The holy men of India.

The Holy Men of India.

Take a short walk down Chouringhee, near Dalhousie, Sealdah or any one of the more busy streets of Kolkata and you will see a half naked bloke with shaggy hair begging on the pavement. Who is he? Who are the thousands of people like him? India has had Sadhus, Rishis and Muni. All of these words refer to sages, people who have talked about religion, science, philosophy, in fact, talked about everything. These men (yes, there have been few women in these ranks) are the Socrates, the Aristotle and the Immanuel Kant of India. The first criterion to the position of a sadhu is to give up wealth and all material possessions. The sadhu who bothers about his next meal is never going to be a sadhu. Such men have always a path so wildly different from that taken by the rest that we can scarcely comprehend their motivation, much less their rewards. For thousands of years, the most respected of these has been the itinerant Brahmin whose sole possession is his loincloth and his begging bowl. His call of ‘bhikhshan dehi’ (alms) brought him food and when needed, shelter. Why? Perhaps because the people who gave him alms recognized his greater understanding of all things. Such people have frequently come to the forefront of society and led others in times of need. The foremost of such sages in recent times has been Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa, and the disciple who transcended him, Swami Vivekanada. Indeed, the father of our nation, Mahatma Gandhi was somewhat unflatteringly referred to as ‘that half naked fakir’ by the then Viceroy to the Queen. But leaving such greats, we turn our attention to the beggars on the streetside. Even in today’s commercial age, we see people stopping to drop a rupee or two into his bowl. One such person is seen every day outside the Sri Guru Ashrama, which is a place established by yet another sage. Every day on my way to college, I passed this bloke. I usually made it a point to carry some change to give him. He would raise the coins to his forehead and mutter something which I never understood. My father has long maintained that he is a sadhu of some accomplishment who simply prefers to remain incognito. This bloke sometimes talks to people only he can see with emphatic hand gestures. He laughs at their foibles and preaches to them. All I can understand is that he sees more than I do. Isn’t that exactly what a sadhu does?