beaten generation I'm part of the beaten generation I graduated in 82 with a rank in CA but we had no hope in this country I didn't go abroad but we had no hope in this country and we were the defeated people didn't know much of course now we are very successful we done very well but I like your courage and how you speak openly I'm astonished at the freedom of speech that you have today because this country has lived in fear has lived in fear fear till 2014 fear of Retribution and it's the fear that created the elal bond scheme because people will not give money to political parties openly because they feel a vindictive government can hurt them income rates used to come everything used to happen of course when rates happened ear side you know people called up the government and spoke to the minister he made a deal and he stopped now you can't speak to anybody it doesn't stop that's a problem there another another kind of operation that is come I wanted to listen to hear all this and then I'll come to what is going to happen now I think is very important and now we seen over the last 5 Seven 8 years a new set of very smart young intellectually oriented very logical people with data and facts stand up in India speak boldly and talk about the India of the future and create a narrative based on a civilization based on a Heritage based on a value system all that is very good and Noble about the India of the past and the India that's going to come in the future so that we can all stand in the world with no fear and speak of Mind as inheritors of this world with 17% of the world's population and we shall work together to define the future based on Dharma democracy and decolonization this cannot happen without Dharma because Dharma permites our soul every bit of us speaks about Dharma it is there in our DNA you can take an Indian out of an Indian but you can't take Dharma out of an Indian and democracy we inherently Democratic because we're so diverse inherently Democratic we give space for everybody they the only civilization in the world please tell me if I'm wrong because you're wiser than me where the scholar sits on the top of the totem pole one of the most powerful people in this country is Sak and prian and Pandit G because we listen to them because they're Scholars and this country respect the scholar not the soldier first all countries have the soldier at the top here it is the scholar in the Old King in the old King's Palace in the court when the Raj Guru comes in the king comes down and washes his feet treats him makes him come sit next to him on a Higher Throne and listens to him why because that is knowledge knowledge is the most powerful thing human beings can have in Civilization there's only one person in the world who has the power of the soldier and the power of the scholar the US president and he can press the button and blow up the world and our forefathers knew knowledge with the sword is too powerful it has to be kept separate and people with knowledge should pursue knowledge and not richness and not wealth because you can with that knowledge create great wealth and Destroy Society it is done in a very subtle way and we are amazed at that as recreate India will grow Rich $5 trillion by 2027 earlier $6 and5 trillion by 2029 10 trillions 2032 33 one more year doesn't matter what does it matter we've been around 5,000 years but India is an ascendency and young India people all of you like this are bold courageous Fearless logical and speak with data and that is what will take India forward and today we'll have people like one of the great thinkers of last 7 years will argue before you how to create a decolonized mind remove the vestages of colonization of slavery for 800 years thousand years or 800 years is debatable and after Independence where the imperialistic rulers in Delhi and the cohorts tried to suppress our freedom and make us feel bad about what we are and about our heritage about our civilization denied us our past to perpetuate the same kind of of rule but they're losing out they're losing out because Bright Young Indians like saak and prian in India are coming and talking and explaining and arguing with them and you can't win arguments against the truth when they speak the truth with the passion and energy they have and is going to do it now and you heard prianka a what did Modi say trailer trailer when you use pran when Priyanka is a trailer Mich and Pandi come Pandi is fighting his own battle in the UK and the British can't put him down not can the jihadis in UK put him down and because his mind is pure logical he's a thinking person very polite and that's they we got to be Sai is of course a little bit more aggressive little bit more V because a much younger man blood is very hot and it's very natural when you're young you got blood has got to be hot prian is also like that blood is very hot hopefully with age you know they be slightly milder though sigh you should continue like this so I want to stop here I want to stop here and say I'm very proud of my country I'm very proud of young people like Sai like prian I'm very proud of Vikram shath the resident intellectual for Bangalore for many years the resident intellectual from for Bangalore for many years was ramchandra guha lately no he's a brilliant man please please brilliant man lately he's become very bitter for whatever reasons because he thinks he has a duty to save India we don't want to be saved that's the problem but he feels an obligation to save all of us from whatever he thinks is wrong about this country there nothing wrong about this country from himself from himself and then we have a young man Vikram saath who has come and spoken to us of about the past viam is a residental intellectual for for Bangalore Sai is of course a resident intellectual for the whole of India and you know Bombay has a resident intellectual s you need to go there to improve the St Shad I feel little bit indifferent Shad is there of course Bengal has somebody I don't know who is in Bengal I really can't remember any intellectual M banerji could be that Chennai of course has some dravidan I don't know who it is s they lost all the intellectuals for the last 60 years right they drw them away right right an I mean intellectually the politician he has to become a little bit more he has to write books like sh and argue so I think the time has come when you create the indiaan narrative you must listen to all of them make up your own mind stand for India hold your head head high and make sure that India is respected on the world India is respected and carry India in the future because for the next 30 years we need all of you to fight the battle to take this country forward we're the greatest of all human civilization and he must regain the spot thank [Applause] you thank you Mr fi for reminding us about our civilizational values and what uh inspiring us to do our bit much better for our country next I invite Pandit Satish K Sharma G to bring us an international perspective Ive on Dharma and [Applause] decolonization om griam thank you Bangalore for such a warm welcome and thank you to the previous speakers for having raised the energy so high that it's an easy act for somebody who's quiet and soft spoken to follow I'd also like to thank the thinkers forum for having brought such an incredibly diverse and amazingly energetic and very very powerful group together so thank you for your vision in bringing everyone here before I start I'd just like to also declare that I have discovered a new deep friend because amongst deep friends there are only deep friends who do certain things to each other and it would only be a deep friend who would invite me to a gathering and then arrange for me to be the entertainment and I'm really looking forward to an opportunity to declare my deep friendship with the gentleman who has done that today but it's a pleasure to be here mon thank you every time I hear the word bundit Neu it makes me feel a little bit uncomfortable and my I am blessed with three wonderful sons and when I became a reluctant public speaker they said Bundi is one of those funny titles it's been tarnished for so long and it's been tarnished because of the activities of a person who was brown on the outside and white on the inside and if you're going to reclaim the title pundit and give it some dignity then you have to do two things one we need cool pundits and reclaim the sanctity of the title pundit everything else will be fine so I'm hoping that in some small way my work will help bundit become a title of respect and courtesy and appreciation once [Applause] more normally I speak with an audience who I have a little bit of familiarity with and so you know what to say and more importantly you know what not to say and since this is a new audience I'm and also that it's being streamed live I'm going to make um a few safety announcements for a long period of time we have two-thirds of the world has called us infidels non-believers and that's a title that we should appropriate with respect and with dignity and with pride because what it means is we do not impose beliefs on anybody else so if I say something if I say something that you find unbelievable or you want to reject I happily give you the freedom not to believe it at all I don't need you to believe a word I say and the same goes for everybody who's watching it on the live stream turning to the topic that we're talking about dhma democracy and decolonization an incredible topic very timely and I want to approach it from the point of view of somebody who has lived in the land of the people who mastered colonization the very first nation which was colonized was actually England and it was colonized by the British the indigenous English are incredible people will Durant I think he wrote in his work the case for India that the Englishman is an incredibly wonderful being but the British early is one of the most evil Creations on the planet and so so I've had gmou has decided that I needed to spend my life in the land of adharm a Vidya assat and everything else and so I have a wonderful understanding of the decolonization and the colonization process so I'm going to share with you some of those thoughts and I'd like you to understand that those who live on a mountain have never seen a mountain you do not know the mountain that you live on and and there are towering mountainous figures who have appeared on this land and from a distance we see them with an objectivity and an appreciation that perhaps is not so apparent here and so do recognize what's the the phrase G mura or something Dal I think is what they say so I want to bring to your attention that actually there is something happening in your part of it and it's an incredibly exciting experience at this moment democ y only dharmic people can make a democracy work who here wants to have a voice in their future show of hands the reason I asked that question is that it's only our tradition that believes that to be incarnated as a human being is a good thing only we have got the darh where we say that Dei Lakshmi buhui her sarda over Millennia have created an environment where an a human being a manusia can incarnate you know we are the Pinnacle of her sarda of running millions of years so we say it's good to be a human being we don't say that humans are born Sinners or Creations in some way destructive we worship herad and so every human being on the planet for us we recognize them as the fruits of Lakshmi Dei we're the only people who have that perspective and if you don't have that perspective you don't want a democracy if you genuinely believe that people are in some way naturally corrupt and they have to be controlled then why would you give the majority of them the opportunity to decide how a society functions and there is another interesting aspect democracy is the dharmic yearning inside every human being to have a participation in their future in the future of their family and the lives so when you see throughout Europe democracies struggling the dhic essence of the people is wanting expression if you don't live breathe and work with that understanding that people are good and in the majority they are inherently and intrinsically good then you organize your Affairs in a different way so any political party which is a monarchy in Disguise whose T is to dictate with some sort of divine appropriate appropriated privilege they don't believe in the Democratic goodness of people if they don't run their Affairs in that manner how on Earth do you think they are going to invite you to participate in your future it's not going to happen and this on its own is an incredible understanding bat what we have seen by the actions of a towering figure all that's happened is that the foot that was on our neck on our intellectual neck on our emotional neck and on our physical neck has actually been removed nothing has been done to elevate the indigenous population from where it was in terms of the Judiciary or in terms of the Constitution but our natural goodness our dmic creativity has been Unleashed and that in itself is incredible excitement development a monarchy believes in imposing laws on people because you can't trust people to do things themselves I had a chat once with the Archbishop of Canterbury and in that meeting we were having this conversation and I was saying people are good and they can be allowed to do good things left to their device and he said no no no everybody's a sinner and I said I'm sorry I deny you the opportunity to call me a sinner I will defend your right to be whatever psychotic being you want to be I will defend that right but you do not have the right to pass that judgment on myself and one of his advisers said no no P you're not a sinner and I said can I have that in writing please and they said no no no they laughed and they smiled the journey to decolonization what would it look like when bat is completely decolonized I'm going to share some thoughts with you on that we have this incredible understanding of the purat the four purat and when an individual is living their life whether you like it or not whether you are an accidental Hindu or whatever the purath are there present in your existence and so we Pa thank you we we navigate this journey of existence by engaging in the dance of each of the POR we dance with G we dance with ARA but we're not bound to them and then we dance with dhma and eventually we don't need to dance anymore that's the Journey of an individual it's also the Journey of a family and it's the Journey of a society and it's the Journey of a Nation our trajectory as a civilization had gone like this and as a society we were dancing with all four of those but not bound by any of those some of the original American philosophers who came here wrote that they found people of the land but not bound by the land that everything they were doing it was almost as though there was some Detachment there and they couldn't understand it a decolonized b will occur when every single person is on that buar conscious Journey that's when bit will have reconnected with its trajectory what happened is we were impacted upon by societies who were stuck in G they used to get aned just through C and societies who got unored through Earth and they would were trapped and ens snared by the the attraction of these when they came and discovered parit they didn't understand us and so they took what they valued they left the most valuable behind and what they left behind is now beginning to reappear naturally because that's who we are and what we are so a decolonized bat will occur when we have rejoined our trajectory and we are well on the way to doing that and your generation is going to be the generation that bring us back to that trajectory [Applause] Prime Minister Modi is the living embodiment of the porar he is living the life of somebody who is completely connected with the bath he is enjoying Anand K is the sensory stimulation that gives us Anand he has transcended that he has enjoying using ARA but he doesn't acquire it and keep it and store it for himself there is OB obviously Harmony and in his activities so he is a dharmic being a completely dharmic being and he is so detached from what he's doing and that's why he's so powerful because once MSHA has been blessed to been given to you then you acquire the real power so for everybody who is Young and wondering what to do and how not to do things and so on and so forth take guidance from Dancing With the porar one thing about Dharma which I always share is that it's the acquisition of Anand maximum unand minimum suffering for all beings and the minimum of consumption those three are the cornerstones of any dharmic action so if you have a choice to make ask yourself is it going to make me feel uned is it going to be at the expense of some other person or being and is the consumption the minimum possible if the answer to those is yes yes yes then go ahead and do it who comes into action so that's uh something I'd like to share with you the last thing is that we must become complete and true to ourselves we are the generation well you are the generation I'm an older generation but we are the people who understood the concept of pun janum that this is clothing and that the real purpose of our existence is to enjoy Anand but then move on and leave the world in a better place our traditional teachers in times gone past used to wake up and before they plac their feet onto the floor they would apologize to the Mother Earth that in order to do my GMA I have to step on you this was the concept of sustainability that we had the other thing we learned is that Anand is something you experience in this this space if you think of a headache you experience it here um if you bump your elbow your funny bone tells you where that is so Anand is experienced inside of this form we learned how to experience un without any external stimulation that is the Pinnacle of human existence to learn how to be in a state of un without any external impetus now if you are genuinely going to be powerful then you need to enshrine and embody the courage that comes when you are true to to the understanding that you are Atma incarnate if you are fearful then you don't really believe it and I say this to many of our elders especially some of our rishes and gurus I say well our children are the greatest hypocrisy detectors and if you're going to tell them that you are Atma on a journey but you're fearful you know you don't know what's going to happen they sense that there's something not right if you try and embody the fact that you are Atma then what how a dharmic world opens up to you and gives you what you need the most powerful person is one who is established in Atma and only our tradition gives you that power so if as youngsters you're looking for utility from shastra what could be of greater value than the understanding that you are Eternal I had in that conversation with the Arch Bishop we were having a difference of opinion they were criticizing sananes and so I'm sitting with the table and so I said to him that unless your mischievous evangelicals withdraw the attack that they have launched on us then we will destroy all Hindu Christian dialogue in the United Kingdom we will burn the bridges because you have put us in an existential problem and around the table there was a little bit of sensitivity and so I said and if I don't finish it this time we're reincarnation is I'll come back and finish it and at that moment everybody laughed they laughed nervously but they did laugh the last thing I want to share with you is that there is a war being waged and that war is directed at the younger generation the documentary Modi the documentary is an example of that war that's being waged and it's an old old F philosophy that's being applied and basically the essence of this philosophy is this you look for a cause any cause even if it's fictitious and what you then do is go to war on the basis of a fictitious cause and we're dealing with the masters of propaganda and their objective is to reach the young innocent genuine people of parth and to radicalize them and to separate them from this trajectory that I talk about some of you may have seen a recent video of um a very tragic young lady Ry Patel who was so radicalized that she literally threatened members of authority and damaged herself there is another video of a lady called avantia who was receiving an award in Harvard and she stood up and spoke so eloquently and I was so impressed and then she said and I dedicate my w to Gaza okay and I'm thinking why is she not dedicating her Awards to The Disappearance of Hindus in Pakistan or what's happening in Bangladesh or even much of what's Happening Here and the reason is that they have been reached by the most cunning clever you have to appreciate and respect them for their expertise in this they're going to try and reach out to each and every person to do this so I'd ask you that when somebody virtue signals it's always worth stepping one step back and trying to gauge the person in front of you and understand where they're coming from you are the most valuable generation we have had the philosophy principle when I look at you and I understand how bu janum Works each of you is an incarnation of a being who has been on a long journey you are the most powerful and the most capable generation that we've ever had and with that power comes a responsibility you have to learn how to understand yourselves and then if there's unin involved nobody's going to be heard and thank you so much for the opportunity to share some with you [Applause] thank you very much Pandit G for reminding us of her guiding values that our Dharma entails and for also reminding us that as young people who represent bhat we have a strong responsibility on us and it's a pride and pleasure to be born on this holy soil next and the most awaited talk of today I request I know I don't need to talk home but please hold on for 20 seconds I request uh JSI Deepak G to deliver today's uh keynote speech on decolonization democracy and Dharma including Reflections on democracy's impact on decolonization in Barat J sa deep G on the stage [Applause] Namaste J Shri Ram so I have a splitting splitting headache because the the feverish writing of the third book is underway so I have a deadline I have to finish it I have to balance it with my commitments as a PR practicing litigator during the day and then balance this with writing schedules of 2 to 3 hours in the night so my apologies if there is a drop in the energy levels but I think the best part of sharing space with all these dignitaries is that they have a sobering effect and uh especially what Pandit Sharma G spoke at the end of it I wish he had continued for a few more minutes so I was just thinking how do I connect decolonization Dharma and democracy and I think I I just said Justice Sharma I'm so sorry uh Pandit Sharma has just uh given us a fantastic foundation for it between decolonization Dharma and democracy what's our priority okay what is the path decolonization so what is the role of democracy exactly the point exactly the point so the question that you need to ask yourself is what is the destination what is the intermediate step and what is the path had this been a left of center audience had this been a left of center audience there's a decent chance that I would have been told the priority is democracy not that it's a bad thing to have I'm not making that statement one bit I'm not making an anti-democratic statement but what is under Fire Dharma or democracy that's it those are your priorities so does it mean that we don't care for democracy exactly because the leftist is bound to see this as a zero some equation where he thinks that we are having this conversation in binaries that is Dharma versus democracy no that's not the silo that we need to embrace why is this crucial one of the things that I've been asked to touch upon is whether decolonization is saffronisation should we Al somebody's fears on decolonization translating to saiz I'm sorry I would say yes it [Applause] is because it is saffron that makes everybody else's existence possible that much has been established through history the fact that everybody else thinks it's possible for them to thrive and flourish in hopefully what is still at least a 70% Hindu majority nation is not not the existence of a 400 page document the document may or may not have value or respect or Force 50 km away from Delhi if somebody were to actually recall the race riots that happened in Los Angeles in 1990s the moment Law and Order went into a state of what I call animated suspension riots broke out and people were looting and plundering each other's shops this has happened even in instances of natural Calamity but if somebody were to recall the earthquake of BJ and several other instances of natural calamities and disasters having visited this country the instances of looting have actually been far and few in between because it's not the presence of Law and Order that makes us peaceful but there is an inherent barometer and that barometer is what crudely translates to Dharma [Applause] now here the important aspect that I think people forget is that we have inherited Dharma as a sansar now what do you mean by sanskar in so-called modern terms sansar effectively translates to certain traits that have been encoded into your DNA thanks to at least three to four generations having practiced it exactly so you may call it epigenetics today you may call call it epigenetics today but we call it sanskara because we have imputed it with a certain degree of sanctity we have sacralized everything what do you mean by sacralizing everything making everything sacred not making everything religious but making everything sacred that is what preserves respect that is what keeps karma in action all the time where even the worst of criminals has to ask himself if I were to do this would I have to pay the price in this life for the next or we believe in the concept of a Pious sin which means the sins of the father will visit the sins of the visit the children in fact right so there is a very clear anthropological epigenetic relationship that we have established between action and consequence what level of sophistication must it take for you to understand human consciousness for you to arrive at this equation and how many thousands of years of trial and error we would have gone through to actually break this code when people are struggling with artificial intelligence today artificial intelligence is at the end of the day replication of human consciousness it should be bhas who should be at the Forefront of it not yet not yet hopefully we should be and hopefully we don't reduce the conversation about artificial intelligence merely to reduction of jobs it has a much more dangerous consequence if it is wielded without a dharmic code hence Dharma [Applause] so Dharma is that code of conduct I'm trying to connect all the dots that everybody has just placed before you when Shas I'm grateful to him for his effusive Praise of me which I genuinely don't think I deserve and I'm not saying this from any sense of false humility I'm not a humble person one bit I just don't subscribe to the colonized sense of Indian humility under any circumstance if I'm good at something I will own up to it if I'm not I will not claim it period one is that when you realize that you need the chatara system the much malign sanatan dhic system that is under attack in the neighboring state is that it realizes that arrogation of all forms of knowledge and Power in the hands of one individual is deeply problematic and therefore you say I don't know how many students of law are here how many anyone okay good if you're in law school as part of jurisprudence you're taught something called as the hegelian Matrix and what does this basically say it's a cube and in that Cube every vertex represents either a right or a duty so one vertex will represent the right and the other opposite vertex will represent the counterveiling duty or obligation to say that there can can never be a right without a Duty or vice versa and that is what we effectively say Baba if you think this is the sense of uh let's say entitlement you're supposed to live with then it also comes with certain obligations and those obligations translate to the different forms of karma you can call it Sam Dharma from there you go to vishes Dharma then you have Nya Karma being specifically enforced as part of your personal code of conduct so you're constantly told two things your vocation is not just a job take it seriously because every other aspect of the society depends on you doing a job well so nobody needs to treat us or rather teach us Dignity of labor but we need to teach ourselves what we knew once which is dignity of Labor a lot of people believe that the destruction of the existing traditional structure in the pockets that it exists is the only way that Hinduism will become United or the Hindu Society will become United I think that's misleading the entire situation so during the ambedkarite movement and around that period there were quite a few movements and there was a huge conversation going on within that movement and it was not as if it was a monolithic movement there were multiple voices within coming from the same set of backgrounds so without dropping names here because who knows what kind of name will lead to what kind of legal action I will I will will basically give you a few pointers and I trust the intelligence of the Hindu audience to draw its own conclusions one if there are non-hindus you're welcome to suffer this one one is basically saying Hindu Dharma is the root of all evil its manifestation is wna varash Dharma so if you want to finish Hindu Dharma finish fora and therefore a book comes out second there are other people within the Fold saying you know what we are not fighting here for destruction of Hindu Dharma we are fighting for our rights to be respected equally as Hindus and we don't wish to convert out of this religion this is the religion of our ancestors we will die on the funeral p as Hindus unfortunately those voices which took this position never got any place in history books the ones who effectively said the only way that this evil can be addressed is by destruction of sonat Dharma have become the most popular fashionable voices doesn't that seem very very coincidental that everyone under the rubric of social reform is accepted so long as the end goal is restruction of satat Dharma but the ones who want to address the problem and retain the religion don't find space at all either in mind or in books why ask the Marxist and ask the naroian because the the constant thing that's been reinforced in US is that there is fundamentally a an incurable incorrigible defect in our dnas that there is a manufacturing defect at the outset and that defect is vad Dharma it was if you look at how it has functioned and I'm not going to say in theory this is how it was but in action it was corrupted for the better part of it what you will see is that it was seen as a ladder for people to climb up their levels of evolution and one of the finest voices to have understood this was sh Nar Guru his movement basically told all the affected parties you know what compete compete with confidence socially religiously financially in every way possible and climb the ladder equality can be achieved in two ways pull everybody down or go up so he said go up so that was one of the few instances where a social reform movement was replacing victimhood with pride and then therefore you are saved the trouble of having to indulge in the competitive destructive race to the bottom called who is the greater victim and that is the pathology of Indian cast politics and reservation politics very uncomfortable to say this no suffer it you've called me what can I [Laughter] say three I don't believe that Indian economic force can be restrained anymore unless we buy the Delhi Chief Minister's model that model follows a scotched earth policy which is if I can't have it I will destroy it and that it is power and the casualty is Barat and I don't see the point in naming a person because that's a mindset that is prevalent across the country now correct there's a multiplier effect as I mean the moment you're in Delhi for good or bad but the point I'm trying to make is you must realize that you can fixate on individuals or you can fixate on mindsets and the thing that always lasts is an idea so it is attitudes and ideas that you must focus on and that requires you to understand what is this process of decolonization I've been accused of being a brahminical student who's trying to use decolonization to bring back BR Brahman dominance a lot of people have actually said this I said the moment you do this you are perpetuating The Stereotype that has been perpetuated about us by missionaries during the colonial period no matter who does this whichever party whichever outfit whichever ideology does this has bought into this fully three from the lofty Heights of Pandit sharma's discourse I must say all of this talk is useless when you're failing or losing the demographic battle fertility rate is what ultimately it comes down [Laughter] to and you don't need State support for it the good part if you need State support for it there's a problem there so my point is Aspire for the lofty Heights of Dharma but the best part about Dharma is that it has its feet firmly planted in Bui and therefore it says as much as someone must indulge in the study of The Vedas and imparted to the rest of the world there must be someone holding the sword making it possible for the rest of us to lead a dharmic life and it must be equally possible for somebody to generate wealth because you can keep chanting everything but and who is going to ensure that the society keeps running respect everyone that's the point perhaps we should give this solution of a tentative solution a shot because all our social reform initiatives have fallen flat if anything they've only created a deep ly casted and Inn society and divided Society I haven't I don't think that from the 1920s to 2024 we have become a society which is much more confident of its identity and of its you know unified nature it has become even more divided so I've always said this I I'm very how do I put it my interest in the political aspects of decolonization are secondary because that is only incidental I'm more interested in the societal aspects of decolonization because that's more lasting it is slower but it nevertheless pays its rewards how many of you have been offered a Biryani packet and alcohol to come here to hear such a dry topic on decolonization surely all the efforts that people like Dr Vikram samat and generations of unsung heroes have put in have finally paid off because because that literature is beginning to surface [Applause] now I am a pygmy standing on the Giants on the shoulders of giants people who have never had the benefit of social media who were never even recognized who continued to toil away were doing this in the true bhagat Gita Spirit at least I have the advantage of social media positional Advantage at least 2 million followers across the board who who which of them had that they were hounded they were finished they were wiped off their careers is destroyed so as Mr Sharma says this is the generation that was blessed with witnessing pran pratia don't ever forget [Applause] that don't forget that don't forget that it's a windfall gain which none of us allow me to say this deserve it has been handed to us on a platter hoping that we will understand its significance and continue the work and that we don't have to wait for another 496 years to reclaim the rest of the thousands of occupied [Applause] sites so what is it that we can doive be smart that's the first thing that's the first thing uncontrolled aggression is importence it leads to nothing you're firing blanks pun intended choose your field of activity depending on what the devatas have blessed you with in terms of skill sets and find a way to contribute to this ongoing silent movement in your own spheres of influence everybody must become a Hindu [Applause] missionary hold power to account no matter who wields it and I am not going to give any person of free pass in the name of hinda I'm very clear about it I'm very very clear about it because they have dual responsibility they need to De deliver on development 100% % and they also and perhaps even more importantly need to deliver on Dharma I'll answer the question the Q&A will come don't worry I am here to answer the questions my point is very simple assume for a moment that you become a first world country with first world infrastructure and you have lost Dharma you could have done that by converting hundreds of years ago you could have done that long ago why did your ancestors fight only for roads or for bsp not ban s party B Sak or only for B Sak Pani no under the Peril of death torture sexual humilation of the worst possible kind for 800 years they have lived through it so clearly there is something else which is at the heart of it and the best possible example that I can give of someone who according to me has become a tragicomic character is Richard Dawkins until a few years ago this gentleman kept saying I read the Bible for the beauty of its poetry I an atheist and today he calls himself a cultural Christian you know why atheist realize the value of religion when they realize that ultimately it provides you a sense of community and protection period they will realize that when they realize that their atheism is not going to save them from The Sword of the Barbarian and that atheism is made possible by a tolerant Society I have no problem with cultural Hindus and atheists let me say this because as Mr I says and Dr Sharma says we don't believe in imposition if you're not blessed to understand the value of Hindu Dharma that's your karma no problem no problem just don't reduce the rest of us to your standards and do not use yourself as the golden standard to judge the rest of our institutions you have no skin in this game you have no dog in this race you're an Insider outsider so the point I'm trying to make is all our priorities today are at a point of convergence you can't give up on any of them because it is economics that makes it possible for bhat to withstand geopolitical forces it is economics that saves us from predatory missionary evil hands which want to save our souls but if it is going to be pure econ omic development without a dharmic foregrounding or a foundation you will lose your children in droves so today there are instances where families are divided because of this specific issue where people are unable to understand what's going on with their children what is that zomie bug that has bitten them they have no clue I have the answer you sent them to certain schools what do you think was going to happen so a few weeks ago there was a controversy about sa also studied in St Anthony's high school he came out okay I'd say Baba that was destiny that was not the intention surely they didn't intend me to come out like this are you going to play on this chance or do you want a process or a system to address this problem if education has to become a priority if all our important issues have to become priorities other than let's say B Sak and Pani the intelligency of the Hindu Community must coess and create a pressure group forcing every government to take heed of these [Applause] issues otherwise the decades that was I mean the last decade which was fantastically successful on the economic front every initiative that the government wanted to bring about in the interest of this country was stalled by students whether it's the ca or the NRC or whatever it may be students were fielded as weapons on the on the streets so if you think that history education is the Pastime of the Rich and affluent and it's a storm in a key teup well that storm is playing itself out on your streets and you don't have a response mechanism you don't know what to do about it okay let's ask ourselves this simple question if this represents a significant cross-section of this youth demographic who's going to join the armed forces how many people are going to join the armed forces if the armed forces have been vilified the Indian state has been called a colonizing State we are being told that Kerala has been colonized by India and Kashmir has also been colonized by India these are the papers that are coming out of certain institutions based out of Mumbai by the way this is not an exaggeration so the battle is very real this is not Kakak shapam I've said this over and over again get very real decolonization is an existential imperative for the Hindu Society for it to understand the layers of mental colonization it has suffered and it continues to suffer this is going to be an extremely volatile uncomfortable period because you're not going to fight an outsider you're going to have constant arguments and battles with The Insider trying to convince that your ancestors were not Savages and that they were not inhuman oppressors and this conversation will be incomplete if I don't mention the one important component of Dharma which is perhaps its foundation its root cause its prime cause prti environment in the rush to become a developed Society on Western lines don't make their mistakes I'm 100% sure every society has had something of value to offer to the global pool of human thought including the Western Society try and learn from them whatever is good without slavishly importing it but ask yourself whether it would work for this country for its for its local conditions for its population ask that question don't be a mental slave where you simply import something merely because it works outside whether that entire economic model works here what is the indigenous bhara working economic model that we can think of that strikes a balance between the genuine aspirations of people to rise above poverty and also preserves environment that's a hard question that we need to ask otherwise Bangalore is seeing the rudra now and the this is merely according to me a trailer of what is to come across the world not just bhat I am genuinely someone who believes that climate change is real if it gets me brick bats so be it I don't care and therefore we need to address this and because I've said this before that there is no Dharma without prri Hindu Society must show the way forward for two reasons you're perhaps at that cusp where you have the ability to change the rules of the game you're doing this internationally you finally have the spine to stand up to Western powers and take a decision in your National interest you must show the very same spine in revisiting the economic model especially in ecos sensitive zones so that you don't make the mistakes of the past and leave an irreversible problem for the future so demographics decolonization prri education history all major points have been touched upon so when you go to the hustings this time I am not going to ask you to vote for any particular individual I am going to ask you to invoke your conscience to ask this simple question even if somebody may not be able to do all of this Who is the the best possible candidate with whom we can air these expectations and hope that we can push them in the right direction to get the job done that is the simple practical question I will ask who offers the best possible let's say alternative or option for at least some of these aspects to be addressed so that this journey can be taken forward because this is going to be at least a 25 to 35 year journey and with what is happening in the Middle East you need a firm hand to steer the ship you need money you need spine you need Clarity of vision and you need character someone who knows that they're answerable in the afterlife to the gods above and someone who has a conscience who that individual is is for you to decide I'm not here to spoon feed at all when people ask me what do you think we can do because on a daily basis I keep getting DMS and messages and emails it's I'm sorry to say it just so happens that I'm fundamentally a ruthlessly ferociously introverted person outside of this so I literally shun people the moment I'm off the place my mother has to literally shake me to get words out of me so when people keep asking this question so I thought I'll actually put out a video of some sort but I'm against the concept of a self-recorded video because it goes against the Optics of being a practicing litigator so I don't wish to do it so I'll use this forum to present a few actionable deliverables within your power that you can do so that you know what is it that you can do to take this forward one all the opinions that I have today I've had them at least since 2004 or or at least since 2009 I tried telling the very same things to a lot of people around that period but why should anybody listen to me what has made it possible for me to get an audience is my command over my subject and even if I say so let's use the word proficiency if not expertise when it comes to my core areas of competence so as a Hindu who believes in being a Karma Yogi you must be absolutely brilliant at what you do that is the first thing that gets you an audience that is what gives you Financial Independence and mental Independence to pursue your cultural initiatives I will never go and ask anybody to contribute to any initiative that I wish to support you wish to do you do it I don't care I will do it because I have the ability to do it you want to match you match so that gives you the independence second a hardcore spiritual and religious grounding which must become a part of your daily life I'm asking you to spend not more than 15 to 20 minutes a day in at the very least revisiting your roots in some form or the other the good part is not one day of the week is us every day of the week is ours so this battle is not ultimately a battle which is political it is a battle of commitment to your AA and if you don't get that don't even hope to survive this battle because the other side is committed like nobody's business and I deeply and grudgingly admire them for it because I learn from everyone like a sponge even if I don't like the person if there is something good to be learned from that person I will absorb it because at the end of the day survival of the community is more important than individual egos three start addressing the cast problem in a very realistic Way by supporting those who are in need of help you don't need to wait for the state to do it always at some point these initiatives between people will deliver Goods it will show because people will know that here is someone who is trying to help me when you do that you're also taking them away from [Applause] predators the more we go down a political discussion on reservation it will only divide us further the answer lies in society not in politics I've said this often over and over again when temples become the point of conversions where they preserve their traditions in accordance with the shastras because I certainly believe that chastras have a value no matter who calls me what and they also perform their societal obligations and reach out to the underprivileged that is exactly when you're actually in a position to start having a decent honest and calm conversation on reservations until then this conversation will never start no political entity has the incentive to start it they have a disincentive to start it so here Society has to take the lead three four please keep a watch on your children unrestrained Independence is not a badge of honor it's not a badge of Pride don't wear it shamelessly have some supervision of what is happening you know we are being targeted in multiple ways I don't need to spell it out so please keep a watch the the Cho the problem of the Hindu parent is they don't know whether to fill their children's heads with negativity and protecting them I think that's that's their confusion what do I do I don't wish to poison their heads the point is shatra is not poison that's an essential survival Instinct that is what has kept the Jewish identity alive that is what has kept several indigenous communities alive across the board one of the finest things that I have watched in recent times is that young Maori politician in New Zealand issuing the war cry of an ancestors from the floor of the parliament amazing and if you watched her speech this is what she basically said this house has been interfering and touching things which it has no business touching which is what they hold as sacred and therefore I've had no other option but to land in this house to protect my people at my lecture in Berkeley we made it a point to call someone from the indigenous community of California specifically to say we are here for you Hindus have to take the lead in the Revival of indigenous [Applause] communities that won't happen as long as you think of yourself as a brown sey so decolonization is imperative for you to take leadership and provide an alternative New World Order where there is respect for indigenous communities we are an indigenous Community for God's sakes every non-abrahamic Community is an indigenous Community yes that is how the definition has become over the last Thousand Years Five find a way so one is of course money education whatnot find a way to support those who are truly pursuing the vas I have to make this statement because that much maligned vilified micro minority is being crushed from every place I am not talking of the Priestly category I'm talking of vadis because that's been the traditional philosophy of this land call out hypocrisy wherever it exists nobody's going to stop you call out lack of character integrity where wherever it exists nobody's going to stop you but at the same time acknowledge the existence of those who have decided to pursue that in these volatile hostile times because this is not exactly a friendly atmosphere for Pursuit Of The Vedas and if there are snakes who need to be wiped out well those snakes could have abandoned the study of the vas for something else because if they are so evil and so diabolical in their brains surely those brains could have been used for earning money as opposed to suffering this kind of let's say calumnia and vilification from their own people on a daily basis whether somebody says this or not I will stand by the temple the cow and the tradition [Applause] period my parameters of Hindu will start and end there period dilution of these first principles is dilution of hindutva what have I said which is remotely against any other person all of this is to address internal problems internal issues internal inconsistency and discard so for those Ultra politically correct people oh does this speech have something that will create trouble for me in my office spaces if I follow this well if it creates trouble for you in your office spaces and you still decide that the office space is more important than protection of this culture you deserve the Fate that's coming your way then you have no reason to whine about this because at the end of the day Dharma is universal which means if Hindus don't want it Dharma will find other Hindus which it is doing in Russia it's doing in Europe in UK and in the United States and in Africa in Africa so you don't want the wealth that your ancestors have given to you there are others that's exactly why the appropriation of traditional knowledge systems is going on at such a rampant Pace from universities in Germany which has been going on for hundreds of centuries now or at least hundreds of years now because they were were the first ones to actually understand what was going on in this place they decided to set up chairs so the the SOS and all the ox brid universities came much later it was the German Lutheran who decided that he needed to appropriate this knowledge so you want it protect it if you don't it'll find a way so you don't need to protect Dharma Dharma will protect itself there's a fantastic uh standup comedian by the name j c Carlin I love his uh as his his speeches the one thing that he said about nature and climate change he said who do you think and I'm being I'm not using the French that he used here he said who do you think you are to protect nature nature will protect itself all it has to do is to hit reset and you're done and the ice age will come and the whole cycle starts so don't go under a Messianic complex you're doing this in self-interest and self-preservation period you don't wish to understand that one delude is enough pray is enough and then we are back to square one drawing board state so with this thank you as [Applause] always just one point Bangalore has everything going for it to lead the Hindu Renaissance [Applause] everything every state it has some drawback or the other but this has everything going for it people Temple nature Traditions art and intellectuals like Dr saath so my point is please make sure that this historical time window is not squandered because it may or may not come again and we can't take the chance lead the country that's all I have to say and this comes from a Tamil q and yeah okay I request everyone to please be seated uh we'll just give sir two moments and meanwhile I know a lot of us have questions we have Amit with us here who will be handling the mics and I this is a sincere request I know there are a lot of people so I request one person to ask one very brief question and hand over the mic to the volunteer please one brief question and then hand over your mic we'll start from the first and then we'll Circle back again introduce yourself briefly and ask your question I'm an I'm working Namaste Deepak G I'm Prasad here from Bangalore BTM leard I just have one question question could you just please highlight on the article 2930 which you have been discussing what's going to happen with that see the point is I know that there are a lot of well-meaning people who want amendments to articles 25 to 30 maybe that's a clarificatory amendment that is needed my point is that my experience before our constitutional fora tells me that even the most perfectly worded document is capable of being deliberately misinterpreted if the mind reading it has a different Vision altogether so let's look at it this way two parties choose to negotiate at the negotiating table and they come out with a tightly crafted contract that shouldn't lead to a dispute there shouldn't be any room for misinterpretation or miscommunication or lack of understanding or a gap between two parties who have actually been a part of the particular process and still there are disputes because motivation is the is the trigger for misinterpretation right what most people don't realize about the judicial process is that it's not like mathematics it doesn't work on 1+ 1 equal to 2 and rightly so in several instances however what this also means is that to a significant extent the outcome is the product of the worldview of the person reading it their own Vision as to what they want therefore it's possible that a word that is specifically mentioned as public morality is then moed as constitutional morality and we are told that it means something else altogether that it has got nothing to do with the mores and the values that a society holds dear so the problem with the Hindu society which I've seen in all the years of interaction ever since I started speaking in I think in September 2016 is we blindly put Faith in the fact that law is where the remedy lies neither has it worked in the realm of Law and Order nor has it work worked in the realm of constitutional outcomes because what you're unable to understand is that when ideology is the prime mover then principles of legal interpretation established principles of Common Sense and everything else take a backseat so assume for a moment we undertake the exercise that you want us to and you amend articles 25 to 30 fully can you guarantee that it won't be deliberately misinterpreted in the old fashion by a future uh individual you can't because you're trying to address a tertiary problem what is a tertiary problem you're not addressing the problem at the at the realm of primary education or secondary education you're addressing the problem after the person has finished an angli sized education for decades goes to law school learns only English jurisprudence or Western jurisprudence has nothing to do with Hindu dhana finally goes and sits in that particular place you're trying to explain the Hindu worldw to someone who's been an anglophone all his life how do you hope to succeed except through a miracle so the process that is most important and that's why most of us constantly cry hores about it education education education that is the Battleground and if you want to see what kind of a Battleground it can turn out to be just look at America where gender has become a Battleground parents don't have control over the sexual identity and gender identities of their own children do you know that these gender identity and gender diversity training uh let's say professors or let's say these experts are now working in tandem with the Indian government for gender diversity education in bhat as part of our education policy that work is already started youve not even become a first world country but you have a first world problem we are still there are quite a few people who are still have to who have to be lifted out of poverty and you want to talk about gender issues this is what happens when in your head space you're living in America and in UK while you're living in shaji nagar sorry sorry that would be the Middle East my apologies so my point is this address this problem as quickly as possible because it's going out of hand every constitutional verdict impacts Society later but education curriculum first next question uh that's it towards your back yeah good evening to the dignitaries um the very the present uh problem I can say the Young Generation which we are addressing so vly now the Young Generation how do we protect them because they are being radicalized and those who are already poisoned so how do we retrieve them that is a wealth how do we retrieve that weth now please suggest about this thank you so thanks to my exposure to what happens in other places and the Good Fortune of interacting with a lot of people what I've realized is Hindu families and parents are coming to together in places like America to form a self-help group of sorts to detox their children through their own self-established gulas based on what they learn in their schools if it is possible for a disparate minority which is perhaps at best 4 million and less than 1% of the American population surely Hindus here can do better because you have two things you have family support structures still here it is still possible for you to rope in your religious institutions or let's say even the arams to do this job uh one institution whose contribution to this uh effort I must mention is the Chima Mission amazing work it has proven to be a fantastic let's say uh first line of defense even in places like America for Hindu parents so it's not as if we don't have those support structures here the problem is if the Hindu parent believes that their only job is procreation delivery and then Outsourcing everything else to schools to put it very politely okay when you do that you're effective ly saying 16 years of their lives their formative years have been consigned to an institution that doesn't share your values at all so until the state grows both the spine and the will and the vision to address this problem these are the solutions that we have to work with at this point and I can share a let's say a story of Hope here that clearly I don't run a school Dr Vikram s doesn't run a school Dr Anand ranganathan doesn't run a school in the age of social media we have managed to use these media to create a multiplier effect and we have had rank strangers share stories of change deep introspection some couples have moved back from California to bhat to establish schools and whatnot so I am saying that we have to use the cards that have been dealt to us at this point I wish I had a better solution to offer at this point these are the limited options but I think they can still do the job if all the literature that we have produced the content that has been produced by so many people has had an impact and has found an audience in the remotest of places I'll give you one example I've never been to Assam the first time I went was uh late last year um for the book fair the Assam book fair I genuinely thought who's going to know me in Assam not because Assam is distant or whatever it is I don't suffer from the tyranny of distance unlike Mr sardesai okay whoever that sardesai may be however I thought that perhaps my content may not have reached that place for whatever reason when I walked into that room rather the auditorium and this video is available you should watch it guess what starts J Shri students youngsters across the place so there is something that's happening there is a silent Revolution that's happening because the channels of communication and the Monopoly over them have been taken away from mainstream media which is exactly their problem with social media and they've been democratized find a way to use this all the garbage that they get to watch on YouTube try to replace it with content that you think you can produce I'm sure there are people who will listen and put Faith in the paror principle that you don't need to convert 100 you need to create 20 cultural leaders the rest of the 80 will follow them that's exactly how Society Works across the board even in the realm of culture it's not just about let's say employment or an office basis create a cultural model and create role models who are worthy of emulation a lot of people will follow them 100% that will happen thank you you know I just want to say because of social media because of people like you know Sai and Anand and Pandit G and Vikram the soul of a Nation long suppress finds utterance that is the revolution that's [Applause] happening G just to repeat the question the question is what can we do as parents to help recover and save and uh guide our children this is one of the questions I'm asked the most when I'm talking outside of BH because we live in hostile territory we live Behind Enemy Lines as this is concerned and in my case I have three I'm blessed with three wonderful young men and two of them are yoga charara in their own right and the third has just set up a Hindu Network in one of the largest consultant is in London and I'll share with you my personal practical tools which we use the first and my apologies to the youngsters who may object to this my wife and myself we had a wonderful Revelation at a very young age and we told the youngsters when they were tiny four or five years old that until the age of 21 none of your opinions [Applause] matter and so they grew up without argumentation my wife would say and they would eat it now that they're older they recognize that they're not dominated by opinions they seek knowledge instead and they are free of being able to be conditioned this is an important understanding opinions are just noise in one's brain and they need to be curated to get knowledge my youngest who was 18 he got to the age of 18 and he said Papa this is not good enough my opinions are important and at his 18 birthday he announced that he was going to have his own opinions the older two went all the way to 21 so this is the first thing the second thing this is so important is you can't give what you don't have and I say to parents that you want your children to become something but you are not Noble AA when children look at you do they think I want to be like that person I want what that person has got and one of the revelations that I learned a long time ago was that if I wanted my sons to connect with their inheritance with their Heritage with their ancestry I needed to be able to answer to their satisfaction any question that they would ask they needed to appreciated it they needed the freedom to be able to ask and as a consequence I did a deep dive into our shastra I was only interested in shastra for personal sad but when they came I really needed to know what I needed to be able to to say to them and so for parents I would say to you just consider that children look for Role Models it's not complicated they want to Aspire to be like somebody so irrespective of how intelligent you are how knowledgeable you are how professional you are you've got to compete with the Taylor Swifts the Justin Bieber right the the Jordans and so on and so forth so you need to grow you need to expand to become embodiments of what a full sonaton is a genuine sonaton is a force of nature when they see that in you they will automatically say how do I become like that so the return of the ARA the genuine ARA is what we need to do and if we do that our children will happily say I want to be like that I'll just add to what pit Sharma has mentioned uh as part of the investig ceremony what we call the the yagit sansar that father who has not chanted the gatri for X number of times does not have the right to do brah they have no other option so therefore if they've not done it for several years two things they have to do at the very least one first you have to chant it in the sun second you have to find a pun nadii go there and chant because it has a multipli effect in terms of the number of times it is counted or you go to UT Kashi or ganga there you try and compensate for all the years that you have not done that is Hindu sanskriti basically telling you practice what you preach before you want to give that upadesam to your children you should do this second to add to what uh P Sharma said on on the question of uh no right of agency until you become a major Swami vivanda actually explains this because as part of his uh uh I think after Ram krishna's passing s ramak krishna's passing they were all in I think in baranagar in a in a in a dilapidated mansion and then where they're trying to actually learn and all that or maybe this has happened after he set up the ramakrishna m one of the young sadhaks come and comes and tells him why do you insist that we memorize this why don't we actually try and understand the meaning first he says the meaning will reveal itself first you commit it to your memory yes when the right moment turns up you will know what it exactly means but until then you should have the ability to summon it at will now why is this crucial because today we are being told root learning is bad root learning is bad memory is equally important otherwise why would God give you that faculty in the first place I'm not saying the power of argumentation has no value at all first is a database and then how to use the database [Applause] so when we were in law school our uh law school adviser was Professor enel Mitra who was the second Vice Chancellor of NLS Bangalore in uh yeah yeah enl Mitra and he was the founding Vice Chancellor of nlu jpur and he would say one thing so there is something called as the civil procedure code of 1908 which is basically the procedural legislation that deals with how do you conduct civil suits and civil trials how does that entire pipeline go it has sections it has rules it has orders it has forms now you the trick during an examination is to connect the right section with the right Rule and the right form and apply to a given Sol situation now we wondering how do you do this how do you do this we have to understand everything we have to understand everything he said you know what legal research in the formative years when you're in law school is about knowing where is what how to use it practice will teach you you need to be able to say this is where it is if I ask you where is the provision for an interpeter okay here it is so these are aspects which have been lost because of the excessive insistence on teach them critical thinking at this age they're not ready for it yet they may not be ready for it yet so first give them the formative grounds because what happens is I think as I survived an education in a Christian school and all the secularization that you go through in law school primarily because of the culture that was imparted to me as a child which I took for granted I did not respect it I resented it fully but now the memories bring back tears oh this is what I was given look at the value of it it has kicked in at the right moment so what was a bitter memory when you were going through it has taken the form of nostalgia I'm conscious that as you leave the hall like most audiences within 30 minutes you will only remember one or two things and so I'm while we're giving you weapons to deal with this I'm going to give you a couple of things that I think you can all work with you want to know what to do in our tradition we have this understanding of n R and tatwa most of us work with Nam rup these days we don't go to tatwa and this is an important opportunity for us to engage in decolonization practice what is the tatwa of conversion we all use the word conversion and say it's bad but what is its tatwa the tatwa of conversion is ethnos side followed by radicalization words are important if instead of using the word conversion which has a nice innocent equality sort of a feel to it if you start to use the word Enos ethnos side and radicalization see how things change make a commitment never to use the word conversion again and to call it ethnocide and radicalization I do this with Bishops in London and in England in conversations secondly colonization we're talking about decolonization and again colonization has a a relatively har less equality based thing everybody does it what's the harm in going to colonize the T of colonization is enslavement this is what we have been facing when you say enslavement then it feels different you know it has aava it has a feel to it has a sentiment to it it changes so think in terms of not colonization but of enslavement and the energies that want to enslave us are still very present they're not interested in anything else they had loved to have Hindus enslaved they have derived a great deal of benefit from it they haven't changed the leopard still has got spots and so recognize that and please try and become more determined to look at the T of things and not get caught in nam thank you uh to my right side yeah Namaste sir my name is Ria Kashi and I'm a grade 12 student at Isha home school my question to you is um who inspires your dharmic mindset and how can I as an 18-year-old learn better and explore the side of my culture you know with time you get more Role Models actually but the one whose voice has always moved me heavily heavily heavily believe is Swami Vivekananda Swami vivean so the one instance which I think of his life and I'm not saying this because I'm trying to fish for compliments here so please don't get me wrong because you see there are several aspects of Swami vivekananda's positions which you may or you may not agree with at the latest St that's a different point but the one thing that is important is someone represents a certain emotion a person represents a certain energy and that energy leaves an impact you may not agree with the decision or the opinion of of on every subject of a person but nevertheless it's very difficult for you to ignore them because they say something which they truly believe in they're at least not faking it okay so this man is spacing around in a hotel room in in United States surrounded by the most beautiful of women all the time simply because they attracted to his leonine masculinity that led to so many slanderous campaigns against him back in India run by kesab Chandra okay astoundingly nasty comments which even the missionaries did not use to attack him reminds you of a lot of things happening now right and everyone is like how did this land this poor land produce this man in that place it's very easy to get carried away when you're seeing as as someone coming so what is the year that he goes there it is it's 1901 1902 1893 is when the Chicago Parliament happens he's what he's 1863 born he dies at the age of 39 he clearly said that he would never leave to see the live to see the age of 40 passes away on the day of American independence 4th of July 19 not I think 4 no not four he did not live to 39 I think it was uh 92 sorry 1902 or 1903 so this man when he's surrounded by Western universities because going to Harvard now and being dazzled is different going to Harvard in the 19th century is different he sees all of that he sleeps on a bed he's unable to sleep he's like what am I doing here when my people are struggling for food and dignity there and he's pacing here and there he's constantly pacing see that energy travels ACR across centuries the one thing that defies the logic of time is emotion because it connects across centuries why are you traumatized by what happened to Hindu women after the third battle of panipat in 1761 do you know that this word by and I'm assuming everybody is at least over 18 here allow me to say this it's a very it's a torturous uh experience and anecdote but bear it for a moment the word B has always been used in the context of professional cortis in Indian history you know what is the origin of it marati women who were enslaved by the Afghans and then put up for sale that buy then continued to be associated with a certain profession unfortunately so even till date you can identify them based on their on their phys physical features so energy good and bad travels across time and it reaches and that man has certainly reached me in one way or the other and two on the day of his passing he's spacing from here and there again and he's he's asking himself this question time will tell how many more viandas will be produced you can either see that as a sign of arrogance or self-importance or it's a sign of self-realization that he knew that he had come there for a purpose and he had done what he was meant to and he was leaving his model coil that institution that he set up singlehandedly revolutionized the perception of Hindu Dharma in the west even before political Independence that achievement can never be understated thousands of people coming to bhat in search of spirituality from the rest of the world when we had nothing but let's say poverty to offer except for Spiritual wealth I would say he was among the Titans who led that movement and therefore according to me he to reduce him to a spiritual figure isn't enough I call him a patriotic Rishi for whom bat was everything so he was absolutely clear about the Islamic period he was clear about the Christian period and his pamphlets short books that he kept writing I kept reading them over and over again when I was in engineering I never had the benefit of actually attending any courses at ramakrishna Mission but their books did a wonderful job of spreading their message so among the people over the years my foremost early memory of someone who inspired me to think on these lines it has to be Narendra DTA [Applause] yeah can we take one question in the front row yeah to the person in white J Shri ramai it's an honor to meet you in person thank you so much um I have two questions one in BJP Manifesto they have UCC and you you mentioned in one of uh the discussion Point UTC will solve more problem than UCC how do you look in from UCC perspective that's one and second so only one question please we have multi people other other question where you always talk about not only development will lead dma will come in and you also talked about in a couple of points where right to education was not been revealed or you know they've not done much whatever they're supposed to to be done but having said that when you have an opportunity to meet you know Prime Minister Modi or someone have you ever discussed or why you not discussed so far if that's that's okay so because what I understand Modi is a very good listener maybe he has something in his plate we are not aware but when we listen to you know there is always a you know tight slapy just kiss kiss not because I'm not a gay so just so can think that what is your view on this Ultra important clarification so I will not answer your questions directly Let Me dance around it for a moment see on UCC I've given at least two detailed lectures I don't want to go down that path again I've explained the pros and cons of it um contrary to popular perception I'm a nobody okay I have no aspirations or illusions that my word carries weight or it matters in the p in the corridors of power I have no such Illusions whats ever and it doesn't make a difference to my life because what I am doing is to try and send the message out if it reaches the right person it does the only time I have met the honorable prime minister was in April 2019 and it was a public meeting of which photos exist where I went along with the pandalam family as their lawyer to discuss the sabala case because they clearly insisted that they would not have that meeting unless and until I was there to discuss the legal integrities and the way forward okay basically the simple question was this it's uh the temple tradition has been affected by a certain judgment what is this how can this happen centuries of traditions have been rendered useless fortunately of course the Supreme Court itself Revisited the decision and Status qu anti which is the position as it existed before the Judgment has been restored for now until the issue is decided finally I have never met Shri Modi other than that ever in my life okay I'm making the statement not because it's a complaint or an expectation I'm simply saying I have no such aspirations what soever most people assume that all the overes and initiatives that I've done over the last eight years is my way of facilitating or enabling my path towards politics okay they don't realize that I am not interested in it because I'm able to do a lot more through my engagement with the society without compromising on certain issues intransigently [Applause] I get to retain the principle of my position by staying out of it as much as possible okay now surely in this age of social media with all of you listening and none of you know me from Manu not Adam okay surely others are also able to hear me then now what they draw from it what they make of it how they choose to action it is entirely left to them but I know one thing for a fact that the works on decolonization that several people have produced before me and the first book that I authored based on their Works to give them due credit and full credit have managed to reach a significant cross-section of the decision-making establishment including in the bureaucracy with no efforts on my part to ask anyone to push my book okay I've never done that I will never do that because ultimately it will speak for itself so what I'm hoping is that the more I stay away from centers of power the greater I retain my ability to speak my mind and also provide honest constructive criticism when somebody falters so I have genuinely speaking no skin in this political game that doesn't mean I don't have a political leaning or a political option in my head I've made it abundantly clear that when push comes to shove which way my button will go there have never ever deferred as long as that option works for Dharma that is a important Rider and caveat so beyond this I don't wish to answer this question okay can we have someone on the right side back may I just add something to to that question which I can bring a distant perspective to it from outside of B and not being involved in the political scenario because I'm not a citizen of this country although I'm a fully paid up member of this civilization I asked myself why is it that our prime or your prime minister sorry um behaves in a particular manner does certain things and doesn't do certain things so the thought was what in his mind would he think is his legacy and would it be article 370 CAA Etc and I don't think any of those would be his Legacy I think his legacy would be that he created a container in which the Hindu samage became robust and muscular this is a legacy I think his legacy is to render himself redundant so that there is no need for another Narendra Modi because the samaj has become capable of making the changes that he has introduced and facilitated so my question to each and every person is what are you going to do to be able to make the same changes that he has introduced and why can't you do it one of the biggest things that we have to do is to stop delegating to others what we would like to see one Swami viand changed the direction of history in a whole nation and so look how many we have here thank you yeah this will be our last question after uh good evening it was a very enlight uh enlightening session um J saak is a star and uh and people like them can give us a false hope that it is in our perception that things are going on well because we are led by uh stars like this ultimately the responsibility of carrying this particular fight for sanatan Dharma and this civilization falls on every one of us so please ask your question in fact in fact he has given us much more weight on our shoulder awaken us and let's go back home with more responsibility thank you very much I major heg from Bangalore after we go home okay Namaste my name is ktina and I'm an educationist uh my question is uh as an educationist what can we do to inspire and Foster uh indic mindset in the younger generation thank you so I think as Educators who or of an indic bent of mind or a paria bent of mind your first challenge is to survive in your schools I know of enough teachers who have been sidelined marginalized vilified isolated ated that happens on a regular basis so thanks to the fact that you stand by your principles and that you continue to believe it to the extent that you're being openly vocal about it so Kos to that uh so the first thing is do not let the negative atmosphere around you affect you in the first place because you have a larger duty to uh to perform two um I think the challenge is you don't have a set curriculum at this point there is no systematic Way Forward which deals with what the school is actually imparting so as my my mother's a teacher and uh a very proud one at that so what I've realized is the teacher personal connect has actually left a huge impact even after uh let's say they've passed out decades earlier so that has certainly made an impact three um you can either be super intelligent and rude or you can be less intelligent and slightly empathetic what works more than more often than not is not intelligence but empathy absolutely so if you're in a position to relate to their troubles and their fear of being isolated in a sea of PE pressure where there'll be Misfit outcasts okay that is something that you need to be able to give them the the spine for to say it's okay to be different today being different is being Hindu and that is something uh I I I don't think I'm I'm offering any tangibles to you because it's a very different reality altogether I've never inhabited in your shoes so I don't know how it works all I can say is is that you need Atma Balan to continue doing what you have to do and two with time the hope is that some of the seeds that you manage to se in their heads will hopefully Sprout and yield fruit don't look at numbers in terms of going for a lot of people who can who can relate to you that may not actually happen what works is when you're able to identify someone who actually has that leaning of mind and give them the encouragement to go down that path to a significant EXT you're also saving yourself the the the problem of disillusionment because at some point as a human being you would want your efforts to pay and show some result right so your your Knack has to be to identify that person invest in that person and hope that they will become Role Models because students learn from their friends than from teachers 100% so if a role model is created out of one student either out of Envy or jealousy or competition others will want to be him or her or [Laughter] thema so let's hope that's the case in the future so the point is that I think that is perhaps one way of going about it other than that uh constant learning is the only thing that keeps you on your toes especially in this department because more and more content is being produced that forces us to revisit what we thought we knew so you have your homework cut out for you thank you so much any of the speakers would like to add your remarks G it's a last word for an educator I too have spent a bit of time in California and it's worth knowing that last year over 120,000 young people committed suicide and yet their educational system is touted around the globe as being the model by which young minds should be trained to occupy positions in society so my thoughts that I'd share with you they have nothing to offer those whose pockets are empty have no solutions to make you rich and so with regard to what you're teaching I would say adhere to our own traditional understanding that we inflame the flame of curiosity and learning in a child instead of filling the bucket and that's the only thing that education should do so take comfort from the fact that even instinctively we are still a dmic civilization and we still know what it is that the Young Generation need the the only thing I'd add is one last thing in every Mand we all we all of all of us say but I always ask people that who's going to do that so teach your children to become sufficiently robust and established in Dharma that they can face aarma wherever it rises and everything else will be taken care of thank you [Applause] I'll just add to this um based on just my personal experiences that uh if you if we can use the tools that are available for our kids currently the new digital tools and the new means of communication and make it cool to flaunt our religion and our culture um automatically other kids and other folks of that generation will get inspired to do the same thing you know you look at some of these social media stars that we have today they are hardcore people who flaunt the Hindu religion with pride you know even though they you know can't really properly explain some of the things but I just think that we should harness the tools that we have available to us and um teach them to take pride uh and flaunt it yeah on your uh with this we have reached the end of today's program uh when saak G said he has an headache and he'll be low on energy we clearly know that opposite of it has happened and we are all very much energetic and we'll take back that energy and uh take pride in what my heartfelt thanks to Indian Institute of world culture for this uh beautiful place and all the arrangements that they have put together I thank our volunteers who joined us to make this program very smooth for all of you uh we tried our best to accommodate everyone and we have shared the link online so you can watch it and uh thank you for joining us audience online and offline Namaste J come
