The Swami and the Children: A Fictional Explanation of the Hindu Culture for Youngsters

By Mrinal Bali

Today’s high school student has more knowledge than all the past sages of the Hindu culture combined, yet it is widely held that the Hindu culture is too complex for the young mind to understand. This book, in fictional form based on a true story, dispels this myth.

The Hindu culture was not founded but discovered. It was discovered by the same process by which our young learn science: observe nature, explain, test the explanation, and if the test fails, repeat the cycle. The young understand this process of discovery well, and will, therefore, understand the Hindu culture because this is precisely the process that the sages of the Hindu culture followed.

What the sages sought was immortality, and they wanted it now, in this life, not in some hereafter. Instead of beseeching unknown gods for immortality, as the rest of the world was doing and still does, the sages did something novel: they observed nature. The sages reasoned that If immortality was possible, nature must have created something immortal. If they could find it, perhaps they could emulate it and themselves become immortal.

The sages defined immortality as a state of no change—a state without a beginning, without an end, no birth, no death. They called the state Brahman (pronounced Bruhm-aa, n nasal). Atmaan and Om are the other two names for it.

Everywhere the sages looked, however, they found that the universe suffers ceaseless change. Today’s high school student, knowing the atom, would conclude this nature of the material universe in a minute. The sages took centuries.

When they didn’t find something that never changed, the sages then observed nature for something that changes but can be controlled and made unchanging. That brought them to the mind, the consciousness—the only creation without atoms and hence possible to make unchanging. The rest of the Hindu culture is the discovery of methods to make the mind unchanging and merge in Brahman. The book describes Patanjali's Yoga, the most popular of the methods for achieving Brahman.

Instead of teaching our young how the Hindu culture was discovered, we teach our young deity worship. The fact is that first came the culture. Our many deities came later. For example, Rama and Krishna were practitioners of a culture that already existed. The culture as originally founded has no deities. "Which is that one God? He is Brahman. They call him tyat (that)." (Brhad-arnyaka Upanisad)

The discovery of the Hindu culture is recorded in the original texts of the culture, the Vedas and their ancillaries such as the Upanisads. The texts are vast. The Rg Veda Samhita, one of the four Vedas, alone has 10,589 verses or mantras, and the process of discovery is scattered throughout the vast texts. This book extracts the scattered basics of the Hindu culture and narrates them in fictional form based on a true story.

When a group of Hindu children mock the Hindu culture, the culture of their birth, the parents ask a reclusive Swami living in seclusion to explain the culture to the children. The Swami believes, as is widely held, that the Hindu culture is too complex for young minds to comprehend, yet he takes up the challenge. What follows is a gripping tale of a Swami against children who resist him.

There is no finer legacy that a Hindu parent can bequeath to our children. This book is a must gift from every Hindu parent to his or her child.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mrinal Bali
• Release date: Mar 14, 2017
• ISBN: 9781532337451

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Copyright © 2017 by Neha Bali.

ISBN: 978-1-5323-3745-1

Thank you for downloading this East Rock book.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Address queries on rights and permissions to the publisher East Rock, USA.

Digital edition published worldwide by East Rock, sole proprietor Neha Bali, Las Vegas, NV, USA.

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Epilogue

Chapter 1

The furor erupted when the children returned home with a new order from their school’s principal: from here on, all students shall wear a pendant of Jesus Christ on the cross, available at the school, and no other religious symbol shall be allowed in school.

The school was an Irish catholic school in the rural northwest Himalayas of India. Education was secondary for the school. Its primary purpose was conversion of the surrounding villages to Christianity. The principal was a new arrival from Ireland. His orders to his school staff were forthright: conversions are slow; step it up.

Within the school’s mountain domain was the Sarovar Campus. Surrounded by snow peaks shooting high into purple skies, the Sarovar Campus housed the engineers of a hydroelectric project under construction in a nearby river valley. The campus was sixty-five acres of an office building, satellite antennae, captive power generation, red-brick cottages for the engineers, a soccer field and a play park of colorful swings and jungle gyms. The campus housed thirty-three families, all Hindus, and their forty-two children who spanned Kindergarten to high school—and who attended the Christian school.

Hindus attending Christian schools is commonplace in India. Most parents of the Sarovar Campus were themselves graduates of Christian schools. Christian schools had existed in India since St Thomas, one of Christ’s very apostles, landed on the Malabar coast of India and founded branches of the Syrian church. Hindus were well aware that conversion, not education, was the overriding purpose of the Christian schools in India, but Hindu parents did not worry.

The Hindu culture is by far the oldest surviving culture of the world. In its life so far, the Hindu culture has been challenged by three of the world's major religions—Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity. Buddhism was born in India. Islam had ruled India for nearly a thousand years. Christians had ruled India for nearly four centuries. The Hindu culture had survived.

Yet the Sarovar Campus parents were now agitated at the new order from their children’s school. Christian schools never openly mocked the Hindu culture. Neither did this school—until the new principal arrived from Ireland and took charge.

The parents were furious at the new order from the new principal.

"Those Christian teachers tell our children that the Ramayana is fiction!" yelled one Hindu mother of the Sarovar Campus.

The campus parents convened in the conference room of the main office building. As happens in most gatherings of Indians, the men and women grouped separately at opposite ends of the room.

The teachers incite the children against the Hindu culture, said a father. "The children now mock the culture of their birth. My son ridicules the Ramayana. He says Ram was obedient to the extent of foolishness, and Dashrath was a bad father and husband."

My daughter says the Hindu culture is all about kings and queens.

My children don't believe that arrows fired into the sky brought down rain and fire.

My children make fun of Ganesh. They say he is the accident of a pregnancy gone haywire.

My son says the Hindu culture hasn't served us well in history because we repeatedly got conquered.

"My children make fun of the pundit who comes to our home on Saturdays for shani puja."

It's all this school's influence. The children are rejecting their culture. The school has to be stopped.

The mothers wanted to withdraw their children from the Christian school. Which other school was there for the children to attend? asked the fathers. The nearest other school of acceptable standard was a day's jeep ride away over rough, unpaved roads winding through thick jungles growling with predatory wildlife. The mothers presented an option: they could take the children back to their urban roots and superior schools. The fathers could stay on in this rural hinterland and finish the hydro project. The men rejected this option. After a long and heated discussion, the parents decided to send two fathers, the chief engineer and his deputy, to meet with the school's principal.

The next morning the two fathers drove to the school in a government vehicle with small authoritative government flags front and aft. In no uncertain words, the fathers told the principal that his religion was his and their culture was theirs and whatever he did with spreading his religion among the local villagers was between him and the locals but leave the campus children alone.

The principal, robed in white with a green cord on his inflated waistline, listened patiently from across his ocean sized desk. He was well aware that in this area, for the children of these engineers, his school enjoyed an absolute and complete monopoly. The principal offered the engineers tea and biscuits, then leaned forward in his chair for emphasis. The school, he said, could not impose different rules for different children. The school's Christian teaching and new uniform code shall stand as mandated.

The two fathers returned to the campus wringing their hands and shaking their heads. The parents convened again in the conference room. Another long and heated discussion followed.

The chief engineer's wife was particularly vocal. She pointed an accusing finger at the men. You are senior government officers building a dam for the government. Why don’t you rattle the government chains at the Ministry of Education? They'll fix this principal.

The chief engineer, a gray haired man with a flapping dewlap, shook his head. "The government will intervene only if the school has broken a law. The school has flouted no laws. It's a private school. It can mandate whatever dress code it wants. The school's prospectus states that its mission is to increase awareness of the Christian faith. Increase awareness, mind you, not convert. The school increases awareness; the people convert of their own volition. The school does not enforce conversion. That's within