Today’ post seems most relevant to me: the meeting of #MaharanaPratap ‘s War council. Now we know that Maharana was a man of the people: he was not surrounded by an army of polished bureaucrats, speaking Oxford English, or sycophants who in true Bhakti tradition, will always say what pleases the guru or the politician, or secluded from reality by a seven ring security. NO, Maharana lived in the forests, he was a friend of the tribals, he had Hindu as well as Muslim soldiers, interacted with artisans, farmers, ordinary folks. So when he called war council meetings, he would have had people from different walks of life and got a correct assessment of the situation at hand.

In these stressing times of #covid, we can see that politicians lost their heads and are taking advice from this closed circle of advisers, medical and otherwise, who have no contact with reality. There are 70 million people in Tamil Nadu and at the moment they are crowding all the vegetable shops, markets, mini marts, as all of them are going to be closed for a week. Do you imagine the promiscuity, the lack of social distancing; the spreading of the virus??? Does it make any sense? Is there any thinking behind it? NO! This is what happens when you are cut off from reality.

The political setup in India, established by 50 years of Indian National Congress, is a VVIP system, whereby the MP or MLA or Minister is surrounded by an army of secretaries, drivers, servants, security guards, sycophants coming for favours etc… SO when they call a war council meeting, or any meeting of importance, they get wrong advice, like from allopathic doctors with big egos, big ideas of their own importance, who are all part of the huge and powerful pharmaceutical lobby, who deny and look down on indigenous systems of medicine, like Ayurveda, which 2000 years before allopathic doctors, performed plastic surgery and knew that any diseases have a psychosomatic origin,  or despise gurus such as Swami Ramdev or Srisri Ravi Shankar.

This is also why I had proposed to Prime Minister @narendramodi an Advisory Board made of people from all walks of life who would give him inputs that he may otherwise not get from his own people – on how for instance his great reforms are being hijacked and diluted by bureaucracy by the time they reach grassroots.

The Shivaji Maharaj Museum of Indian History Pune, recognizes the value of India’s ancient system. We have exhibitions on the Vedas, on pranayama and one in the making on Ayurveda ( I have written in French an encyclopaedia of Ayurveda, below). Support us by sending me a mail at fgautier@rediffmail.com

Namaste

Francois