Why Mythili Initiative?

 

The current state -

 

  Please take a moment to look around us. We are surrounded by immorality and corruption. Yes, we have also evolved a robust police department and a matching judiciary, but do the problem creators really respect and abide by these institutions? To the people who have less than moral values, no police department can force them to follow the righteous path, no judicial enquiry is going to correct their evil designs. To them, it is just going to be a week or two in jail and then they are going to find some judicial loop hole to get out. Till now no judicial review has been able to bring the real culprits to book. For the culprits, they just have to throw around a few more dollars to get around a judicial review or judgement.

 

So what is the point?

 

I believe that the point is.. no police department or judiciary or any form of societal policing is as efficient as fear of god. I believe that fear of the omnipresent is the ultimate deterrant to morally loose people to prevent them from committing acts of corruption or damage to society. But, If you know that a lightning will strike you blind the moment you accept a bribe then you will always fear bribe and never accept one.

Now, our society and the current generation has grown up to be atheist for the most part. This has resulted in most of us testing the realms of acceptable morality. So we cannot really turn around our generation to become god-fearing but what we can do is to make the next generation to respect the omni-present thereby leading to a better society for tomorrow.

 

Therefore -

 

It is my humble attempt to re-invigorate the brahmins so that they turn back to their old profession of practising the vedas and spreading the knowledge of god. This is in the hope that, the next generation of brahmins will once again be scholars in vedic knowledge and use ancient wisdom to answer our questions to distinguish between the eternally opposing paths of right and wrong.

For the average hindu child, I am trying to create a vedic syllabus which will teach them the basics of vedic knowledge, astrology, itihasa-puranas and our classical music/arts which they can use in their daily lives and which will also help them identify a guru for themselves in their pursuit of vedic wisdom.

Hopefully we are able to create a society which has a balanced diet of science and religious philosophy so that the human race continues to grow and expand albeit without the currently inherent problems of corruption and immorality.


 

Conceptually -

 

I believe the brahmins have always restricted themselves to temples, service to god and memorizing the vedas to be passed on to generations over the centuries. It is my humble, as also personal opinion, that the current view that brahmins are upper caste and they have been oppressing the rest of the hindu community for centuries might not be entirely correct.

During the rule of kings, the valiant and knowledgeable kshatriyans always provided food and livelihood for the brahmin community after realizing that the vedic knowledge provides for a stable, peaceful and corruption free society. But when the rule of the kings died with the advent of the persian and mogul invasions followed by the eventual british colonization under the east india company, the brahmins lost their livelihood as there was no one to donate food to them. The british seeing that the brahmins were seemingly able to read and understand began to employ them across the board in India. This led to the feeling that brahmins were superior. This when it got combined with the brahmins practice of "Theetu" which is grossly and incorrectly translated into english as "untouchabililty" fortified the theory that there were sections of the community which was "upper" caste and "lower" caste. This basically played into the hands of the british who wanted to use their "Divide and Rule" policy.

"Theetu" in my understanding as a simple brahmin is the word assigned to anything which is needed to be avoided based on health and cleanliness concerns. Without going into an elaborate discussion on the concept, I believe it would suffice to the intelligent people to note that - Even menstruating women where considered to be "Theetu" during their 3 day periods. Thus "Theetu" was not made to target a section of people who became known as the "lower" caste. It was practiced in effect to maintain cleanliness.

The initial brahmin generation did not believe in this lie. But sometime towards the end of the british rule, when the next generation came in, they began to live the lie of Upper caste and Lower caste. They began to really believe that they were upper caste and started to treat the rest of the population accordingly. This was because no brahmin family had continued to pass on the vedic knowledge to its children and the concept of para brammam or singular unity was lost to the indian population. This was a direct result of all brahmins being forced to find sustenance for themselves and had to go to a job instead of passing on the universal knowledge to their offsprings like what had happened for centuries.

Further the western hemisphere also contributed by again incorrectly translating brammam as brahman in every english literature that was published and therefore feeding it also to the people of the developed world that brahmins were considered supreme and were upper caste. It was totally lost on everyone that we in India were the first to use respect for one's profession no matter what they did. But having torn down this concept where it was born, it is now practised in almost all developed countries where equal respect is given to a man irrespective of whether he is cleaning a toilet or managing a team. This is why our current generation feels more comfortable cleaning toilets in singapore than doing the same thing in india because they are considered lower caste here whereas they are considered respectable everywhere else.

It is our responsibility to change this. We have to again spread the knowledge of para brammam and singularity.

 

Irrespective -

 

Irrespective of what has happened, I believe that it would help us all .. together .. as a community, if we could push the brahmin community back to its original path of temples, service to gods and memorizing the vedas.

It would be best if we could request the remaining few truly knowledgable people to leave the act of searching for jobs and entering business to the rest of the population. Instead, the brahmins should be enthused to return to memorizing the vedas and temples.

Asking the government to provide for the brahmin community like the kings used to do might not be entirely realistic in todays world. Therefore, it would be ideal if the brahmins could restrict themselves to using fields of education, law, auditing and priesthood for gaining a means of financing their livelihood. The above suggestion is not new.. in the intermediate times after the british rule, brahmins have only been lawyers and accountants and teachers in schools for the major part. Also these areas of employment do not provide riches but do lay the foundation for a strong and incorruptible society..

I will be dedicating all my resources to achieving this end. I hope I am correct and god does guide me. If you can help, then please spread the message of the Mythili Initiative.