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Honourable Sri Narendra ModiPrime Minister, Government of IndiaNew Delhi Re: Massacre of Christians Planned for March 1, 2025 Honourable Modiji Thank you for affirming “Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam” (the world is one family) during the White House Press Conference last week and for asking your party’s Chief Minister in Manipur to resign for the massacre of Christians. In light of these positive steps, may I please urge you to intervene in Chhattisgarh where large scale anti-Christian violence is being planned for March 1, 2025.  You must be aware that on January 8, 2025, at Prayagraj, during the Hindu RELIGIOUS PARLIAMENT, Shankaracharya Avimukteshwaranand called for 1,000 Hindus to come out and “slay those who slay our mother cow. Do not ask for the death penalty of cow slayers. Kill them and ask for the death penalty for yourselves. Do not wait for the law to act.” In the same “RELIGIOUS” Parliament, Mr. Aadesh Soni from Raipur, Chhattisgarh, gave a hate speech that (a) Bishrampur, Ganeshpur & Jhanakpur are Christian villages that eat cows. (b) Since the police do not stop them, Mr. Soni’s group of cow-defenders will take the law into their own hands. (c) A militia of 5,000 will (d) enter these villages on March 1, 2025, to kill, maim & violate Christians, and that (e) the state’s BJP government will support his militia. Soni’s speech is still there on his Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1346150826807812  Please hear the one minute between 2:50 and 3:50. Mr. Pannalal of Chhattisgarh Christian Forum has outlined the threat in this video: https://youtu.be/mdwXeulcHow?si=7Z0d-f__ZMJdPcMW For his courageous service, the Chhattisgarh police are threatening to arrest him. These threats cannot be ignored because the gang that burnt alive Graham Staines and his two sons in Honourable President Smt. Murmu’s former constituency, Mayurbhanj, also claimed to be cow-defenders.  Requesting you to prevent this planned genocide, respectfully yours Vishal MangalwadiAuthor, The Bible and the Making of Modern India CC. Honourable Sri Amit Shah, Minister of Home AffairsHonourable Vishnu Deo Sai, Chief Minister, ChhattisgarhHer Excellency Smt. Droupadi Murmu, Honourable President of IndiaHonorable Ramen Deka, Governor, ChhattisgarhHonourable Donald Trump, President, USA 

“Charm is deceptive and beauty fades away, but a woman who fears the Lord shall be greatly praised” (Proverbs 31:30). “But the LORD said to Samuel, ‘Eliab is tall and handsome, but don’t judge by things like that. God doesn’t look at what people see. People judge by what is on the outside, but the LORD looks at the heart…’” (1 Samuel 16:7). “Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as elaborate hairstyles and the wearing of gold jewelry or fine clothes. Rather, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight” (1 Peter 3:3–4). Does God despise fading, external beauty?  No! The Lord Jesus said that God himself creates fading beauty: “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?” (Matthew 6:28–30). God rejected handsome Eliab, but did He call his younger brother David to become Israel’s king – because David was ugly? No! Michelangelo turned David into Europe’s icon of male beauty because the Bible says that David “was glowing with health and had a fine appearance and handsome features” (1 Samuel 16:12). David was “a son of Jesse of Bethlehem who knows how to play the lyre. He is a brave man and a warrior. He speaks well and is a fine-looking man. And the LORD is with him” (16:18). Saul, David’s predecessor, was also chosen partly because of his ‘fading’ physical beauty: Saul “was a handsome young man. No one in Israel was more handsome than Saul, and he stood head and shoulders above everyone else” (1 Samuel 9:2). Beauty is adored because it is divine: like truth (John 14:6), goodness (Matthew 19:17), wisdom (Colossians 2:3) and love (1 John 4:8). Why is beauty divine?  Beauty expresses God’s creativity. He takes delight in His work: “And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31). “And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food . . .” (Genesis 2:9). God gave us the gifts of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, thinking, imagining speaking so that we may take such delight in what He has made so as to praise Him (Romans 1:19–21). To love our neighbors as ourselves means to not envy (1 Corinthians 13: 4) their work and success, but to delight in what other creatures make, made as they are in Creator’s image. To love means to “encourage one another, and build one another up” (1 Thessalonians 5:11), to become godly, that is, God-like, creative. God takes delight in the words of our lips (Hebrews 13:15) as well as in the fruit of our creative, caring work (Genesis 4:4), especially when they are offered to Him or to His children as unto Him (Matthew 25:31–46). “And whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him” (Colossians 3:17). Beauty is spiritual. That is why God filled creative artists with His Spirit (Exodus 31:2). Beauty becomes ugly only when it is separated from inner spirituality. This is true also of religion. There is a religiosity that God hates like filthy rags. (Isaiah 1:14; 64:6) Can Ugly Art Be Divine?  Reality can be very ugly. For the world is really fallen. Can Art reflect ugliness, brokenness, evil and yet be divine? Imagine you are studying Fine Arts. For four years you have studied great masters. Besides internalising theory and art history, you have spent countless hours developing your skills and style. Now you have sat down for your final, practical exam. Every student in your class is given a canvas and three hours to paint a landscape. You are the best in your class. You complete your painting in two hours. While the colors are drying you decide to get a cup of coffee. A student looks at your canvas and knows that he won’t get the gold medal. He is jealous. So he dips his brush in black paint and splashes it on your canvas. He goes back to work on his canvas. You return to find your masterpiece a mess. You can’t possibly sign it. So, what are you going to do? You can start fighting with your neighbors. The culprit could say that you must have messed up your own canvas and now, out of envy, you were interfering with his work. Other students might support the culprit’s hypothesis. If you fight too much, you could be thrown out of the examination hall. Your other option is to pick up a knife, shred the canvas that you can no longer own, and stomp out of the examination hall. But then—you lose, your rival wins. If you are a real genius, you have another option: you can get back to work. You can turn each of those ugly dark spots into stones, rocks, plants, leaves, flowers, fruits, butterflies, birds, bad boys, clouds, kites, helicopters, planes, and so on. In the end, your landscape would have acquired greater depth, color, and reality. You were already a great creator, now you would also be a great redeemer. By embracing ugliness redemptively, your art will become truly divine—beautiful, Godlike. You will be like Jesus who embraced sinners, tax-collectors, and prostitutes (Matthew 9:10-13; 11:19) Vishal Mangalwadi ©

Bharatendu Harishchandra (1850-1885) became the father of Modern Hindi Literature, because he understood Lord Macaulay better than Hindu intellectuals of today, who condemn the Macaulay Minute (1835) without having read it. Bharatendu grasped Macaulay’s Protestant view that a mother-tongue is far more important a tool of nation-building than a sacred but dead language, such as Sanskrit. He agreed with the Vernacularists in his time that 14 or so dialects collectively called “Hindi” could be enriched by ideas adopted from more developed languages such as English and French. Therefore, he was transmitting the Christian view on nation-building to his fellow countrymen when he said, Nij Bhasha Unnati Ahe, sab unnati ko mul. Bin nij bhsha-gyan ke, mitat na hiy ko sul. Vividh kala shikha amit, gyan anek prakar Sab ddesan se le karhu, bhasha mahi prachar Progress is made in one’s mother tongue, the foundation of all progress. Without the knowledge of the mother tongue, there is no cure for heart’s pain. Many arts and education, infinite knowledge of various kinds, Should be taken from all countries, but propagated in one’s mother tongue. Sadly, until Bharatendu’s time, caste prejudice and cultural arrogance had prevented the Hindu religio-intellectual aristocracy from developing the language of the people that we now call “Hindi.” It was the painstaking toil of the Christian movement that gave us what has become our unofficial “national language.” Protestant Christianity with help from some Roman Catholics and many enlightened Hindus created Hindi because they were committed to moving the “Backwards” forward.  The Older Meaning of “Hindi” During Bharatendu’s time, the term “Hindi” did not refer to the language that you read in the pages ofFORWARD Press. It was a generic name given by Muslims to dozens of languages – just as the Muslim term “Hindu” referred to thousands of gods and goddesses, different and even contradictory beliefs and practices, oppressors and the oppressed beyond the “Sindh” river. Sir George Abraham Grierson, who earned the right to become the Superintendent of the prestigious Linguistic Survey of India in 1898, came to Bengal in 1873. From 1880 he served as the Inspector of Schools in Bihar and then as the Additional Commissioner of Patna. He had a position that allowed him to pursue personal pleasure and power. But the spirit of Christ enabled him to use his spare time not for indulgence but to understand the people he was called to serve (govern). He focused his attention on their dialects in order to retain the richness of their culture into a wholesome language that could become a vehicle for India’s knowledge-based development. Out of Grierson’s voluntary labour came the “Seven Grammars of Bihari Dialects.” John Beames, the author of the Comparative Grammar of the Modern Aryan Languages was a missionary who became the world’s foremost expert on structural variations among different languages and dialects of India. He reviewed Grierson’s master-piece above in Indian Antiquity of July 1, 1885. In that review he explained what the term “Hindi” meant in those days: “All round the outer edge of Aryan India (Gangetic planes) is a circle of kingdoms or provinces, Bengal, Orissa, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Sindh, Punjab, Nepal, and the ‘Indian’, or as the Muhammmaden called it, the Hindi, spoken in each of these places came by degrees to be called Bengali, Oriya, Marathi and so on. But in the centre there remained a vast area for which no special name was found: it was merely Hindi and its language or languages were all merely Hindi. It has long been known that under the general term [Hindi] were included forms of speech differing very widely from each other, and it only remained for some scholar to enquire into the subject and classify these various forms, referring them to their proper relationships. Grierson has done this for the eastern part of the hitherto undefined area, and he has therefore, a perfect right to give a name [“Bihari’] to the form of speech whose independence he has successfully established.” Hindu sages did not lack ability. They had already done a superb job in refining Sanskrit and its grammar. Their problem was that their religious worldview prevented them from sharing Sanskrit. The secret of their cultural power over fellow Hindus lay in keeping the common people ignorant of the language of the gods. The secrecy or monopoly of “knowledge,” turned Sanskrit, an otherwise scientific language, into a vehicle of religio-magical mumbo-jumbo. Nor did Muslim Maulanas lack talent. Their difficulty was that their theology and religion also prevented them from developing the dialects of the downtrodden. Islam was as interested in converting Hindus as was Christianity, yet Islam did not develop our dialects because its culture values submission more than intellectual freedom to pursue truth. It is estimated that a relatively weaker European country such as Spain publishes more books in a year than the whole of the Arabic world has published in a thousand years. The West’s vibrant literary tradition emerged because the Bible said that the Lord Jesus brought grace and truth (John 1: 17). The first two of the Ten Commandments required Jews and Christians to believe only what is true. That became the seed for a passion for truth which enabled Christianity to cultivate languages, libraries, schools, universities, and research labs as they developed technology and modern science. This intellectual tradition made the West powerful.  Christ’s Spirit Why did the West share its secret of power so liberally and sacrificially? The Bible said that the Lord Jesus sacrificed himself to save this world, enslaved by sin and suffering. That inspired Christian scholars and saints to also dedicate their lives to go to the remotest parts of the world and live with Stone Age tribes to develop their mother-tongues. They gave to the marginalized the opportunity to acquire the secrets of intellectual power generated in more developed parts of the world. The Macaulay Minute, so hated by our bigoted elite, asked the East India Company to prepare a class of Indians, who would learn English, in order to give to India access to European sciences, arts, laws, governance, organization, values, and management. Understanding the nobility of

Christianity lost America because 20th-century evangelicalism branded itself as the party of faith. By default Secularism (science, university, media) became the party of truth. This is one reason why 70% Christian youth give up meaningful involvement with the church when they grow up. Pentecostals, Jehovah Witnesses, and Baptists are the poorest communities in America. According to a study by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life,[ii] less than 20% followers of these religious groups make more than $75,000 a year. By comparison, 67% of the Reformed Jews, 65% percent Hindus, and 57% Conservative Jews earn more than $75,000/year. The finding that American evangelicals[iii] are poorer than the Roman Catholics surprised Pew Researchers who had thought that the economic miracle of the “modern” age was Protestantism’s fruit. The study raises questions such as: Has American evangelicalism lost Protestantism’s original DNA? Do American missions still carry the “good news for the poor?” (Luke 4:18) Or, is their success, spectacular in some countries, a tribute to the original and still-lingering image of Protestantism? Why did Christianity lose the power that gave it influence over education and economy, government and law, press and entertainment? How can the Church recover the power to prevail over the forces of evil? In November 2011, I met an American missionary who has served in Guatemala for 36 years. He described a recent (unpublished) doctoral study examining Protestantism in one part of Guatemala. The Hispanic scholar had hoped to substantiate Max Weber’s thesis on the connection between Protestantism and economic development. The data, however, drove him to conclude that the gospel taught by present-day American missions makes no perceptible difference to the economic life of the believing communities. The Pew study found a direct correlation between college education and economic status of religious communities in America: poorer communities had fewer college graduates. This is astounding, for classical Protestantism was synonymous with educated clergy.[iv] USA’s DNA, for example, was written by network of 140 university graduates who founded the Massachusetts colony. One hundred of these had studied in Cambridge (significantly 35 came from Emmanuel, the most Puritan college in Cambridge) and 30 in Oxford. Within six years of arriving, they established the college that became Harvard University, committed to Veritas– “Truth”. Twentieth century American missions have ignored higher education to the point that many Guatemalan Protestant pastors do not have even High School diplomas! In Argentina, Protestants (including Charismatic, Pentecostal, and evangelicals) have over 50 mission agencies and 500 missionaries but not one university.[v]  Why is the sun setting on the West? This essay summarizes one factor: the brand Christianity.[vi] In November 2011, I visited two classes at a Christian university in North America. I asked both: “How many of you would still believe Christianity if you found out tomorrow that Christianity was not true. That is: God never became a man; Jesus did not die for our sin; or, that he did not rise from the dead?” Twelve hands went up in each class of about 25 and 45 students. These sincere and devout students had grown up in Christian homes, gone to church all their lives and studied in Christian schools. Some had been in that Christian university for three years! They respected their elders who taught them that Christianity was all about faith with little concern for truth. Christianity lost America because 20th-century evangelicalism branded itself as the party of faith. Secularism (science, university, media) became the party of truth. This is one reason why 70% Christian youth give up meaningful involvement with the church when they grow up. In the second class, only one in four students perceived Christianity as disconnected with truth. This was because my host professor had taught them to believe because Christianity is true. Some professors and pastors do teach that, yet the “truth-less” brand is common perception because it is reinforced by most pastors, Bible teachers, and some Christian professors. I asked both classes if they thought secular universities knew truth. Overwhelmingly the answer was positive. When I asked them to name one secular professor who claims to know the truth, both classes named Stephen Hawking. (No student, however, had read Hawking’s latest book which demolishes the God of Western logic but not the God who has revealed Himself.) Secularism acquired the “Truth” brand by default because evangelicalism began defining Church’s mission as cultivating Faith, not promoting knowledge of Truth(compare 1 Timothy 2:4; 2 Tim 2:25; Titus 1:1, etc.). I asked these questions because two years earlier I had met students from that university on a mission trip in New Delhi. Their dedication was inspiring. Their love for Jesus was contagious. But they were “storying” not witnessing. That is, unintentionally they were rebranding missionaries as tellers of alien stories, not witnesses to Truth. Jesus can claim trans-cultural authority, demand allegiance of all cultures and call them to repent only if all nations have actually been given to him as his inheritance (Psalm 2:8; Matthew 28:18). If he really is the “ruler of the kings of the earth” (Revelation 1:5): the “ruler of God’s creation.”(Rev. 3:14). Jesus cannot be the Lord and have no say over social and political, work and business dimensions of life. The fact that some American missions to Muslims and upper-caste Hindus are backing away from Christ’s lordship over their cultures seems to be a result of their increasing uncertainty about Truth. To discuss the “image” problem does not mean glossing over the deeper problem of substance. Economic weakness is often a caused by intellectual and social poverty. In the long run, the image is created by theology – by the substance of faith. This essay can look only at the core theological issue: how American evangelicalism views the Bible. The branding or perception of Christianity as a religion of faith, disconnected with truth, is tragic given that the Judeo-Christian tradition is the only reason why any medieval, modern, or postmodern person talks about “Truth” that can be stated in rational words and propositions (creeds or equations). The secular academy and science acquired the truth-brand only because Secularism is a Protestant heresy. The university exists because the Church was committed to knowing and believing truth. Secularism didn’t create the university. It obtained that Christian

Definitions: (i) Macaulay = Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800 – 1859) who drafted India Penal Code, overturning the Hindu Law codified in Manusmriti (The Law of Manu). (ii) Manuwadi = An upper caste Hindu who prefers some form of casteism or Hindu racism The Manuwadis have very good reasons for hating Lord Macaulay. It is a fact that the India Penal Code (IPC) that Macaulay drafted in 1837 is not Indian. It may have rescued the downtrodden from Manu’s oppressive law, and together with his Minute on Education (1835) it may have set India on a course that could make us the greatest nation on earth. Yet, the truth is that the IPC is alien to Hindu culture. That is why it is not working very well. It could just be a matter of time before we mess up Macaulay’s Penal Code so badly that it becomes a worthless burden. Will scraping the IPC be good for India or tragic? That is a question that must be pondered as we celebrate (or loath) this month both the formal passage of the India Penal Code on October 6, 1860 andMacaulay’s birthday (October 25, 1800). Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay, the first Law Member of the Governor-General’s Council of India (1834-38), admitted that he had crafted the IPC both to protect ordinary Indians from the Law of Manu that had ruined India, and from the arrogance of British rulers who considered themselves the new Brahmins, authorized to exploit. On submitting the draft IPC, Macaulay’s cover letter clearly stated his biblical worldview that overruled both Brahmanism and British racism, “I fully believe that a mild penal code is better than a severe penal code, the worst of all systems was surely that of having a mild code for the Brahmins, who sprang from the head of the Creator, while there was a severe code for the Sudras, who sprang from his feet. India has suffered enough already from the distinction of castes, and from the deeply rooted prejudices which that distinction has engendered. God forbid that we should inflict on her the curse of a new caste, that we should send her a new breed of [English] Brahmins, authorized to treat all the native population as Pariahs!” You only fix what is broken. You change what you consider wrong or unsuitable. Just as Macaulay’s Penal Code sought to change India, his Minute on Education accepted Raja Ram Mohan Roy’s 1832 assertion that the five Englishmen, called the Orientalists, who were insisting on using the East India Company’s educational money to promote Sanskrit, Arabic, and Persian were pursuing a course “best calculated to keep this country in darkness.” In his Minute, Macaulay spoke as a surgeon speaks the unpleasant truth when he tells his patient: “You have cancer.” Macaulay explained that the Orientalists who promoted Sanskrit had assured him that Hindus and Muslims had great works of literary imagination. However, every single Orientalist, without exception, had also conceded that when it comes to scientific and historical facts or practical usefulness, all the wisdom available in Sanskrit or Arabic literature was less than what was available in a single shelf in any good library in Europe. Manuwadis hate Macaulay because his Minute honestly stated India’s need of true and useful knowledge: “I have no knowledge of either Sanscrit [sic] or Arabic. But I have done what I could to form a correct estimate of their value. I have read translations of the most celebrated Arabic and Sanscrit works. I have conversed both here and at home with men distinguished by their proficiency in the Eastern tongues. I am quite ready to take the Oriental learning at the valuation of the Orientalists themselves. I have never found one among them who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia. The intrinsic superiority of the Western literature is, indeed, fully admitted by those members of the Committee who support the Oriental plan of education.” Neither Macaulay’s haters nor most of his defenders actually understand his Minute on Education. He was asked to give his magisterial opinion to the Governor General because the ten member committee on education was unanimous on one point and evenly divided on another. All ten were Protestant Christians: Therefore, along with Lord Macaulay they all agreed with the Protestant reformers and with the Father of Modern India, William Carey (1761–1834) on one point: every child should be able to study Truth in his/her own mother-tongue. The problem was that for centuries neither Pundits nor Maulvis had shown any sustained interest in developing Indian vernaculars. The Mogul rulers had used Persian to govern India. The British were unanimous that India could not develop without developing the dialects spoken by common people. The disagreement was on which classical language would most effectively enrich the vernaculars. The Orientalists argued that Sanskrit, Arabic, and Persian were best suited to enrich the vernaculars. These classical languages had already influenced vernacular vocabulary and enough Brahmin and Muslim scholars were available to teach them. The Anglicists disagreed. They followed Charles Grant’s view that English would better enrich the Indian mind and the vernaculars. Together with Lord Macaulay’s father, Grant was an associate of William Wilberforce and a member of the Clapham Sect. The two-decade long parliamentary battles (1792-1813) by Grant and Wilberforce had forced the East India Company to invest in educating India. In Indian terms, Wilberforce and Grant, were Lord Macaulay’s “uncles.” Charles Grant, Jr. Who grew up with Lord Macaulay in that same closely-knit community was both the head of the East India Company and a fellow Member of Parliament when Macaulay gave his 1833 speech in Parliament. That speech won him the position of the Law Member of India’s Supreme Council and set India on the track for freedom. Macaulay was neither opposing Sanskrit, nor trying to make English the language of India or of general education. He was advocating that the Company’s educational grant should be used to equip some Indians to access information and

WARNING: This article is not fit for family consumption. It is intended for mature readers. It was about 10 pm in Hawaii on Thursday 18 August, when Kamala informed me, “Anna Hazare just left Tihar Jail in Delhi. His procession is on its way to pray at the Gandhi Samadhi.” This was the third unsolicited briefing from Kamala that day regarding Anna Hazare’s fast against corruption. She knew every detail about how he was forcing the government of India to accept his version of the Lokpal (anti-corruption Ombudsman) Bill, his arrest and release, his refusal to come out of the Jail except on his own terms, and now his march to pray at Gandhi’s grave before sitting at a fast, Gandhi-style. “Has our government become just as bad as the British Raj that we need another Gandhi?” I teased Kamala. “You seem to be glued to the TV, as though this was a Cricket match.” “I’m not!” she protested a bit embarrassed. “I’m telling you because my sister just called me.” “Why is she glued?” “She’s so mad at corruption that she wants to shoot every corrupt man, if she could.” “But why? She’s always come across to me as a quiet, simple woman; why would she want to become a terrorist?” “I can’t tell you,” said Kamala, “she made me promise her.”  That really aroused my curiosity: but to get Kamala to break her promise to her sister, I had to become seriously interested. “Usha is enthused about Anna, because corruption has ruined her life.” “How?” “She toiled for more than four years to complete her Ph.D. thesis on ‘Folk Literature and its Psychological Appeal.” After a whole day’s job as a junior lecturer, she cooked, put her family to bed, then read and wrote until she fell asleep. He husband hates the fact that for four years she has been more devoted to her Ph. D, than to him. He tolerated these years when his wife was in the home, but not really with him, in the hope that a doctorate will help her become a professor. But, now her own guide, to whom she was deeply devoted, has turned out to be a slimy snake.” “What did he do?” “That’s what I am not supposed to tell you.” “Please do tell me, because I really want to understand why so many people are so excited about Anna Hazare and Baba Ramdev.” “Usha read every book and journal her professor suggested. She visited pilgrim centers described in our folk literature. She wrote her thesis exactly as he advised. But he returned it with only negative comments. When she confronted him he said that it may take her four more years to get it right, unless he re-writes it for her. He said he didn’t have the time to help her during the day, but he could re-write if she came to his home after dinner. She went. He took her to his study next door. Inside was a little shrine with lamps and incense burning before a Shivalingam[i]. Hooded Kobras and Parvati were worshipping the lingam. The professor bowed before the lingam with deep piety . . . Usha followed his example . . . before they sat down facing each other.” “The professor kept gazing at the lingam, so Usha also took a good look. Behind the lingam was a large photograph.” “Do you recognize that temple?” “Yes, that is Mylapore temple in Chennai.” “This lingam is special because I brought it from there. Do you know that temple’s story?” “Yes, Shiva and Parvati were sitting there.  A peacock came by and Parvati was distracted. Shiva got angry and cursed her: she became a peacock. Shiva was pleased only when Parvati began worshipping the Shivalingam morning and evening. Then he turned her back into a woman.” “’Correct,’ said the professor. You’re researching folk literature; you know the legend; but have you learnt the lesson? I do not need to re-write your thesis. All I have to do is to re-write my notes on your thesis. Then you can get a Ph. D. within months.” “So, what do I have to do, sir?” “Learn from Parvati. Serve my lingam.” “But sir, your wife is next door!” “I’m a Brahmachari (celebate). Like Mahatma Gandhi I’ve renounced my marriage in search of self-realization. I’ve not touched my wife for ten years. She knows that this room is my shrine where I awaken my Kundalini[ii]. Those serpents represent Kundalini Shakti. My Parvatis come here to assist me in my quest. I help their pursuits.” “But Sir, this is hardly Gandhian or holy.” “You’d know how Gandhian this is if you take the trouble to Google Gandhi and Tantra[iii]. Gandhiji learnt Tantric tradition from Ramakrishna, Vivekananda, and Aurobindo. That tradition had gone underground due to foreign invasions, but it was kept alive by the very literature that you’ve been studying. I’m just making sure that you’ve actually learnt what you read.” “But my husband will kill me. He is already frustrated that I am here and not with him.” “Both of you have to learn from our Advaitic culture. You have to transcend this nonsense of husband-wife dualism. Parvati is worshipping Shiva’s lingam, but is she is his wife? He is a Brahmachari. She is his consort; his sexual-spiritual partner. This is what Gandhi was teaching all his assistants, including J P Narayan, whose wives slept with him. Sex has to be divinized. You are Brahma – not female or male. By awakening your Kundalini – your serpent power – and experiencing your true Self, you realize that you are one – complete. Both male and female are within you.” “But sir, I came here to re-write my thesis . . .” “But I called you here to make sure that you’ve really understood our religious literature, our gods, as well as our great men like Mahatma Gandhi. What’s a Ph.D. worth in folk literature, if you can’t be a Parvati? You know what I’m talking about. I’ll give you a few minutes to think and decide whether or not you want me to re-write my notes on your thesis.” “The professor went into the