June 30, 2013: This was nearly 15 years ago, we were travelling to the higher reaches of Badrinath and on the way back we went into a restaurant just outside the temple. We asked for some cow milk and told the owner to be doubly sure that it was cow milk and not powdered milk; he assured us and went into the kitchen. We waited for 10 minutes and then I decided to take a look in the kitchen. Inside to my surprise, I saw him boiling water and adding powdered milk to it! On confronting, he cheekily replied, “Now where do I get cows here?” I told him that if you people won’t send your cows to the butchers then you would have them and your character would be devik and not asuric, for this is what you people have become. How can you fool people at the dham of Vishnu?

Another time on my visit to Kedarnath, I found families thronging the shrine in a picnic and holiday mood, filmi songs blaring and card parties galore. Inside the dharamshalas surrounding the shrine, people dressed as Shiva waving their trishul at me and simultaneously demanding money! It is too pathetic and sad for someone like me to describe in detail what all I saw and how I got out of there. These could not be the state of affairs of a Jyotirling and Vishnu Dham.

This was nearly 15 years ago, I dread to think what would be happening there now? Suddenly the news flashed on television, “THOUSANDS KILLED IN LANDSLIDES AND FLOODING IN KEDARNATH”, “THE TEMPLE STANDS”, “SADHUS CAUGHT LEAVING THE AREA WITH JEWELLERY AND MONEY HIDDEN IN THEIR CLOTHES AND JHOLAS”, “VILLAGERS SELLING WATER AND FOOD TO THOSE STRANDED AT 10 TIMES THE PRICE”, “PEOPLE DESPERATE TO LEAVE, DEAD BODIES STREWN ALL OVER”.

Are we talking about a coveted Chaar Dham? Are we referring to a Jyotirling? Are we talking about real sadhus? Are we talking about human beings? And last but not the least, are we talking about people who went their looking for moksha?

It’s important to note here that a rock rolled down and stopped just short of the temple while other rocks destroyed everything around. The temple stairway was washed away, the Nandi statue and the temple unharmed; nothing else survived. This rock was like a dam which prevented the water and other boulders from hitting the temple. Is it not so clear that the statue of Nandi and the entire temple are standing and the stairway has been washed away? Shiva is telling us not to disturb him by our foolish actions. Such places should be left for sadhakas and for those who want to do penance. They should be out of bounds for family picnics.

Is this too uncanny or just a coincidence? No, it’s neither uncanny nor a coincidence. Did this happen because a goddess temple was being shifted to make way for a hydel power project? The reasons I will give below:

1. India is the third largest exporter of beef, thousands of Nandis are separated from their mothers and killed to satisfy the greed of a few. The media or the politicians don’t pick up the topic as they say it will turn communal even though as per law it’s illegal to kill cows and calves. I don’t see anything communal in this. It is just a blatant violation of the Indian law by powerful people. The biggest traders of skin and different kinds of meats are Hindus. Cows are killed by bashing them on their heads. Lord Shiva had given a boon to Nandi, “Whatever is whispered into your ears will be heard by me.” One can imagine the pain and suffering of the animals and what all will be going to lord Shiva’s ears.

2. The majority of people going to Dhams don’t go there asking for moksha or for penance. They go there for a picnic, a family outing and in the process temples are visited and more wealth and health is asked for. Never have they bothered to feed a hungry human or animal on the road.

3. We have polluted the Ganga, and our water bodies are now poison. Trillion tonnes of effluence go into our sacred rivers. Extreme negative karma is created when this water poisons the animals, humans and plants which it touches.

4. Majority of sadhus are unsuccessful businessmen who have found religious blackmail a good way of making money. They have opened big ashrams and are thronging religious melas in the hope of coming into the Forbes list of billionaires. A lot of them are selling asanas and so called Ayurvedic medicines to cure all diseases, known and unknown.

5. Majority of religious places are busy collecting wealth and filling their coffers. The money which they get as donations for helping the poor is used for making gold thrones. The fact is completely ignored that the founders had spent their entire lives in helping others and doing penances, they propagated moksha, not bhoga.

In this age Muhammad Ghori and Mahmud of Ghazni or even the Afghan warlords would not come to loot these places and kill the inhabitants. Our armed forces are competent to handle all this, but then the divine has to tell us that what we are doing is wrong, we are ruining our culture and making a mockery of our religion. The divine has to find some way of telling us that we must change or else the creation will end and we will suffer in hell, for we are only responsible for all the harm we are causing to nature—by destroying it with our tree cutting, pesticides, killing cows, polluting rivers and water bodies, turning ashrams into business models, becoming completely selfish and nonsensitive to our neighbours, desecrating places of penances and sadhana by our wild partying.

Source: The New Indian Express, DT. June 30, 2013.