This Blog post is an assessment of the possibilities for optimising the practice of Vishista-advaitism in non-Hindu countries. It is based on a personal experience of the author as an immigrant to the United Kingdom since the age of 15.
TWITCH VIDEO TRANSCRIPT 19 OCTOBER 2021
( https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1181167984 )
Good evening everyone. This is Shantanu Panigrahi here. I have had an interesting day today. I completed my Review of the Status Quo and found that there was nothing further to be done. It is all over now, 24 years after I struggled to protect my reputation in the United Kingdom. I came to the proof that Hinduism cannot be a functioning religion in an alien culture. It has either got to be abandoned, or It has to be modified to meet the requirements of the State; and as a conviction person who believes that truth is sacrosanct and the ultimate truth given to me is Vishista-advaita Vedanta, I could not sacrifice that truth. So I am remaining at home isolated from society and not cooperating with any intrusions into my liberty, just waiting to se what next turns up in my life.
I had given the benefit of the doubt that Britain was a multi-cultural society, but culture without religion, culture without spirituality is no culture whatsoever. It is merely a materialistic outlook that goes as culture. Culture is materialistic culture of spiritualist culture and materialist culture and spiritualist culture do not mix. So in this sense Vishista-advaita Vedanta being the highest of all religions, highest of all thoughts, because it puts truth at the top of all considerations so that one manifests one’s karma or duties and responsibilities to one’s family and society to that level of perfection. If the society does not want you, then of course it is up to them. It is not for want of trying my level-best to accommodate into the British State and to naturalise within my deeply-held conviction that suppression of truth is the ultimate religious persecution. So the persecution has been proven and in that sense one has to grin and bear it.
I did not come to the United Kingdom by choice; I came as a 15 year old boy with my parents and my parents left me here for higher education and I am grateful for that, but when I applied for asylum out of the United Kingdom back to India in 1998/1999 first when I was feeling severely persecuted in the United Kingdom and I had the evidence of my brother Devanand Panigrahi who is now deceased having been booted out of the United Kingdom when he worked at Hawker Siddley Aviation and could not cope with the stringent requirements place upon him as a calm and dignified person and who I love very much and he ended up in the Psychiatric Unit of India and became a life-long mental patient with paranoid schizophrenia that was treated with high doses of medication and electro-convulsive therapy, I have avoided all that as I got stuck into Creation as my conviction based on religion to get as much experience as possible taking advantage of all the facilities that came my way to improve myself materially and to improve myself spiritually. And the spiritual dimension took precedence in the end over material considerations. So I cannot let go of my spiritual convictions whatsoever in any shape or form. I am a strong theist, a very strong theist, and I do believe that God protects those who conduct themselves spiritually at the ultimate level of spiritual well being for the individual in terms of dharma which is the duties and responsibilities, and which should give them their lives.
Whether that dharma is Sanatan dharma meaning that one conducts God’s wishes on Earth, I do not accept that this is what it means. It is for God to protect ordinary dharma that a person conducts and not rely upon attributing one’s karma as sanatan dharma in that we are conducting the wishes of God. In my experience it is God who left me in 2014 and I went my own way. God made it clear to me that there was no such thing as Sanatan Dharma. Sanatan dharma is a figment of the human imagination in Hindus and which is used in a religious and nationalistic manner to further the cause of the need toprotect the religion and to protect the State. Dharma on the other hand is very important and that dharma in Dharma Rakshati Rakshita means that if one performs dharma at its finest level of perfection, then that Dharma protects the dharmic person, the Dharmist, and his works are protected forever. That is the true meaning of Dharma Rakshati Rakhshita. Jatha dharma tatha Jaya is the motton of the Supreme Court of India. So I go by that on this day the 19th of October 2021 17.40 pm hours to make it clear to myself that while I investigated the concept of Sanatan Dharma in considerable dedication and devotion to God, Sanatan dharma did not come to secure me any kind of material justice in this world. It did not get me free from mental health medications, it did not get me my £55,000 severance payment from the University of Greenwich and it did not reverse the decision of the Courts to fine me £4170 to be paid to the Prime Minister of this country. So Sanatan Dharma is not the eternal law of the universe. Dharma itself is what it is all about. And Dharma to me is not going to be compromised in any way or form. You try to do the best for society, or globally, but is in the order that dharma comes first to yourself, then to the family, then to society and then to globally. So, if the global environment does not require you, the State does not require you, the family does not require you, then you go it alone and get isolated into an ashram and become a sanyasi. For that is the only way to attain peace of mind which leads to nirana or Shunyata.
Of course, nirvana or Shunyata need to be sacrificed when one has a family and has commitments to the family, and the family is functioning well. In my case this is the situation, so I have no need to go to sanyass. I have a reasonable family life here in the United Kingdom, happy with a daughter, and I have commitments to them and I intend to fulfil them. So I stick to my dharma towards them until they say that my dharma is no longer required by them. And this is not the case at the moment. So I live by that simple dharma, not dharma in sanatan dharma. We explored, I explored Sanatan Dharma in considerable detail. But all the while I was looking to see where my fate was and this is the final fate that I have arrived at. And the fate is that I am totally ignored and disregarded by the society of the United Kingdom; for all the work that I have put in over the past 24 years and the 35 scientific papers that I published prior to that – all amounted to nothing. There was no reward for me. I was a cleaner, a warehouseman, a supermarket assistant and a petrol station worker; all that after having a Distinction level Post Graduate Diploma in Agricultural Development and Environmental Sciences and a PhD on top. So that kind of life had to be sacrificed in the interests of securing liberty; liberty as far as the commitments that one has, the dharma one has to perform permits. And once society has rejected me, all my qualifications had to be jettisoned; and now that I have completed 15 books of my knowledge and experiences in the United Kingdom these too have to be jettisoned and I must not rely on them to further any goals of mine into the future. So I will not be promoting the books or trying to obtain any kind of financial gain or recognition of contribution; If the books sell and finances come my way I will gladly accept them because that will assist the family into greater prosperity and we all need that to survive and continue to fulfil our dharma, the Dharma that is swadharma, then family dharma, and once the family is self-contained within its house of shelter there is nothing else to worry about.
I have played my cards right and avoided the mental hospital for a third time and I have played my cards right to avoid prison at any time of my life. So I have not committed any offence since 2008 that deserves for me to be detained in a mental hospital or in a prison. And I have survived to this day with my liberty intact. And that liberty is due to the fact that I had always put my dharma ahead of any other considerations. And that dharma had to be family first; and me first when the family was rebelling against me: I tried to divorce my wife a number of times when I saw that she was going a different way and we were not compatible. But that somehow got adjusted and we learnt about each other and we stayed together and we are prospering right now.
So the thing is that whilst I do not have personal ambitions of any kind anymore, used to have that as part of the Santan Dharma that I was exploring in terms of developing Knowledge for World Development, Knowledge for World Conservation to contribute to humanity. I set up this Conservative Libertarian Society to promote those ideas and I set up the Vishista Advaita Vedanta as the structure or philosophy that was the ideal way of living, but there is no proof of any of that. They were just formulations that I made up to help me find my way forward. At the end of the day, they had all got to be jettisoned and a fresh new start has to be begun. And that is the situation right now.
I am going to watch the James Bond Film with my wife this evening and tomorrow I will be taking our daughter to a place of Training. That is all I will be concentrating on from now onwards. I have avoided contacts with the despicable creatures that have persecuted me for the past 24 years for being who I am; having total belief in ahimsa and non-violence but believing also that the truth must be sacrosanct; and truth must be exposed. Truth must be probed out, exposed, and brought to the public domain as truth is the ultimate goal of humankind. Truth is the Reality. Truth is what human beings are destined for in terms of their destinations. Truth shows you the meaning of life. Truth itself is the meaning of life.
Thank you