The entire world is flooded with chelas (disciples)

The entire world is choked with chelas (acolytes). Everywhere you turn your gaze, nothing but acolytes. Cyan, magenta, VIBGYOR, every shade imaginable—yes, even infrared and ultraviolet acolytes.

Acolytes by the dozen, acolytes by the kilo, take your pick!

Disciples of the Congress, of the BJP, of Ambedkar, of Mahamad, of Jesus, of Gautama Buddha, of Marx, of Osho, of Stalin, of Gandhi, of Nehru, of Indira, disciples of Sufi shrines, of Sai Baba rubbish, disciples of Periyar, disciples of the sister-in-law’s husband!

Astute acolytes, subtle acolytes, wretched acolytes, flashy acolytes, mild acolytes, rabid acolytes, shameless acolytes, packed-tight acolytes, jam-packed acolytes, stuffed-to-the-gills acolytes.

No room is left for a human being.

The disciples of Mahamad have an agenda. Blinders strapped to their eyes like horses, on they gallop. Do not argue with them; he is a foot-soldier—the moment he loses an argument, he will unsheathe his sword; that alone is his language.

The Indian disciples of Jesus and Saint Paul maintain a gentle cadence, warm pockets, and deception in their eyes. So that the gates of heaven may swing open for all, and the grace of the only begotten Son of God reach everyone, it becomes indispensable to grab land and natural resources, buy off men’s consciences, and traffic children.

Ambedkar’s disciples are consumed with vengeance; do not try to reason with them. The venom of hatred courses through their veins.

Marx’s disciples will revile capital and capitalists from dawn to dusk, only to begin cavorting with the plutocrats by evening. All young comrades remain afflicted with anti-establishment rage only until they manage to become District Collectors.

Buddha’s disciples—taking the Buddha who was an anatmavadi (advocate of non-self), a shunyavadi (proponent of the void), an atheist, and an iconoclast—deify him as God and plead before his idol for the purity of the atman (soul).

।ऊं मणिपद्मे हुं। (Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ: Om, the jewel in the lotus, hum!)

Gandhi’s disciples are so non-violent that if you refuse to obey them, they will bash your skull in with a brick. "Turn vegetarian, or things will end badly for you—we are warning you!"

।जय गुरूदेव। ।जय ब्रह्मकुमारी। (Hail Gurudev! Hail Brahma Kumaris!)

In India, the devotee is always greater than the deity: here the new Mullah eats more onions than Mahamad; the Indian leftist brandishes the banners of varna (traditional social order) and the bourgeois-proletariat a thousand times more obsessively than Marx; and the Gandhian’s affection for goats and brahmacharya (celibate conduct) outweighs Mohandas’s tenfold—and how grateful we are to them!

Yet the rarest of all are the acolytes of the cataclysmic, world-shattering superman, unprecedented in the past and unrepeatable in the future—the Pradhan Sevak. Do not bother arguing with them; they will rewrite history on the spot. Their wish list is their news:
"China is groveling—take Mansarovar and Tibet back!"
"Pakistan is crushed; Doval will build an impregnable citadel in PoK!"
"India has become the supreme superpower!"
"Trump and Putin concede defeat to our might!"

I bumped into one such acolyte the other day!

Me: "Nothing substantial could be achieved on Article 370."
Acolyte 1: "The Brahmins of the North Indian Hindi belt are quietly slipping away from the BJP."

Me: "Ram Mandir: if not now, then when? You are at the Centre, you are in the State, the President is yours?"
Acolyte 2: "Neutrality in dharma (righteous order)—it was you Brahmins who introduced secularism! You Brahmins brought reservations! You gave shelter to the remnants left behind after the creation of Pakistan! At the root of this entire mess lies your own inaction. You want to remain Brahmins, yet you whine at the slightest inconvenience!"

Me: "What happened to the Uniform Civil Code? Nobody seems to know anything."
Acolyte 1: "First using the Shudra Mahapadma Nanda and then republican Kshatriyas like the Mauryas and Guptas as mere instruments, Brahmins like Yaugandharayana and Varshakara orchestrated the annihilation of republican Kshatriyas like the Licchavis, Mallas, Yaudheyas, and Arjunayanas at the hands of Magadhan imperialism—all to establish Brahminical supremacy and bleed the populace dry!"

Me: "Mathura, Kashi, Kashmiri Pandits, Love Jihad, the Tanvi Seth fiasco—where does all that stand??"
Acolyte 3: "What you call the freedom struggle was also a Brahmin fraud, designed to strip the princely states of their hegemony. Everything was snatched from us, yet we never threw such a tantrum!"

Me: "Come on, friend, we are hereditary Jan Sanghis; we voted for Modi even in 2014!"
Acolyte 2: "If you feel you are being persecuted day in and day out just for being a Brahmin, you are free to go. But listen before you leave: Where will you go? And once you get there, what will you do?"

Me: "Brother, where on earth could we go? Even our Eurasian citizenship—where the Communists wanted to banish us—has expired by now!"

All of them in unison: "After all, was it not you (Brahmins) who nurtured and fed the Left and the secularists?"

।इति चेलापुराणे प्रथमखण्डे प्रथमोध्यायः संपूर्णं। (Thus concludes the first chapter in the first section of the Chela Purana.)

– Dr. Madhusudan Upadhyay, the author is an erudite scholar of Indian culture, history, art, dharma, and spirituality.

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