Posted on 24th April, 2026 (GMT 09:02 hrs)
ABSTRACT
This activist art work, structured as a banned dramatic dialogue between two borderless earthlings, Aniket and Jijñāsā, rigorously exposes Hindutva’s Phantasma — a colonial-era political construct masquerading as eternal “Sanātana Dharma.” Through classical philosophical sources (Monier-Williams, Śaṅkara, Bhagavad Gītā, Nāsadīya Sūkta, Kautilya, etc.) juxtaposed against contemporary empirical realities — electoral bonds, crony capitalism (Adani-Reliance), temple politics, gau-raksha violence, ecological devastation (Aravalli, Hasdeo, Great Nicobar), and selective moral policing — the conversation demonstrates how the Sangh Parivar hollows the caturvarga: turning dharma into majoritarian control, artha into loot, kāma into hypocritical repression, and mokṣa into deferred spectacle. Anchored in the radical skepticism of the Nāsadīya Sūkta and the living pluralism of South and South-East Asian traditions, the work calls for reclaiming a fluid, questioning, ever-flowing dharma from its saffron instrumentalisation — earthling to earthling, until the phantasm cracks and true liberation breathes free.
“…the Hindus must consider whether the time has not come for them to recognize that there is nothing fixed,
nothing eternal, nothing sanatan; that everything is changing, that change is the law of life for individuals as well as for society. In a changing society, there must be a constant revolution of old values; and the Hindus must realize that if there must be standards to measure the acts of men, there must also be a readiness to revise those standards.” — Bhimrao Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste (1936)
Prologue
This is activist art in dramatic dialogue form — raw, unapologetic, and deliberately provocative. It makes no claim to “neutral” academic scholarship or the pretence of dispassionate journalism. It is a forbidden exchange.
In certain quarters, the Sangh Parivar’s magazines (The Organiser, Panchjanya) and their extensive digital networks patrol the boundaries of language and thought with the vigilance of border guards. To describe “Hindu” as a relatively recent, borrowed umbrella term — a colonial-era administrative construct that flattened a vast, heterogeneous, often contradictory plurality of traditions into a single political category — is to commit ideological heresy. To question how this umbrella was later reshaped into a mirror-image of Semitic and Judeo-Abrahamic models of organised religion is treated as an act of betrayal.
Here, in a shadowed digital clearing far from temples and flags, two earthlings meet. They carry no religious or national passports. They call themselves Aniket and Jijñāsā. They speak as terrans — ordinary humans who choose soil over borders, questions over certainties, and the living earth over manufactured identities. Echoing John Lennon’s Imagine, they refuse the passports that divide.
Through this banned conversation, they return to the caturvarga — dharma, artha, kāma, mokṣa — not as political slogans, but as living philosophical pillars drawn directly from primary classical sources: Monier-Williams’ Sanskrit-English Dictionary (1899), Śaṅkara’s Brahma Sūtra Bhāṣya and Adhyāsa Bhāṣya, the Bhagavad Gītā, the Ṛg Veda’s Nāsadīya Sūkta (10.129), Kautilya’s Arthaśāstra, Manusmṛti, and key Upaniṣads (Chāndogya and Īśā).
At every step, they place these roots beside the empirical realities of our times in the context of contemporary Indian socio-political landscape— electoral bond data, court records from NCLT and NCLAT, investigative reports, and documented patterns of governmentality. Theory and evidence speak to each other without illusion.
All references to specific allegations — Snoopgate, Epstein-linked connections, DHFL irregularities and similar matters — are drawn strictly from publicly available documents, court proceedings, and recorded claims. This work does not pronounce verdicts on these issues; it insists on the right to ask uncomfortable questions.
This is an art of resistance. It is offered for whispered performances in hidden gatherings, for quiet readings under digital shadows, and for every clearing where doubt is still free.
It does not seek to replace one dogma with another. It seeks only to reopen the space where genuine inquiry — earthling to earthling — can breathe once more.
Disclaimer: The creators of this work, including the earthling voices of Aniket and Jijñāsā, do not endorse or uphold the category of Sanātana Dharma as it is currently invoked in public discourse. We regard the contemporary construct of Sanātana Dharma as largely a genealogical phantasma — a contemporary ideological invention that feeds and legitimises the majoritarian, standardized, theocratic, centralising, and exclusionary rhetoric of the BJP, RSS, and the wider Sangh Parivar dynamics. What is presented as timeless and eternal is, in our reading, a politically engineered umbrella that flattens radical pluralism, suppresses internal dissent, and serves electoral and cultural hegemony. This “Adharma against Sanātana Dharma” is a strategic subversion in this work. This dialogue seeks not to defend any version of Sanātana, but to reclaim the plural, questioning, ever-flowing philosophical heritages of South and South-East Asia from its current political instrumentalisation. This conversation series is called “banned” because in today’s BJP-RSS India, freely questioning the political hijacking of so-called Sanātana Dharma, Hindutva majoritarianism, or crony extraction is treated as ideological treason — where free speech has itself become a dangerous, surveilled, and increasingly forbidden act in the age of paid Godi Media news anchors and Whatsapp University forwards from the BJP’s ever-so-notorious IT Cell.
The Initiation
Nāndī
(Invocation & Enunciation – Spoken by Nāndīkara, the celestial announcer, in rhythmic style):
In saffron robes that cloak the greed of power,
The richest party and its unregistered kin,
Twist eternal Dharma into vote-bank tower,
Turn artha to loot, kāma to policed sin.
Puppet-deities as juristic lords they crown,
Phallic spires rise where pluralism drowns;
Nāsadīya’s doubt they bury deep in stone,
While mokṣa flees their temple, far from home.
Yet earthlings whisper in forbidden glade—
From dharma’s root to mokṣa’s silent fire—
The banned conversation shall never fade,
Till adharma cracks and truth reclaims its pyre.
[Performance Note: Nāndīkara’s voice emerges from a slow-rotating holographic planet — blue, borderless, no saffron, no tricolour, no red. Lights dim to bare earth. Two figures sit cross-legged. The dialogue begins in a whisper, as if the Sangh Parivar/SP’s digital sentinels might be listening.
The dialogue begins in a soft whisper, as if the Sangh Parivar (SP)’s digital sentinels might be listening.
As the dialogue starts, the holographic Earth slowly recedes into the vastness of space, gradually shrinking until it becomes the Pale Blue Dot — a tiny, fragile speck suspended in a distant sunbeam.]
Banned Conversation Series – Session I
The Identity of Being “Hindu” and the Hollowing of Dharma
[Scene: A bare virtual clearing. Two figures sit cross-legged on bare earth. Behind them, the slow-rotating hologram of the Pale Blue Dot stays alive — a silent, luminous witness in the darkness.]
Jijñāsā (leaning forward, voice soft but insistent): What is meant by the term “Hindu”? Who is a “Hindu”, after all?
Aniket (pauses, smiles faintly, runs a hand over the earth): Jijñāsā, my fellow earthling… you begin with the trapdoor question itself. The Sangh Parivar or SP’s own gurus — Savarkar first, then Golwalkar, then also probably Hedgewar… then The Organiser editorials — answer in one breath: “Hindu is he who calls this land both pitṛbhūmi and punyabhūmi.” A territorial-cultural loyalty test. Not organized faith, but “way of life.” Sanātana Dharma eternalised as national glue.
Theoretically, this definition is in fact a 20th-century construct. Empirically, it was forged in the colonial census laboratory. The 1881 and 1901 censuses crystallised “Hindu” as a residual administrative category — a catch-all label for everyone who was neither Muslim, Christian, Sikh, nor Jain — flattening thousands of distinct traditions into a single statistical bloc. Savarkar’s 1923 Essentials of Hindutva then weaponised this colonial artefact into a full-fledged political ideology.
Ashis Nandy and his collaborators — Shikha Trivedi, Shail Mayaram, and Achyut Yagnik — in Creating Nationality: The Ramjanmabhoomi Movement and Fear of the Self exposed this historical sleight of hand decades ago. They demonstrated that “Hindu” nationalism was never an unbroken ancient continuity, but a modern-colonial manufacturing: a frightened, upper-caste, urban middle-class project that required an “other” to forge its own “self.” The Ram Janmabhoomi movement, they argued, was not revival but the deliberate creation of nationality through fear. They implied that the intolerant Hindu nationalism is nothing but an illegitimate child of modern India, not of tradition.
A more recent critique, Devil’s Advocacy: Sabotaging Hindutva (2022), sharpens the point further. The authors argue that Hindutva is fundamentally an exonym — a label imposed from outside — functioning as a borrowed mirror-image of Judeo-Abrahamic religious structures. The Sangh Parivar, they contend, consciously sought to engineer a monolithic “Hindu” bloc that could rival the Semitic model of one Book, one Prophet, one God, and one Law. Taking the colonial “Hindu” category as raw material, they attempted to shrink-wrap a thousand diverse streams, sects, cults, traditions, practices, rituals, and faiths — Vaiṣṇava, Śaiva, Śākta, Tāntrika, Vāmācāra, Bālāhari (Balarami), Kartābhajā, Nera-Nerī, Kāmācārī, Bāmācārī, Baul, Sahajiyā, Matuyā, Aul, Fakir, and countless Ādivāsī, and even atheist or materialist traditions — into a single, rigid political identity. As Akshay Kumar Dutta meticulously documented in Bharatavarshiya Upasak Sampraday (1870) and Shashibhushan Dasgupta later analysed in Obscure Religious Cults (1946), some of these streams were often radically plural, non-conformist, and even antinomian — many openly rejecting caste, scripture, temple rituals, idolatry and Brahminical authority. Yet the Sangh Parivar tried to force them into one monolithic bloc along with hyper-ritualistic regimentation. In doing so, they Christianised the category in saffron, imposed boundaries, loyalty tests, holy-land certificates, and doctrinal conformity. What was once fluid and plural became fixed and adversarial. Heterogeneity itself was declared the enemy.
Jijñāsā (laughing bitterly, tracing a circle in the dirt): So they stole the word from its own source? The Sanskrit Sindhu — the great river — became Hind in Persian-Arabic usage, a simple geographical identifier for the land and people across the Indus. The British later turned this geographic label into a religious category. And now the Sangh Parivar sells this same borrowed colonial term back to us as something eternal — claiming Sanātana Dharma, the so-called ancient, founderless, scripture-less, prophet-less way of life, was always this rigid, uniform, majoritarian “Hindu” thing?
Aniket (nodding, voice dropping): Exactly. Open any Organiser archive or RSS YouTube lecture. They speak of Sanātana Dharma as “indigenous faith, eternal religion and culture.” A beautiful, plural phrase — until they weaponise it. Then it becomes code for Hindutva: one nation, one culture, one people, one religion, one ideology. Caste hierarchy and discrimination sanitised as “varnashrama dharma,” regional differences flattened, Muslims and Dalits lynched, churches or Christmas decorations vandalised, women’s bodies raped and mutilated, food habits policed, love or intimacy policed, language monitored. One could call it “phantasmic Hindutva” — a ghostly ideology the Sangh itself cannot define consistently. Contradictions everywhere: they worship diversity when it suits them (“unity in diversity”), yet scream for uniformity the moment a Dalit, a Muslim, a Christian, or even a questioning Hindu steps out of line.
The BJP — the richest party on the planet, funneling astronomical amounts of opaque corporate money — uses the RSS (that non-registered, donation-sucking octopus with Bajrang Dal muscle and VHP global reach) as its ideological factory. They seem to violate the very Sanātana — the eternal flow, the non-coercive order — by turning it into a fascist political corporation. A sellable brand. A vote bank. A surveillance state dressed in saffron.
Jijñāsā (eyes narrowing, half-smiling): Then what is Sanātana Dharma, if not their version?
Aniket (looking up at the rotating blue planet): Ask the rivers. Ask the forests. Ask the old grandmothers who still light lamps without asking for certificates of loyalty.
But tell me, Jijnasa — is “Sanatana” itself beyond question? Or has this word “eternal” become the ultimate weapon, a claim so absolute, so totalising… that it smothers everything it claims to preserve? Was dharma ever truly one eternal, unchanging order — or was that always a convenient fiction?
It was never one thing. It was never meant to be policed by a non-registered paramilitary or a richest-party manifesto. It was the way the earth holds us — plural, contradictory, ever-flowing, ever-transforming. The SP’s deepest crime is not merely against minorities or women. It is against the very pluralism that may have been the living soul of fluid dharma. They have taken the word “Sanatana” and turned it into eternal majoritarian panic — freezing what was always meant to remain fluid, weaponising eternity itself to enforce conformity.
Jijñāsā (whispering, as if the sentinels might hear): Then we keep asking. Earthling to earthling. Until the phantasm cracks.
(The hologram of the planet spins on. Lights dim. The banned conversation continues…)
Jijñāsā (voice quieter now, almost conspiratorial): You’ve peeled back the “Hindu” label — colonial umbrella-term, borrowed mirror of Semitic religion, heterogeneity shrink-wrapped into majoritarian glue. But what about the other sacred phrase they keep chanting? Sanātana Dharma.
If “Hindu” is their invented nation-religion, then what do they even mean or understand by the term dharma? Isn’t that the eternal part they swear they’re protecting?
Aniket (laughs softly, a short, dry chuckle): Ah, Jijñāsā… now you’ve stepped into the real linguistic minefield. The SP’s gurus on The Organiser and their YouTube shakhas throw “Sanātana Dharma” around like a party slogan — “most oldest, most eternal, most Hindu in an authentic, pure, uncontaminated, pristine way.” They treat it as if it were always a rigid, ethnographic Hindutva brand: one loyalty test, one unified political identity forged in the fire of majoritarian-theocratic anxiety. What they call “Sanātana” is not the ever-flowing order — it is a twentieth-century political invention wrapped in the language of eternity.
Let me show you the theft with regard to dharma itself. It is not “religion.” Never was. If you wish to understand it, take its antonym — adharma. In Monier-Williams’ Sanskrit-English Dictionary (1899), dharma (धर्म) comes straight from the verbal root √dhṛ (धृ) — “to hold, bear, maintain, support, or keep.” The literal etymological sense is “that which is established or firm,” the bearer, the supporter of cosmic and social order. Vedic origin: an older n-stem dharman, meaning “bearer” or “supporter.”
The dictionary spells it out plainly: steadfast decree, statute, ordinance, law; usage, practice, customary observance or prescribed conduct, duty; right, justice (sometimes punishment); virtue, morality, religious merit, good works. Conduct. Order. That which upholds. Not a belief system. Not a creed. Never one Book, one Prophet, one God.
Adharma? The negation: unrighteousness, injustice, irreligion, impiousness, wickedness, immorality, sin, guilty deed, demerit. Personified in the texts as the husband of Hiṃsā (Violence), father of Falsehood and Immorality. It is whatever breaks the holding, the supporting, the firm order of things.
Jijñāsā (eyes widening, leaning in): So they’re translating dharma as the “religion” the whole time?
Aniket (nodding, voice sharpening with amusement): Exactly — and that translation is a colonial derivative, altered to fit their needs. The English word “religion” comes from Latin. Cicero (45 BCE) said relegere — to go over again, to read carefully, scrupulous observance of rites, the opposite of superstition. Later Christian writers like Lactantius and Augustine pushed religare — to bind fast, to tie back — an obligation that chains humans to the divine. By the 16th century it hardened into “a system of faith,” an organised belief bloc.
Dharma and religion are not twins. Religion (via religare) is a bond between parties — human and God. Dharma (√dhṛ) is that which upholds the entire order — cosmic, social, economic, ethical, aesthetic, ecological. No single text. No loyalty oath required. The SP has turned the upholding into a binding contract: vote for us, wear the uniform, hate the right people, and we’ll call it “eternal.”
That’s the violation, earthling. They follow ethnographic Hindutva — census categories, colonial anthropology, theocratic and majoritarian muscle — rather than the multitude of indigenous epistemological heritages of South-East Asian philosophy. They quote Sanatāna Dharma without ever having read the Sanskrit and Pali sources that actually carry it. It is a misnomer. A political brand that hollows out the very word it claims to protect.
Jijñāsā (tracing the root √dhṛ in the dirt with her finger, smiling fiercely): So while they scream “Sanātana Dharma is under attack,” they are the ones committing adharma — breaking the order, the holding, the support — by forcing pluralism into a Semitic-style monolith. Turning conduct into creed. Turning the earth’s way into a fascistic party manifesto.
Aniket (looking up at the rotating planet, voice low but steady): Precisely. The BJP’s opaque billions, the RSS’s unregistered donation networks, and the Bajrang Dal’s street muscle — all of it wrapped in the stolen robes of the “most ancient” dharma. They violate the very root of the word. They break what is meant to hold the world together.
Jijñāsā (whispering again, half to the planet): Then we keep naming the theft. Earthling to earthling. Until the misnomer cracks.
(The hologram spins on. The sentinels of The Organiser and YouTube patrols keep scrolling elsewhere. The banned conversation does not end.)
Banned Conversation Series – Session II
The Four Pillars Hollowed – Artha as Loot, Not Meaning
[Scene: The virtual clearing remains bare. The small blue planet rotates slowly. Jijñāsā sits with a small pile of imaginary earth in her palm. Aniket leans forward, voice calm but edged with quiet fury. Jijñāsā has drawn a balance scale in the dirt — one side weighted with coins stamped “electoral bonds, PM CARES” the other with roots from √dhṛ and palm-leaf verses.]
Aniket (starting directly): As we began with dharma — that which holds, supports, upholds the order — let us now turn to the other three pillars of this South-East Asian philosophical heritage: artha, kāma, and mokṣa. These form the caturvarga, the four legitimate aims of human life. Not commandments carved in stone, not Semitic-style articles of faith, but a flexible, contextual framework for a full terrestrial existence. The SP speaks of “Sanātana Dharma” as if it owns these pillars, yet reduces them to slogans of exclusion while their richest-party machinery devours the substance.
Let us begin with artha — or rather, the artha of artha itself. In the 1899 Sanskrit-English Dictionary of Sir Monier Monier-Williams, artha (अर्थ) reveals a profoundly multifaceted term. It spans the mundane to the highest philosophical truths. Materially, it means money, property, opulence, advantage, worldly success, material possessions (satva) — the resources needed for life. Yet critically, it also means meaning, sense, goal, purpose, essence, motive. Linguistically, it is the content carried by words: what gives sound its significance instead of mere noise.
This polysemous nature is no accident. In the puruṣārthas, artha as wealth is legitimate — but always bounded. The highest form appears in the compound paramārtha (परमार्थ): the highest or whole truth, supra-mental knowledge, the best kind of wealth, the ultimate object. It marks the shift from worldly aims to realization of what is supposed to be the Absolute.
This paramārtha is approached through parā vidyā — supreme, intuitive knowledge of Brahman that removes the veils of ignorance — distinct from aparā vidyā, the secular sciences (grammar, mathematics, empirical skills) that deal only with material “meanings” in fragments and regimented disciplinary frameworks. Worldly artha is a necessary stage, a helpful adjunct, but never the final destination. Seeking it without regard for dharma slides into adharma — the breaking of order.
Jijñāsā (letting the soil slip through her fingers, voice thoughtful): So artha is not just accumulation. It is essential purpose itself — wealth in service of meaningful creations, resources that support the holding (dhṛ) of life, not the shattering of it. The scriptural texts never imagined artha as unchecked plunder. And yet the SP’s regime turns it into exactly that.
Aniket (laughing shortly, the same dry chuckle): Precisely, fellow earthling. And here lies the SP’s deepest violation. The BJP has systematically inverted artha — turning legitimate wealth and purpose into naked extraction for political survival and personal enrichment. Through opaque corporate donations, electoral bonds, and funds like PM CARES, it has built the largest war chest in Indian political history. This money is not merely for “development” or “rashtra dharma.” It is funnelled to consolidate power, reward loyal corporates, and secure electoral dominance.
The RSS ecosystem — sustained by massive foreign and domestic contributions — supplies the ideological cover. While Bajrang Dal and gaurakshaka networks enforce cultural discipline on the ground, the party’s economic machinery concentrates wealth in a handful of friendly conglomerates. What the classical texts bound artha to dharma, the SP has decoupled completely: wealth is now accumulated without ethical restraint, then weaponised to buy loyalty, silence critics, and perpetuate majoritarian control.
Even the RSS’ own headquarters in Nagpur showcases this contradiction — a sprawling, air-conditioned multiplex-like complex with neoliberal amenities, auditoriums, and commercial infrastructure that stands in stark contrast to the ascetic image they project. What the classical texts rigorously bound artha to dharma, the SP has decoupled completely: wealth is now accumulated without ethical restraint, then weaponised to buy political loyalty, silence critics, fund propaganda, and perpetuate majoritarian control. This is not paramārtha. This is lobha in saffron robes.
They hollow artha of its dual nature. The material side becomes loot without limit; the existential side — meaning, purpose — is replaced by majoritarian loyalty tests. Paramārtha? Forgotten. Parā vidyā? Reduced to YouTube sermons that never touch the actual Sanskrit or Pali sources. Instead of wealth serving the upholding of cosmic-social order, it funds surveillance, division, and ecological ruin in the name of “development.”
Jijñāsā (eyes narrowing, pointing to the scale): Look at Kautilya’s Arthaśāstra — Book 2, Chapter 8 on the “Detection of what is Embezzled by Government Servants.” The treasury is the foundation of the state; all undertakings depend on finance. Kautilya lists nearly forty techniques of embezzlement: entering realized amounts later or not at all, showing collected funds as uncollected, falsifying accounts, inflating expenses, diverting funds, discrepancies in weights and measures, fabricating records. He compares corrupt officials to fish drinking water underwater — hard to detect — and the temptation to tasting honey or poison on the tongue. Detection demands audits, spies, cross-verification, separate interrogations. Punishment? Twelve times the amount in fines, confiscation, demotion, imprisonment. Prevention includes decent salaries to reduce temptation and transparent daily recording. This is pragmatic dharma in statecraft: artha must serve the order, not shatter it.
Yet the SP regime? Demonetisation was sold as a moral strike against black money — echoing Kautilya — but over 99% of the notes eventually returned to the banks, the informal sector was devastated, and new digital systems opened fresh avenues of opacity. Electoral bonds, later struck down by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional for violating the right to information, funneled nearly ₹16,000 crore anonymously into political parties, with the BJP receiving the lion’s share — approximately 47% of all bonds issued. Massive undisclosed funds continued to flow into the BJP’s coffers through other routes, including the controversial PM CARES Fund, which has faced persistent questions over lack of transparency, audit, and parliamentary oversight. Data revealed heavy contributions from a handful of corporate donors, raising serious quid pro quo concerns — “chanda do, dhanda lo” (give donations, get business). The Supreme Court itself warned of the grave risk of fostering crony capitalism, where political power and economic favouritism feed each other in a closed loop.
This economic model has produced staggering inequality: according to the World Inequality Report, the top 1% now controls nearly 40% of India’s total wealth, the top 10% holds around 65%, while the bottom 50% owns a mere 6–7%. In terms of income, the top 10% captures 58% of national income, leaving the bottom 50% with just 15%. What was promised as “Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas” has instead delivered one of the most unequal societies in the world.
Aniket (nodding, gesturing to the scale): And the forty ways relating to embezzlement live on in their contemporary forms: timing manipulations, misrepresentation, diversion — now through opaque funding, selective enforcement, and corporate concentration. Allegations swirl around rapid growth of certain conglomerates in ports, airports, energy, infrastructure — Hindenburg Research’s reports flagged stock manipulation, accounting concerns, offshore entities. Whether fully proven or contested, the pattern of proximity and policy favoritism contradicts Arthaśāstra’s zero-tolerance vigilance. SEBI’s role has faced scrutiny. Meanwhile, Manusmṛti subordinates artha to dharma: regulated lending, fair trade, kingly oversight against corruption, differential yet bounded interest rates, punishment for misuse of public resources. Wealth through inheritance, trade, gifts — but always ethically, within varṇa duties and social harmony, never as raw monopoly power.
The SP’s Integral Humanism (Deendayal Upadhyaya) once critiqued both capitalism’s greed and communism’s dehumanization, advocating antyodaya (uplift of the last), swadeshi, decentralized economy rooted in dharma. Yet in practice, pro-market reforms, corporate tax cuts, privatization pushes, and “ease of doing business” coexist with cultural majoritarianism. Lobha thrives while paramārtha — the highest meaning through parā vidyā — is forgotten.
Jijñāsā (voice sharpening): They foreground religious and cultural fundamentalism — temple politics, cow protection, identity wars — to mask and foreclose market fundamentalism. As one incisive paper titled Foregrounding Fundamentalism, Foreclosing Fundamentalism argues, the emotional spectacle of Hindutva successfully displaces public scrutiny of primitive accumulation, cronyism, and extreme wealth concentration. “Godi media” amplifies social division while economic plunder — marked by duopoly-based dominance in key sectors and regulatory capture — slips conveniently into the shadows.
Look at the stark examples: the meteoric rise of the Adani Group in ports, airports, energy, defence, and infrastructure; Ambani’s Reliance’s near-monopoly control over telecom, retail, and digital platforms through Jio; and the selective awarding of massive contracts in green energy, highways, and airports to a handful of favoured conglomerates. Sanātana Dharma is reduced to a powerful mobilizational glue rather than any real ethical constraint. Ancient texts are invoked only rhetorically, while in practice the regime runs on neoliberal pragmatism: digital money flows, stock market euphoria, selective welfare schemes with systemic corruption, and persistent structural inequality.
This is adharma against artha itself — breaking the support (dhṛ), turning meaningful, essential purpose into power, meaning into manipulation. Kautilya demanded proactive detection; here, selective enforcement. Manusmṛti bound wealth to righteousness; here, concentration among few. Vedānta’s paramārtha sublates limited artha; here, the limited artha of the powerful claims eternity.
Aniket (voice steady, eyes on the planet as if reading ancient palm leaves): Jijnasa, we have only begun with artha. The Monier-Williams entry was our doorway. But to grasp its full depth — the artha of artha — we must enter the Vedānta texts themselves. Not the SP’s ethnographic pamphlets, but the living philosophical heritage of South-East Asia: the Upaniṣads, the Brahma Sūtras, and Ādi Śaṅkara’s commentaries that crystallise Advaita.
In the Vedānta framework, artha is never merely “wealth” or even “purpose” in isolation. Śaṅkara, in his Brahma Sūtra Bhāṣya and commentaries on the Upaniṣads, distinguishes three gradations of reality, with pāramārthika (absolute) at the apex. From the paramārthika standpoint, Brahman alone is real — non-dual, infinite, the substratum of all. The world of names and forms (nāmarūpa) is mithyā: neither absolutely real (sat) nor absolutely unreal (like the horns of a hare). It appears, it serves a function, but it is sublated — dissolved — when true knowledge arises.
Śaṅkara illustrates this with the classic rope-snake analogy, drawn from the Upaniṣads: in darkness you mistake a rope for a snake (prātibhāsika — illusory appearance). In daylight you see the rope (vyāvahārika — empirical, transactional reality). But the ultimate truth (paramārthika) is that there was never a snake; the rope itself is superimposed on the ground, and even the ground is ultimately Brahman. The dream example in the texts is equally powerful: the dreamer experiences a vivid world (vyāvahārika within the dream), yet upon waking it vanishes into the waking consciousness, which itself is sublated in paramārtha.
Jijñāsā (finger pausing over the dirt drawing): So paramārtha is not another layer of “meaning” to be accumulated. It is the dissolution of all limited artha into the one without a second.
Aniket (nodding, voice gaining quiet intensity): Exactly. In the Chāndogya Upaniṣad (one of the core Vedānta texts), we hear “tat tvam asi” — that thou art. The individual self’s artha (its limited purpose, its worldly wealth of identity) is revealed as Brahman. Paramārtha is parā vidyā — the higher knowledge that removes ignorance (avidyā). Lower knowledge (aparā vidyā) deals with sciences, rituals, even the pursuit of artha as money or power. All legitimate, all necessary stages — but they are vyāvahārika. Only paramārtha reveals the Absolute as the “best kind of wealth,” the ultimate object.
Śaṅkara is merciless on this in the Adhyāsa Bhāṣya: superimposition (adhyāsa) is the root error. We mistake the non-eternal for eternal, the many for the one. The SP’s Hindutva does precisely the opposite. It freezes artha at the empirical level — richest-party accumulation, crony “development,” manipulated-stolen vote-bank majoritarianism — and calls it rashtra dharma. It never allows the sublation. It never lets paramārtha dissolve the phantasm of a monolithic “Hindu” nation. Instead of Brahman as the ground, they offer a political Brahman — bordered, policed, funded by opaque billions. Adharma against the very texts they claim to own.
Jijñāsā (smiling bitterly, brushing the dirt): They chant Sanātana but stop at the marketplace. Paramārtha would require them to see their own “Hindu” umbrella, their richest-party empire, their unregistered octopus of branches — all of it mithyā. Subordinated. Dissolvable.
Aniket (looking directly at her now): Yes. The Vedānta texts do not forbid worldly artha. They contextualise it. Pursue it within dharma, enjoy it as kāma, orient it toward mokṣa. But the SP severs the chain. Their artha has no paramārtha. Their “eternal dharma” has no dissolution into the non-dual. It is ethnographic Hindutva masquerading as epistemology — census categories instead of Śaṅkara’s sublation, YouTube slogans instead of the Upaniṣads’ silence.
Jijñāsā (brushing the dirt, eyes on the rotating blue sphere): Earthling to earthling. Until lobha is named from the texts themselves and the misnomer of the so-called “most oldest dharma” collapses under its own weight. And look — the DHFL resolution under the IBC is the living textbook of this violation.
Aniket (nodding gravely): Exactly. In the DHFL case, the Committee of Creditors (CoC), appointed by the RBI, exhibited procedural bias by approving the Piramal resolution plan despite higher competing bids (including ex-promoter Kapil Wadhawan’s offer of 100% creditor repayment) and despite NCLT directions (19 May 2021) to reconsider on merits. NCLAT (27 January 2022) explicitly declared the CoC’s conduct “illegal,” noting failure to maximise asset value and violation of fiduciary duty toward retail fixed-deposit and NCD holders, who were clubbed as unsecured creditors and subjected to ~77% haircuts. The subsequent reverse merger of Piramal Finance Ltd. and selective invocation of IBC Section 32A (granting “clean slate” immunity to the acquirer for pre-CIRP offences) while sidelining Section 66 (which targets fraudulent and wrongful trading) further institutionalised adharma. Assets valued at an alleged book value of approximately ₹94,000 crore were transferred for a discounted ₹34,250 crore, with avoidance transactions (potential recoveries of ₹45,000–47,000 crore) assigned at nominal ₹1. Forensic discrepancies revealed ₹8,861 crore allegedly missing from EMI collections. Retail depositors recovered only 23% of principal.
This resolution starkly exposes the clash between Sanātana dharma and governmental praxis under the IBC and NHB Act — a blatant inversion where Kautilya’s Arthaśāstra principles on detecting embezzlement are ignored while the regime enables greedy accumulation instead of renunciation (aparigraha and tyāga). Ajay Piramal’s documented electoral-bond contributions to the BJP (₹85 crore between 2019–2024) and earlier donations via Prudent/Satya Electoral Trust (₹28 crore, predominantly to BJP-aligned entities) exemplify artha as raw lobha rather than paramārtha. This inverts the Vedāntic hierarchy wherein worldly artha remains a subordinate stage oriented toward ultimate realisation. The SP’s regime severs the chain: artha as loot for the connected, masked by identity panic. Horse-trading, opaque funds like PM CARES, electoral bonds, and vote-bank arithmetic — all feed lobha. They violate the epistemological heritage by reducing South-East Asian philosophy to ethnographic Hindutva, Sanskrit roots unread.
Jijñāsā (voice resolute): We press on to kāma — desire policed into moral panic rather than bounded delight — and mokṣa, the freedom their identity machine can never permit.
(The hologram spins. Sentinels scroll past. The banned conversation holds the roots.)
Banned Conversation Series – Session III
Kāma Un-Policed – Desire as Bondage or Liberation and the Hypocrisy of Policed Desire
[Scene: The virtual clearing. The blue planet rotates. Jijñāsā has drawn a flame in the dirt — kāma as fire that can warm or consume — now ringed by broken surveillance chains and shadowed figures. She adds two more links labeled “facilitators.”]
Aniket (beginning directly): Jijñāsā, having traced artha from material loot to paramārtha, let us now turn to kāma — un-policed. First, place it within the six ripus (ṣaḍripu or ariṣaḍvarga), the internal enemies of the mind that block spiritual growth and mokṣa. These vices form a chain: kāma (lust/desire) is the root — excessive craving for sensory objects, pleasures, attachments. When blocked, it becomes krodha (anger). When fulfilled, it breeds lobha (greed) — the insatiable hunger we already exposed in the SP’s money-mongering. Then comes moha (delusion/attachment), mada (pride/arrogance), and matsarya (jealousy/envy). The SP masters lobha while weaponising kāma as the enemy to police in others.
In the caturvarga — dharma, artha, kāma, mokṣa — kāma holds dual significance, bridging worldly existence and liberation.
Jijñāsā (leaning forward, tracing the flame): Dual meaning — tell me clearly. And show me how the SP inverts it.
Aniket (nodding): In one sense, worldly kāma (vyāvahārika) is sensory gratification: pleasures of the five senses, aesthetic enjoyment of art and beauty, emotional and/or creative intimacy, the biological urge for procreation and affection. As a puruṣārtha, it is fully legitimate — but only when grounded in dharma. In the classical tradition, this finds its highest expression in Śṛṅgāra — the refined aesthetic sentiment that celebrates creative self-cultivation, sensual refinement, and jouissance — the profound, aesthetic delight in beauty, love, and artistic expression. Unchecked or divorced from dharma, however, it slides into the ripus, binding the self to transient sukha (pleasure) and saṃsāra.
But one must ask — have the BJP-RSS ever truly read the Kāma Sūtra, not as a cheap sex manual but as a sophisticated treatise on desire, aesthetics, relationships, pleasure, arts, pottery, weaving, and refined living? Have they truly seen the magnificent temples of Khajuraho and Konark, where kāma is openly and exuberantly celebrated as divine play, carved on sacred walls as an integral part of supra-mental life?
Let me now move further. In its polysemic connotation, kāma (pāramārthika) transforms the same faculty of desire. It becomes mumukṣutva — the intense yearning for mokṣa, the divine drive toward paramārthika satya (absolute truth), mergence with Brahman, unmixed ānanda (bliss). Worldly kāma seeks temporary objects and often leads to bondage; an-other kāma impels parā vidyā and freedom. The same fire, directed outward, burns; turned inward, it illuminates.
Jijñāsā (smiling wryly): The SP knows only policing. They surveil inter-faith love as “love jihad,” women’s bodies and choices, food habits, dress, art that challenges majoritarian taste — all in the name of “protecting Sanātana.” Kāma as pleasure is permitted only within their narrow saffron boundaries. Desire for power, wealth, dominance? That lobha flows unchecked. And worse — credible allegations show the powerful allegedly indulge in raw, worldly desire untethered from dharma while the masses are policed.
Aniket (voice gaining intensity): Exactly. The Bhagavad Gītā shows the evolutionary path of desire through karmayoga. Most begin with sakāma karma — action fueled by personal kāma for results (wealth, fame, heaven). If blocked, krodha; if fulfilled, lobha. This is the bondage of karma.
Krishna teaches the shift to niṣkāma karma: “You have a right to action alone, never to its fruits” (karmanyevādhikāraste mā phaleṣu kadācana). Act from duty for duty’s sake, offering fruits to the greater good. This purifies the heart (citta-śuddhi), neutralising the ripus while preserving the capacity for work.
The goal is mokṣa — realisation beyond ego. Then comes the return: lokasaṅgraha (universal welfare). Krishna cites King Janaka: “By performing their prescribed duties, King Janaka and others attained perfection. You should also perform your duties to set an example for the good of the world. Whatever a great man does, common people follow; whatever standard he sets, the world pursues” (BG 3.20-21). The liberated sage acts not from need but compassion — līlā (divine play) to sustain social order. Realisation equals engaged service, not laziness. Janaka and Aśvapati fulfil royal duties as well as by at-tending to the land perfectly while detached.
Jijñāsā (eyes bright): And the sthitaprajña — the person of steady wisdom — in Gītā 2.54–72 embodies this un-policed yet mastered kāma. Krishna describes one “satisfied in the Self alone” (ātmany evātmanā tuṣṭaḥ), unmoved by sorrow, without craving in pleasure, free from attachment, fear, and anger (vītarāga-bhaya-krodhaḥ). Like a tortoise withdrawing its limbs, the sthitaprajña engages senses for duty then rests in inner stillness. Like the ocean — rivers of desires pour in, yet it remains full and unmoved. Such a being conserves energy, acts tirelessly without burnout, because happiness is internal.
Aniket (gesturing to the planet): The SP inverts this completely. They police worldly kāma in the masses with aggressive moral vigilantism — Bajrang Dal and gaurakshaka squads raiding inter-faith couples, dictating what people eat, wear, or love — while their own lobha and mada (arrogance of power) run unchecked. They claim to defend Sanātana Dharma but violate its epistemology at every turn: desire is not eradicated but selectively redirected. Their version offers neither legitimate pleasure grounded in dharma nor the spiritual kāma that yearns for paramārthika satya. It is control dressed as virtue — adharma that chains ordinary earthlings while the powerful indulge with impunity.
Look at the stark hypocrisy: several BJP-ruled states consistently report among the highest rates of sexual violence in the country. Rapists and sexual offenders have repeatedly been given party tickets, remained scot-free for years, or been publicly garlanded after release. The Bilkis Bano gang-rape case, where convicts were released and felicitated in Gujarat; the Unnao rape case involving a sitting BJP MLA; and the wrestlers’ protest against BJP MP Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, accused of sexually harassing female wrestlers — these cases have become symbols of selective impunity. While the masses face moral policing, those close to power often enjoy protection. This is not dharma. This is raw moha and lobha masquerading as cultural defence.
Jijñāsā (voice low but cutting): And the hypocrisy runs deeper. Snoopgate (2013) exposed the mechanics. Audio tapes released by Cobrapost and Gulail captured Amit Shah, then Gujarat’s Minister of State for Home, directing police officer G.L. Singhal to illegally surveil a young woman architect (Mansi Soni) — tailing her, tapping her phone, monitoring her movements across states — all at the behest of “Saheb” (widely understood as Narendra Modi). The BJP later admitted surveillance occurred but claimed it was for her “protection” at her father’s request. Critics, including suspended IAS officer Pradeep Sharma, alleged deeper personal motives. The operation misused state machinery for possessive or obsessive ends — classic kāma sliding into control, the very adharma the classical texts warn against.
And the pattern deepens through insider allegations. Madhu Kishwar — author of a once-laudatory book on Modi — later distanced herself, citing “disgusting stories” of “sickly dalliances” circulating in Gujarat and Sangh networks. She referenced whispers that women received tickets, MP seats, or ministerial positions in exchange for intimacy, and named figures like Hardeep Singh Puri as having “provided special services” during Modi’s Gujarat days. Subramanian Swamy, a senior BJP voice, publicly alleged he could name “three or four women” who became MPs (one even a minister) after “sleeping with the PM,” linking it to Epstein-file contexts and vulnerability to blackmail. This reveals their hypocrisy.
Worse, specific ministers stand accused of playing facilitator roles — pimps — in this alleged network of desire-as-power. Kishwar explicitly pointed to Hardeep Singh Puri (and Jaishankar) as figures whose elevation coincided with hushed talk of “special services.” Puri’s extensive Epstein connections add shadow: dozens of email exchanges (reports cite around 62 between 2014–2017) and multiple meetings at Epstein’s Manhattan residence, even after Epstein’s 2008 conviction as a sex offender. Puri has described the contacts as professional (linked to think-tank work and business networking, including attempts to connect Reid Hoffman), denying any knowledge of or involvement in crimes. Yet the timing and frequency fuel perceptions of elite circles where kāma operates as currency — facilitated access, favors, silence.
Jijñāsā (eyes narrowing at the flame): Worldly kāma grounded in dharma sustains life; another kāma yearns for paramārthika satya. The SP offers neither. Only selective repression for the weak and alleged impunity for the connected. The sthitaprajña acts without craving or fear; here, power allegedly feeds on both. This is moha and lobha dressed as cultural defence — adharma that hollows the very Sanātana they claim.
Aniket (looking at the rotating planet): The puruṣārthas demand balance and redirection. The SP severs it, turning desire into a tool of control and predation. Their “most oldest dharma” is ethnographic panic, not the Gītā’s living epistemology.
Jijñāsā (breaking another imaginary chain): We name the predation. Kāma must be un-policed for the many and unbound from power for the few — so the same fire can illuminate rather than consume. We move next to mokṣa — liberation impossible under bordered identities and selective impunity.
(The hologram of the pale blue dot, the Earth, spins. The banned conversation refuses to be surveilled or silenced.)
Banned Conversation Series – Session IV
Mokṣa Denied – Temple Idolatry, Ecological Adharma, and Unsublated Pluralism
[Scene: The virtual clearing. The tiny blue planet rotates. Jijñāsā has etched a towering temple silhouette in the dirt, its spire exaggerated into a phallic form. At its base lie scattered puppet strings and propaganda reels. Aniket sits, voice quiet but resolute.]
Aniket (starting directly, eyes on the etched temple): Jijñāsā, we have moved from kāma as predation to the final pillar — mokṣa. Liberation. The dissolution of ego, the realisation of paramārthika satya, the end of all bordered identities. The SP stands nearer to the temple than to mokṣa. Their entire project is external ritual, gimmick, and idolatry — staged ritualistic performances or agnihotrādi karma performed for political theatre — while the living epistemology of the South-East Asian traditions is erased.
Look at their newest legal sleight: deities declared “juristic persons.” What began as a colonial legal fiction has been turned into a saffron weapon. Idols become “puppet-deities” — unconscious, without self-awareness, memory, or agency — yet granted full legal rights to own property, sue, be sued, and claim land. Justice Mukerji once called this “adult puppet-worship or heathen attitude.” The 2019 Supreme Court Ayodhya verdict turned Rāmlālā Virājman into a juristic person, legitimising the demolition of the Babri Masjid and handing over the site for a grand temple while erasing its documented history. The same strategy is now being aggressively pursued in the Krishna Janmabhoomi dispute in Mathura, where the deity itself is the plaintiff claiming vast surrounding land, and in the Gyanvapi mosque case in Varanasi, where the temple side has used the deity’s juristic status to demand surveys and control over the mosque complex. Similar declarations have been sought or granted in Shirdi, Sabarimala, and numerous temples in Uttarakhand and Madhya Pradesh, turning sacred symbols into instruments of majoritarian real-estate acquisition and political mobilisation.
As sharply critiqued in the documentation Strange Destruction of Self: Hindus, this is not devotion — it is the instrumentalisation of deities as legal proxies for Hindutva’s territorial and electoral ambitions. The SP has multiplied it across the country: every major temple is now a political asset, every vertical architecture — statues, towers, even the new Ram Mandir spire — perceived as the phallus of Śiva, a symbol of majoritarian potency rather than transcendence or social commitment.
Jijñāsā (tracing the phallic spire, voice sharp): Exactly. They proliferate “heathens” first in the cow-belt — labeling Muslims, Christians, Dalits, Adivasis, dissenters as the “hostile”, “antagonistic” other — then diffuse this division across India. BJP propaganda films churn out [un-]success stories: grand temple inaugurations, “development” via bulldozers, gau-raksha as eco-theatre. All external ritual, all vyāvahārika idolatry. Yet the Nāsadīya Sūkta of the Ṛg Veda (10.129) — the agnostic Hymn of Creation — stands in direct opposition, upholding scepticism about creation by going beyond binary-thinking.
Aniket (voice steady, reciting as if from palm leaves): Fellow earthling, here is the Nāsadīya Sūkta — Ṛg Veda 10.129 — in full, rendered in a clear modern translation drawn from the most respected scholarly sources (Basham, Brereton, and others). Seven verses of pure philosophical fire.
Verse 1
nāsad āsīn no sad āsīt tadānīṃ nāsīd rajo no vyomā paro yat kim āvarīvaḥ kuha kasya śarmann ambhaḥ kim āsīd gahanaṃ gabhīram
Then even non-existence was not there, nor existence. There was no air then, nor the sky beyond it. What covered it? Where was it? In whose keeping? Was there then cosmic fluid, in depths unfathomed?
No sat (existence), no asat (non-existence). No space, no atmosphere. Pure paradox. The hymn begins by negating every category we use to think about origins. Even “nothingness” is too definite.
Verse 2
na mṛtyur āsīd amṛtaṃ na tarhi na rātryā ahna āsīt praketaḥ ānīd avātaṃ svadhayā tad ekaṃ tasmād dhānyan na paraḥ kiṃ canāsa
Then there was neither death nor immortality, Nor was there then the torch of night and day. The One breathed windlessly and self-sustaining. There was that One then, and there was no other.
Before duality — life/death, day/night — there was only tad ekam (“That One”), breathing without wind, self-sustaining. Not a creator god with agency, but an undifferentiated ground.
Verse 3
tama āsīt tamasā gūḷham agre ’praketaṃ salilaṃ sarvam ā idam tuchyenābhv apihitaṃ yad āsīt tapasas tan mahinā jāyataikam
At first there was only darkness wrapped in darkness. All this was an undifferentiated ocean. The One that was, was covered by void. That One arose through the power of heat (tapas).
Darkness upon darkness. Primordial ocean of potential. Tapas — not mere ascetic heat, but the intense inner energy of concentration — stirs the One into manifestation. No external creator; an internal arising.
Verse 4
kāmas tad agre sam avartatādhi manaso retaḥ prathamaṃ yad āsīt sato bandhum asati nir avindan hṛdi pratīṣyā kavayo manīṣā
Desire first arose in That. This was the first seed of mind. Sages, searching in their hearts with wisdom, Found the bond between existence and non-existence.
Here is kāma — desire — as the primal seed of manas (mind). The sages (ṛṣis) turn inward (hṛdā manīṣā) and discover the link between sat and asat. This is spiritual kāma we discussed earlier: yearning that bridges the paradox, not worldly craving the SP polices.
Verse 5
tiraścīno vitato raśmir eṣām adhaḥ svid āsīd upari svid āsīt retodhā āsan mahimāna āsan svadhā avastāt prayatiḥ parastāt
A ray of light cut through the darkness. Was it below or was it above? There were seed-placers, there were powers; There was energy below, impulse above.
Even the first differentiation is uncertain — below or above? Creative forces (retodhas) and powers (śaktis) emerge, but the hymn refuses to locate or name them definitively.
Verse 6
ko addhā veda ka iha pra vocat kuta ājātā kuta idaṃ visṛṣṭam arvāg devā asya visarjanenātha ko veda yata ābabhūva
Who really knows? Who can here proclaim it? Whence was it born? Whence came this creation? The gods came later, after the creation of this world. Who then knows whence it has arisen?
The climax of doubt. The devas (gods) themselves are latecomers — post-creation. They cannot know the origin. This is the earliest explicit agnosticism in recorded literature: radical skepticism about cosmology and theology.
Verse 7
iyaṃ visṛṣṭir yata ābabhūva yadi vā dadhe yadi vā na yo asyādhyakṣaḥ parame vyoman so aṅga veda yadi vā na veda
Whence this creation has arisen — perhaps it formed itself, or perhaps it did not — The One who looks down upon it, in the highest heaven, Only He knows — or perhaps even He does not know.
The final, devastating line: vedā yadi vā na veda (“He knows — or perhaps He does not”). Even the highest overseer (adhyakṣa) may be ignorant. Ultimate epistemic humility.
Jijñāsā (eyes wide, tracing the Sanskrit in the dirt): This is no creation myth. It is a profound meditation on the limits of knowledge itself — perhaps the most radical expression of skepticism in the entire Vedic corpus, which could be treated just as a collection of poetries akin to Palgrave’s Golden Treasury. There’s no allusion to one final dogma in this. The gods themselves arrive after the mystery. Desire arises internally. The sages look within the heart, not to idolatrous temples or juristic puppets.
Many scholars regard the Nāsadīya Sūkta as a relatively late addition to the Ṛg Veda (belonging to the tenth mandala, widely considered one of the latest layers). Some even call it an interpolation that introduces a deeply agnostic, almost proto-Upaniṣadic spirit into the earlier ritualistic Vedic world — a voice of doubt that challenges the very certainties the SP tries to project onto “Sanatana Dharma.”
Aniket (voice rising with quiet intensity): Indeed. The Nāsadīya Sūkta anticipates the Upaniṣads’ inward turn and Vedānta’s non-dualism. It dissolves ritual certainty (agnihotrādi karma) — the very external acts the SP multiplies into grand political spectacles.
Look at the on-ground reality: they produce Islamophobic propaganda films like The Kashmir Files and The Kerala Story, which are screened with official patronage and turned into tools of mass polarisation. Even from within certain Hindutva-aligned voices, these films — along with The Bengal Files — have been sharply indicted for brazenly violating Bharata Muni’s Nāṭyaśāstra, the foundational text of Indian dramaturgy, by transforming Hindu grief into voyeuristic gore, graphic violence, and tāmasika spectacle instead of upholding rasa, maryādā, and ethical-aesthetic restraint.
They orchestrate temple events — the grand consecration of the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya — as prime-time political theatre. Their gau-raksha vigilantism has led to countless lynchings and mob violence across the country, destroying both lives and forest ecosystems in the name of “cow protection.” Deities are turned into juristic persons to stake legal claims on land, as seen in Ayodhya, Gyanvapi, and Mathura. Textbooks are rewritten, histories erased or saffronised, and pluralism flattened.
However, the Nāsadīya hymn refuses every bordered claim: no “Hindu” monopoly on truth, no majoritarian certainty, no phallic verticality as power. Mokṣa here is the freedom from knowing everything, the courage to rest in unknowing. Against this Vedic agnostic fire, the SP’s puppet-deities, ecology-destroying “cow” vigilantism, and anti-historical erasure stand as clear adharma.
The sages searched in their hearts. The SP searches in electoral arithmetic and YouTube or Whatsapp University shakhas. This Sūkta is the epistemological heart of Sanātana Dharma — plural, questioning, unsublated. They have replaced it with idolatry and certainty.
Jijñāsā (gesturing to the planet): This denial of mokṣa breeds ecological adharma. Temple mega-projects, statue-building, gau-raksha vigilantism that destroys forests for “cow shelters,” riverfront “development” and poorly managed yet spectacularly marketed kumbh fairs that poison the Ganges — all in the name of dharma. Artha and kāma serve only the connected; mokṣa is deferred forever. Pluralism remains unsublated: the Vedānta that dissolves all into the non-dual is replaced by bordered Hindutva. No sthitaprajña here — only mada (arrogance) and matsarya (envy) toward any other.
Nature, which the indigenous South-East tradition saw as the living matrix and conduit of mokṣa, is being systematically destroyed. Kālidāsa opens his Abhijñāna Śākuntalam with this profound Nandi (benedictory verse) that invokes Prakṛti as the very source of life and liberation:
yā sṛṣṭiḥ sraṣṭur ādyā vahati vidhihutaṃ yā havir yā ca hotrī ye dve kālaṃ vidhattaḥ śrutiviṣayaguṇā yā sthitā vyāpya viśvam yām āhuḥ sarvabījaprakṛtir iti yayā prāṇinaḥ prāṇavantaḥ pratyakṣābhiḥ prapannās tanubhir avatu vas tābhir aṣṭābhir īśaḥ ||
This means: She who is the primal creation of the Creator, who carries the oblation offered according to sacred law, who is both the offering and the priestess, who regulates the two divisions of time (day and night), who pervades the entire universe with her qualities perceptible to the senses, whom they call the Seed of All Beings (sarvabījaprakṛti), by whom all living creatures are endowed with life — may that Goddess, manifest in Her eight visible forms, protect you!
This verse reveres Prakṛti (Nature) as the living, dynamic matrix of all existence — the primal energy that sustains ritual, time, life, and the cosmos itself. The “eight visible forms” traditionally refer to earth, water, fire, air, space, sun, moon, and the individual self. Far from being a passive resource, Nature is portrayed as sacred, conscious, and the very pathway to spiritual realisation. When this prakṛti is ravaged — in the Aravallis, Hasdeo Arand forests, Great Nicobar project, or the polluted Ganges or chemically poisoned Yamuna— the SP is not merely committing environmental crime; it is destroying the very ground from which mokṣa can arise.
Aniket (voice steady, looking upward): The puruṣārthas culminate in mokṣa — freedom from the very identities the SP enforces. Their “Sanātana” is nearer to the temple spire and the propaganda reel, far from the silent, agnostic, inward turn of the texts. This is the final violation: adharma against liberation itself.
Jijñāsā (brushing the dirt temple until it blurs): Earthling to earthling. Until mokṣa is reclaimed from the puppets and the planet breathes free. And the DHFL resolution stands as the cumulative case study of every pillar violated — dharma broken by procedural bias and fiduciary betrayal, artha hollowed into lobha and crony extraction, kāma twisted into institutional predation masked as “commercial wisdom,” and mokṣa denied to 2.5 lakh small depositors left in perpetual financial and psychological saṃsāra while the acquirer receives Section 32A “clean slate” impunity. The IBC’s predatory evolution — normalising 77% average haircuts and non-justiciability of CoC “commercial wisdom” — forecloses any transcendence of material suffering. The SP’s temple-centric majoritarianism and propaganda spectacles stand in stark contrast to the Nāsadīya Sūkta’s epistemic humility, rendering mokṣa an unattainable ideal for those bearing the scam’s brunt.
Aniket (gazing at the rotating planet): The hymn ends where true dharma begins: in the silence after the question. We have named the final violation.
Jijñāsā (smiling fiercely at the blurred temple drawing): The Nāsadīya Sūkta does not build temples — it dissolves them. It does not police kāma — it seeds the mind with yearning for truth. Until the SP confronts this doubt, their “most oldest dharma” remains nearer to the puppet-spire and farther from mokṣa.
Aniket (looking directly at the planet): The banned conversation rests in the same radical openness the Sūkta demands.
(The hologram spins on, vast and unknowable. The banned conversation concludes here, yet the questioning does not.)
Epilogue
This dialogue is offered as an act of resistance — meant to be performed where the sentinels of theocratic-crony-fascist power cannot reach.
When a political project turns deities into juristic puppets, rituals into propaganda spectacles, rivers into real-estate, and forests into coal blocks, earthlings must return to the roots. Not to the frozen, majoritarian “Sanātana” manufactured by the Sangh Parivar, but to the living, plural, ever-flowing dharma that the Nāsadīya Sūkta dared to question, that the Upaniṣads turned inward to realise, and that Kālidāsa celebrated as prakṛti — the sacred matrix from which mokṣa itself arises.
The core thesis stands exposed: what parades today as “Sanātana Dharma” is largely a phantasm — a 20th-century political construct draped in the language of eternity. BJP-RSS Hindutva has not protected the heterogeneous South-East Asian heritages; it has hollowed them. It has decoupled artha from ethical purpose, turned kāma into selective repression for the many and impunity for the powerful, and postponed mokṣa indefinitely in favour of temple politics and majoritarian panic. In the name of the so-called most oldest “eternal”, it has committed profound adharma — against pluralism, against the earth, against the radical doubt that lies at the heart of the Vedic tradition itself.
As Bhimrao Ambedkar reminded us in Annihilation of Caste: there is nothing fixed, nothing sanatan; change is the law of life. Standards must be revised when they become instruments of domination.
Yet this banned conversation series does not end in despair. It ends in an open invitation.
Earthlings must keep asking. Earthlings must keep reciting the Nāsadīya Sūkta aloud — verse by verse — until the manufactured certainties crack and the courage to rest in unknowing returns.
As the tradition itself powerfully reminds us through Bṛhaspati’s verse (quoted in the Smṛti-candrikā):
kevalaṁ śāstram āśritya na kartavyo vinirṇayaḥ |
yukti-hīna-vicāre tu dharma-hāniḥ prajāyate ||
“Do not ascertain what is to be done on the basis of śāstra alone. Dharma is lost by deliberation devoid of reasoning.”
Dharma has never been about blind scriptural literalism or frozen dogma. It demands living discernment, ethical reasoning, contextual wisdom, and the courage to revise when old standards become instruments of domination.
Earthlings must therefore reclaim the caturvarga not as political slogans or saffron brands, but as a living compass for our times: dharma as that which truly holds the world in justice and ecological balance; artha as meaningful purpose rather than loot; kāma as desire rightly directed — neither repressed nor predatory; and mokṣa as freedom from every bordered identity — including the saffron cage called “Hindu”.
This is the real sanātana — not an eternal dogma to be policed, but an ever-flowing, ever-questioning way of being.
The phantasm has been named. The adharma has been laid bare. Now the questioning must spread — in hidden gatherings, whispered performances, digital clearings, and wherever doubt is still free.
Until the stolen robes of “eternity” fall away and the plural, contradictory, ever-flowing dharma breathes again.
Earthling to earthling. Question to question. Root to root.
References
Ambedkar, B. R. (2014). Annihilation of caste (S. Anand, Ed.). Navayana. (Original work published 1936)
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