The Other Side of Atrocity, the Other Kind of Atrocity Literature- When Sanyasis were attacked in India
- In Society
- 02:06 PM, Oct 14, 2018
- Sreejit Datta
Take a close look at this.
Pay attention to the noise emanating from the scene captured in the video footage and then try to comprehend the few stray words which you could, with some effort, make out from among all that garbled noise. It is a rather good thing about modernity that one can freeze any given moment while keeping its motion intact; then capture and transmit the same to those who wish to partake of that moment at their own time. Retaining the motion of this specific scene was crucial, for it vividly depicts the chaos unleashed by the characters donning uniform in the scene. Those characters look like they mean business. They are in full riot gear, wielding arms, after all.
The country where this incident took place is the Republic of India. Time: roughly two years back.
Why is this footage so extraordinary that we had to write a piece on it? Why, because this happened nowhere but in India. In this short footage you can see that a group of sadhus and sanyasi-s are being manhandled, thrashed, pushed around and dragged through the streets. Sadhus, who have donned the saffron robe to mark their absolute renunciation of worldly affairs. Sadhus, who are unarmed – who do not even seem to retaliate in response to the brutal attack on their physical persons.
What you see in this particular frozen ‘motion moment’ (like the motion picture) is no ordinary attack on a mere person or even a mere human body – the kind that occurs every day on the streets of this rather vast and unnervingly chaotic country, the kind which has thus become a rather usual phenomenon. That later kind of physical assault by the repressive state apparatus hardly strikes us as shocking anymore – it has become commonplace, a norm. But if, somehow, you can still manage to remember the age-old traditions and customs of your ancestors; if you still happen to hold on to the shraddha with which they lived, acted and died; if you still feel moved when the sacred symbols of those lives flash before your eyes, then you would know that this is no less than an attack on the supreme ideal that your ancestors, their wisdom, and their lost country together held in such high regard; something which you have perhaps inadvertently inherited from them: the very idea of sannyasa.
Where a Sanyasi – whose dharma is to observe ahimsa at all times and under all conditions – is subjected to brute force, that land gets cursed. Such a land where this atrocity, this brutality, this savagery takes place becomes barren; its people die of hunger, thirst and plague. In the process the land itself dies along with its soul. The land of Bharata has been witnessing this sort of death for a long time now. It is a wonder that this land has still not perished completely, given the amount and intensity of attacks that its sadhus and sanyasi-s had to face in the post-1947 era. That alone is testimony to the vigour and vitality of this land, its dharma and of the punya accrued by the noble souls who were born on this land. And perhaps it also signals the veracity of a promise made long back in time, in such an era into which the western notion of history dares not peep. This promise was made by none other than the Ideal incarnate – the Ideal of sannyasa itself, born in the shape and form of man, a Yadava prince in the yuga named Dwapara. It was a promise of saving the sadhus and vanquishing the mischievous. When a sadhu, in the very heart of Bhaaratavarsha, is left with nothing other than his bare body to defend himself against the blows of the miscreant's bloody baton and cry out "maariye! maariye!" (Beat me! Beat me!"), reminding the foolish miscreant that this body is nothing, that the oppressor’s blows can never so much as touch the eternal Atman that dwells within it and which alone is True, know for sure that the time is nigh for the most ancient and eternal Ideal to embody Itself once again. The sheer intensity of the oppression heralds His coming. The cruel and mindless blows of the tyrant’s minions herald His coming. The tears of the innocent herald His coming. And most of all, the cries of the oppressed sadhus are but the clarion blasts of the conch that welcome the Maker of the Srimad Bhagavad Gita, Sri Bhagavana Himself.
For if that does not happen, then the words of that one great promise would become empty. And if they become empty, if their shells do not continue to get a new lease of meaning with every passing yuga by the manifestation of the One Who uttered them, making them come true again and again, then what really remains? What, then, remains of our essentially sacred lives – what meaning is then left in our identity, in our existence as a remnant of these ancient people, known the world over as Hindus? The words have to be true, they must embody truth. Slowly, but surely, those golden words are shedding off the centuries of grime accumulated on them by the many barbarous acts like the one depicted in the above video footage.
Therefore, do not despair. The long thick Night is always at its darkest right before the break of crisp Dawn. Know that the cries of the sadhus declare Him. Know that every violation of our sacred symbols, our sacred traditions scream out His bold footsteps. And the earth shakes with every approaching footfall of His. Know then, that it is His path which is being curved through this dark jungle of confusions and terrors by the millions who endure the atrocities – those who are a great multitude but nonetheless continue to receive all the attacks, abuses, injustice; and yet still, who aren’t prepared to give up. Not yet.
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