Skip to main content
Sabrang
Sabrang
Health India

A team that never was a hope provider for the poor

Mohan Bhagwat, Jaggi Vasudev and Sri Sri Ravi Shankar to “create hope” amidst Coronavirus pandemic

Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd 18 May 2021

Image Courtesy:newsroompost.com

Just a few days ago, I saw an interesting news item on my mobile phone. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s (RSS) top leader Mohan Bhagawat and his friends: Jaggi Vasudev, and Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, will address the nation to create hope in times of Corona dance of death. One does not know what networks they will use to do that? According to the news item, they will create an opinion of ‘positivity’ in an atmosphere of ‘negativity’. Obviously, the negativity refers to opposition to the RSS/BJP central Government all over the world and India. 

The news of these three great saintly men creating hope is being propagated by the RSS cadres. I wish they would have included all the Shankaracharyas of different pittas in the country. Of course, another Yogi--Adithyanath, who also heads a pitta, apart from the Uttar Pradesh Government where mass cremations are happening like a Kumbh, should have been part of the team.

The Prime Minister himself, who now looks like a saint not a ruler, will anyway address the nation from time to time. 

However, the declared team consists of a Saraswat Brahmin from Maharashtra, a Tamil Brahmin who mostly lives abroad and educated in English medium at St. Joseph college of Bengaluru. The third is a Dwija educated at Mysore university-that too in English literature with a chequered life and final guruhood of international institutional base. The Indian diaspora and native upper middle-class swings and waves as they speak but the vast masses of food producers do not know what their guruship is. It is this productive nation that needs hope. For the whole nation should get hope from the central Government not from saints and sanyasis. 

The RSS wants to use Ravi Shankar and Vasudev to add Hindu international networking. But the question is why this team did not find a Hindu Guru born in Shudra farmer family and a Dalit family. Is it because they are less Hindu, as they belong to the fourth varna and also no varna (Dalits are known as avarnas)? In the teaching of these three socio-spiritual leaders is there a single sentence that: ‘All Hindus Are Created Equal by Hindu God’. Is there a caste-free God they visualised for protection of all Hindus, leave alone Muslims, Christians and Sikhs of India?

Even assuming that they do not want to save the atheists and seculars, worldwide who were said to have worked for the advanced medical science, how many rural hospitals these gurus established in our poverty-stricken rural India? Ravi Shankar has a network in Geneva where there is a lot of oxygen to breathe in open air as well as in hospitals. But none in the Dandakaranya tribal belt where malnutrition is making their breathing more difficult than in any other part of the world. Why not that be his international base?  

Jaggi Vasudev has networks across the United States including the wealthiest California state, but none in the Koraput tribal belt of Orissa. They learnt English in a manner that every English-speaking Asian, American, European, Australian would understand. But they never learnt a single tribal language of India. Their divinity flows in sweet English to promote ‘Hindu, Hindi, Hindustani’ and the RSS loves this nationalism.    

Whom are they teaching their methods of pranayama (Isha foundation specialization)? Ravi Shankar is supposed to be an expert on rhythmic breathing. India is now dying without pranavayu, and no breathing--leave alone rhythmic. What scientific advancement they achieved and handed over to the nation? How many good hospitals that RSS and these foundations established to save the poor from lack of pranavayu in the villages and tribal areas? 

Even before this deadly disease attacked Indian people in villages and urban slums were dying for want of enough oxygen in the atmosphere. What did they do? Why do they go to teach the Americans and Europeans who have everything--enough pranavayu, prana padarthas to eat along with plenty of cars and planes to travel? Why Hindu God is sending these gurus there not to tribal areas or even to African countries where there is nothing to eat and hardly any energy to breathe? They go to the US and Europe to acquire dollars, Euros and Pounds. How is that nationalism loved by the RSS?      

In 1900, Ida Scudder reached the Vellore region to give life to lifeless and started a medical centre, which later became a trend setting hospital. What kind of guruship she initiated and what kind of guruship these Indian Dwijas established? The RSS leaders attack the Christian missionaries on an everyday basis. Did they establish a single hospital in the country that could match the Christian Medical College Hospital in their long life of 95 years? Did they ever look at what that hospital has done to the nation in subsequent years? That was the first hospital that started open heart surgeries in the 1960s itself, when no other hospital in India knew that science. Did any Hindu Pitta, or Foundation or organisation including the RSS did such constructive humanitarian work? Why accuse such Christians as anti-national? 

The RSS and the gurus like Jaggi Vasudev, Ravi Shankar, who work around them as great Hindu nationalists must know the caste culture is causing more harm than corona to the spiritual will of the nation. Why are they so silent about it? In Uttar Pradesh where a Yogi rules, dead bodies are being discriminated against. Which culture is responsible for that? Where is a call from these gurus to not to do that?    

Most organised religions in the world with strong notion monolith of faith are Hinduism and Islam, though they differ in caste cultural practices. In Hinduism these saints are in control and in Islam the Mullahs are in control. Why could vaccine science not develop in countries of those nations where they play a dominant role? Why does the secular world produce more vaccines and life-saving drugs? Why India of these pranavayu giving gurus begging for oxygen from secular nations? Why did the ‘Art of Living Foundation’, which is said to be a great teacher of breathing exercise, establish a vaccine producing industry and also an oxygen production centre? Do these gugus want to tell us those who breathed according to their methods are not attacked by Corona? We assume that Mohan Bhagwat follows them with a discipline of RSS but was attacked by Corona and treated in a modern medical system developed in Europe and America, not in the Art of Living breathing.   

What kind of nationalism in Ravi Shankar and Vasudev the RSS found who established the Art of Living and art of pranayama in America and Europe but not in Indian Tribal Areas? Should Hindu nationalism be taught from California and Geneva to the farmers who are producing food for all Indian to survive and the safai sainiks who are cleaning the roads in the times of this deadly disease? 

The RSS leaders must know that the nation is watching them when they are in the driving seat of the national power. There is enough intellectual base among the productive masses that can see through these English-speaking gurus, what they speak and do in their typical saintly attire here, and what they speak and do in America and Europe? The farmers, workers, shepherds, artisans and so on are already on ‘hope production’ jobs. They do not have to listen to these gurus to protect themselves from Corona. They are on the job of killing coronavirus in the fields by producing protein and raw material for medicines.

*Views expressed are the author’s own.

(Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is a political theorist and social activist. His latest book is The Shudras--Vision for a New Parth co-edited with Karthik Raja Karuppusamy)

Other articles by Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd:

Disease distancing, not social distancing during Covid-19

Babu and Bhasha: The Game may end with this

Remembering Usaa: The greatest revolutionary barber after Upali

 

A team that never was a hope provider for the poor

Mohan Bhagwat, Jaggi Vasudev and Sri Sri Ravi Shankar to “create hope” amidst Coronavirus pandemic

Image Courtesy:newsroompost.com

Just a few days ago, I saw an interesting news item on my mobile phone. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s (RSS) top leader Mohan Bhagawat and his friends: Jaggi Vasudev, and Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, will address the nation to create hope in times of Corona dance of death. One does not know what networks they will use to do that? According to the news item, they will create an opinion of ‘positivity’ in an atmosphere of ‘negativity’. Obviously, the negativity refers to opposition to the RSS/BJP central Government all over the world and India. 

The news of these three great saintly men creating hope is being propagated by the RSS cadres. I wish they would have included all the Shankaracharyas of different pittas in the country. Of course, another Yogi--Adithyanath, who also heads a pitta, apart from the Uttar Pradesh Government where mass cremations are happening like a Kumbh, should have been part of the team.

The Prime Minister himself, who now looks like a saint not a ruler, will anyway address the nation from time to time. 

However, the declared team consists of a Saraswat Brahmin from Maharashtra, a Tamil Brahmin who mostly lives abroad and educated in English medium at St. Joseph college of Bengaluru. The third is a Dwija educated at Mysore university-that too in English literature with a chequered life and final guruhood of international institutional base. The Indian diaspora and native upper middle-class swings and waves as they speak but the vast masses of food producers do not know what their guruship is. It is this productive nation that needs hope. For the whole nation should get hope from the central Government not from saints and sanyasis. 

The RSS wants to use Ravi Shankar and Vasudev to add Hindu international networking. But the question is why this team did not find a Hindu Guru born in Shudra farmer family and a Dalit family. Is it because they are less Hindu, as they belong to the fourth varna and also no varna (Dalits are known as avarnas)? In the teaching of these three socio-spiritual leaders is there a single sentence that: ‘All Hindus Are Created Equal by Hindu God’. Is there a caste-free God they visualised for protection of all Hindus, leave alone Muslims, Christians and Sikhs of India?

Even assuming that they do not want to save the atheists and seculars, worldwide who were said to have worked for the advanced medical science, how many rural hospitals these gurus established in our poverty-stricken rural India? Ravi Shankar has a network in Geneva where there is a lot of oxygen to breathe in open air as well as in hospitals. But none in the Dandakaranya tribal belt where malnutrition is making their breathing more difficult than in any other part of the world. Why not that be his international base?  

Jaggi Vasudev has networks across the United States including the wealthiest California state, but none in the Koraput tribal belt of Orissa. They learnt English in a manner that every English-speaking Asian, American, European, Australian would understand. But they never learnt a single tribal language of India. Their divinity flows in sweet English to promote ‘Hindu, Hindi, Hindustani’ and the RSS loves this nationalism.    

Whom are they teaching their methods of pranayama (Isha foundation specialization)? Ravi Shankar is supposed to be an expert on rhythmic breathing. India is now dying without pranavayu, and no breathing--leave alone rhythmic. What scientific advancement they achieved and handed over to the nation? How many good hospitals that RSS and these foundations established to save the poor from lack of pranavayu in the villages and tribal areas? 

Even before this deadly disease attacked Indian people in villages and urban slums were dying for want of enough oxygen in the atmosphere. What did they do? Why do they go to teach the Americans and Europeans who have everything--enough pranavayu, prana padarthas to eat along with plenty of cars and planes to travel? Why Hindu God is sending these gurus there not to tribal areas or even to African countries where there is nothing to eat and hardly any energy to breathe? They go to the US and Europe to acquire dollars, Euros and Pounds. How is that nationalism loved by the RSS?      

In 1900, Ida Scudder reached the Vellore region to give life to lifeless and started a medical centre, which later became a trend setting hospital. What kind of guruship she initiated and what kind of guruship these Indian Dwijas established? The RSS leaders attack the Christian missionaries on an everyday basis. Did they establish a single hospital in the country that could match the Christian Medical College Hospital in their long life of 95 years? Did they ever look at what that hospital has done to the nation in subsequent years? That was the first hospital that started open heart surgeries in the 1960s itself, when no other hospital in India knew that science. Did any Hindu Pitta, or Foundation or organisation including the RSS did such constructive humanitarian work? Why accuse such Christians as anti-national? 

The RSS and the gurus like Jaggi Vasudev, Ravi Shankar, who work around them as great Hindu nationalists must know the caste culture is causing more harm than corona to the spiritual will of the nation. Why are they so silent about it? In Uttar Pradesh where a Yogi rules, dead bodies are being discriminated against. Which culture is responsible for that? Where is a call from these gurus to not to do that?    

Most organised religions in the world with strong notion monolith of faith are Hinduism and Islam, though they differ in caste cultural practices. In Hinduism these saints are in control and in Islam the Mullahs are in control. Why could vaccine science not develop in countries of those nations where they play a dominant role? Why does the secular world produce more vaccines and life-saving drugs? Why India of these pranavayu giving gurus begging for oxygen from secular nations? Why did the ‘Art of Living Foundation’, which is said to be a great teacher of breathing exercise, establish a vaccine producing industry and also an oxygen production centre? Do these gugus want to tell us those who breathed according to their methods are not attacked by Corona? We assume that Mohan Bhagwat follows them with a discipline of RSS but was attacked by Corona and treated in a modern medical system developed in Europe and America, not in the Art of Living breathing.   

What kind of nationalism in Ravi Shankar and Vasudev the RSS found who established the Art of Living and art of pranayama in America and Europe but not in Indian Tribal Areas? Should Hindu nationalism be taught from California and Geneva to the farmers who are producing food for all Indian to survive and the safai sainiks who are cleaning the roads in the times of this deadly disease? 

The RSS leaders must know that the nation is watching them when they are in the driving seat of the national power. There is enough intellectual base among the productive masses that can see through these English-speaking gurus, what they speak and do in their typical saintly attire here, and what they speak and do in America and Europe? The farmers, workers, shepherds, artisans and so on are already on ‘hope production’ jobs. They do not have to listen to these gurus to protect themselves from Corona. They are on the job of killing coronavirus in the fields by producing protein and raw material for medicines.

*Views expressed are the author’s own.

(Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is a political theorist and social activist. His latest book is The Shudras--Vision for a New Parth co-edited with Karthik Raja Karuppusamy)

Other articles by Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd:

Disease distancing, not social distancing during Covid-19

Babu and Bhasha: The Game may end with this

Remembering Usaa: The greatest revolutionary barber after Upali

 

Related Articles

Hate Speech

Hate a political tool, now a state project: India 2023

There is a chance to make Meta Facebook accountable for its hate generating content on May 31, by voting YES for Proposal 7 titled “Assessing Allegations of Biased Operations in Meta's Largest Market” which is to be presented at Meta's AGM on May 31, 2023. It highlights allegations against Facebook for disseminating hate speech, its failure to address risks and political bias, voices concerns around inadequate content moderation and lack of transparency in platform practices. The writer calls on readers to participate in this campaign on social media to make our republic hate-free

Hate Speech

Hate a political tool, now a state project: India 2023

There is a chance to make Meta Facebook accountable for its hate generating content on May 31, by voting YES for Proposal 7 titled “Assessing Allegations of Biased Operations in Meta's Largest Market” which is to be presented at Meta's AGM on May 31, 2023. It highlights allegations against Facebook for disseminating hate speech, its failure to address risks and political bias, voices concerns around inadequate content moderation and lack of transparency in platform practices. The writer calls on readers to participate in this campaign on social media to make our republic hate-free


Sunday

03

Jan

Pan-India

Saturday

05

Dec

05 pm onwards

Rise in Rage!

North Gate, JNU campus

Thursday

26

Nov

10 am onwards

Delhi Chalo

Pan India

Theme

Stop Hate

Hate and Harmony in 2021

A recap of all that transpired across India in terms of hate speech and even outright hate crimes, as well as the persecution of those who dared to speak up against hate. This disturbing harvest of hate should now push us to do more to forge harmony.
Taliban 2021

Taliban in Afghanistan: A look back

Communalism Combat had taken a deep dive into the lives of people of Afghanistan under the Taliban regime. Here we reproduce some of our archives documenting the plight of hapless Afghanis, especially women, who suffered the most under the hardline regime.
2020

Milestones 2020

In the year devastated by the Covid 19 Pandemic, India witnessed apathy against some of its most marginalised people and vilification of dissenters by powerful state and non state actors. As 2020 draws to a close, and hundreds of thousands of Indian farmers continue their protest in the bitter North Indian cold. Read how Indians resisted all attempts to snatch away fundamental and constitutional freedoms.
Migrant Diaries

Migrant Diaries

The 2020 COVID pandemic brought to fore the dismal lives that our migrant workers lead. Read these heartbreaking stories of how they lived before the pandemic, how the lockdown changed their lives and what they’re doing now.

Campaigns

Sunday

03

Jan

Pan-India

Saturday

05

Dec

05 pm onwards

Rise in Rage!

North Gate, JNU campus

Thursday

26

Nov

10 am onwards

Delhi Chalo

Pan India

Videos

Communalism

Bastar violence: Anti-Christian Campaign causes breach in Adivasi unity

Hundreds of Adivasi church-goers across villages in Narayanpur and Bastar, Chhattisgarh have been experiencing boycott, intimidation and violence since December last year, forcing them to leave their homes and live in refugee camps. Reportedly, Adivasi districts across Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh is seeing a rise Hindutva mobilisation against Christians .

Communalism

Bastar violence: Anti-Christian Campaign causes breach in Adivasi unity

Hundreds of Adivasi church-goers across villages in Narayanpur and Bastar, Chhattisgarh have been experiencing boycott, intimidation and violence since December last year, forcing them to leave their homes and live in refugee camps. Reportedly, Adivasi districts across Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh is seeing a rise Hindutva mobilisation against Christians .

IN FACT

Analysis

Stop Hate

Hate and Harmony in 2021

A recap of all that transpired across India in terms of hate speech and even outright hate crimes, as well as the persecution of those who dared to speak up against hate. This disturbing harvest of hate should now push us to do more to forge harmony.
Taliban 2021

Taliban in Afghanistan: A look back

Communalism Combat had taken a deep dive into the lives of people of Afghanistan under the Taliban regime. Here we reproduce some of our archives documenting the plight of hapless Afghanis, especially women, who suffered the most under the hardline regime.
2020

Milestones 2020

In the year devastated by the Covid 19 Pandemic, India witnessed apathy against some of its most marginalised people and vilification of dissenters by powerful state and non state actors. As 2020 draws to a close, and hundreds of thousands of Indian farmers continue their protest in the bitter North Indian cold. Read how Indians resisted all attempts to snatch away fundamental and constitutional freedoms.
Migrant Diaries

Migrant Diaries

The 2020 COVID pandemic brought to fore the dismal lives that our migrant workers lead. Read these heartbreaking stories of how they lived before the pandemic, how the lockdown changed their lives and what they’re doing now.

Archives