There was a time when Hindu seers would be abdicated for crossing the oceans for Sagara-Ullangana and until as recently as 2008 this culture was very much prevalent where the Puttige seer who was part of the Udupi Ashta Mutt faced the flak and public humiliation by his own peers of the Mutt by excluding him in the Paryaya festival for visiting foreign countries, but these are changing times where we move towards a more inclusive society at the cost of overtly bending back in minority appeasement where substantiated secularism is conscripted and confined only for the Sanathanis.
The temple town of Udupi that is often gripped with communal tensions witnessed something very shocking when Pejawar Sri Vishweshwara Theertha Swami ji hosted an Iftar feast for Muslims in the sacred ancient sanctum of the Krishna temple where 150 Muslims broke their fast and prayed in the holy premises.
The move has left the Hindu community in a state of shock and the people are divided on their views with some expressing disgust at the Mutt letting in beef eaters that too in the temple of Krishna who the protector of the cows, while many others are disillusioned that if this was a mere friendly gesture then the Iftar could have been arranged anywhere else but why inside the temple premises while a few others feel it is in the democratic free spirit as the Sri Krishna temple has followers from all faiths!
There are no second thoughts about the much revered seer’s good intentions and liberal thinking as he has in the past been a vociferous voice for communal harmony and unification of the masses and has been a proponent of religious tolerance insisting on equal treatment to both minorities and the majority communities by the Governments and has condemned special treatment to any one particular community.
He is regarded as the modern seer on a spiritual journey concerned about the wellbeing of the society and has never shied away from taking social or political stands that has caught the politicians off guard. He has been instrumental in setting up schools, hostels for the poor and has equipped Dalit villages with electricity facility under the Pejawar Mutt developmental schemes.
The Pejawar Mutt has a blood donation team that has Muslim members as well who actively help organize blood donation camps and the Udupi District Muslim Paryaya Souharda Samithi even renders help during the Paryaya by organizing foodgrain and vegetable offering camps. For those of you who did not know what Paryaya is _ “The Udupi Paryaya is grand celebration that takes place once in 2 years and is a customary congregation and celebration where the rotational responsibility of running the Krishna Mutt is passed on from the incumbent Mutt to the next one of the Ashta Mutts that is due in line to receive the Paryaya baton”.
Vishwatheertha Swami ji has offered Bhakti Deekshe and Vaishnava Deekshe to Dalits who wanted to lead life the Vaishnavite way in an effort to end caste discriminations and has come out as a revolutionary monk who traversed the Dalit streets on Padayatra to knit social harmony where he symbolically lit oil lamps in few Dalit homes and asked them to give up alcohol. And this he continues to do every now and then and not a onetime photo op as many of these remote villages are turning Naxal hubs because of the extreme backwardness coupled with the growing threat of Christian conversions.
The Pejawar swami ji’s initiatives have been praise worthy and perhaps the reason for CM Siddaramaiah’s heartburn who refused to visit this Krishna Mutt along with the President inspite of belonging to the Kuruba or the cowherd caste which is seen as Lord Krishna’s caste in the South.
While the Hindus at large are criticizing and casting aspersions if there would ever be a Ganesh Pooja or a Satyanarayana pooja hosted in a Masjid, it is impossible for the political pundits not to ascribe motives to the Iftar Koota incident with political equations especially in the context of the upcoming assembly elections in Karnataka as everything is not unfair altogether in politics but the outrage is just that the followers of Sanathana dharma are unaware of the powers wielded by the Pope in politics of Vatican but remember even Chanakya was a scholarly priest who took it upon himself to restore dharma with his Nitishastra!
While the Krishna temple of Udupi is symbolic to casteless Bhakti and the Kanakana Kindi is reminiscent of Kanakadaasa’s devotion to which the statue of the Lord had turned back west breaking the wall, to give Darshan to his untouchable devotee(Kanaka) who was denied entry into the temple, this effort at the unification of the masses with no barriers of any religion/caste whatsoever looks very promising to the pure hearts.
But in the current global scenario that is infested with Islamic terror, more so in an India that was brutalized at the hands of Islamic invaders and an India with its current constitutional categorization of masses on religious/caste lines, it still seems to be dominated by leftist Muslim/Christian appeasing and Sharia endorsing Mullahs and Marxists where there seems to be no end to the bane of indoctrinated Muslim appeasement by the Majority Hindus and the vanguards of Hindutva whose sincere attempts at bringing about a social change seems futile without constitutional backing where terms like ‘Majority’ and ‘Minority’ are shunned forever but as long as the Muslims of India cannot replicate their own Indian version of a Mecca within India and as long as the Christians swear their obedience to an external Vatican – any amount of open armed libertarianism extended from the Hindus will be scorned as a premature politicking effort which will only make the Hindus more vulnerable to be misled in their pursuit of religious path especially when it seems that there is never going to be an equable reciprocation whatsoever! But what is notable is that the whole episode has left the masses pondering about the importance of being unified under spiritual Gurus, as religion and politics are inseparable from times immemorial and whether one likes it or not the spiritual wellbeing of people is directly connected with the political well being of the state and vice versa!