Monk Who Sold Nothing

It just happened today. I was watching a news item about a businessman who got converted to a monk by spending twentyfive crores of rupees. More than one lakh people watched the conversion ceremony. All kinds of expensive rituals were performed. More than thousand other monks and some celebrity industrialists were present. A very expensive structure was built in the name of renunciation from public life. This structure was named as the “Ship of Self-Control” or “Saiyam Jahaj”. 

Somehow after watching this whole episode I could not keep control over me and what came out was this article. I was surprised to note that even the mainstream media was not able to make any comment about the extravagant expenses for someone to become a monk. I have been seeing all sorts of wasteful expenditures by many people all around. That too in a country where farmers commit suicide just because of untimely rains in one season. I am of the opinion that our society needs to get up and make law against the wasteful expenditures, whether it is done by a political leader in a marriage function or by a film star in a film success party. Unequal distribution of wealth is not actually due to “karma” of anyone, but very often it is due to cunningly planned strategies of some people, who turn the flow of money in their favour by snatching the rights of many others. We do have hardworking wealthy people in our society. The purpose of my write up is not to make a generalized remark. It is rather to raise a small voice against extravagant and vulgar display of some people in this country. I was surprised, when I surfed the net, I found that our neighbour Pakistan has been able to implement “One Dish, one Rule” rather well in their marriages. We do have Guest Control Act in India too. We have many committee reports that have spoken against “Big Fat Indian Celebrations”. But so far only files have been moving and so much so when a seasoned RTI activist wanted to know about the original guest control order, even that file is missing. We have a state like Assam, where at least a similar order is in action. 

I know we are a fun loving society. The only little issue is that sometime our fun crosses the limits; we do not even realize that such limits existed. So I just finish my post with a best wish to the future life of “A Monk Who Sold Nothing”. Tomorrow we will have MBA case studies on “Marketing Techniques of Monks”. 

Dr. Sunil Ji Garg