In 58 posts with close to 100k words, we shared a lot in 2024! Explore 2024’s biggest geopolitical shifts, cultural battles, and bold insights with Drishtikone’s year in review. See you in 2025! Happy New Year! Be safe!
When you see Russia get into existential war over Ukraine, or Israel bomb Syria or India battle with Pakistan or Bangladesh, it is not because of some whim. It has a historical and geographical context. That is critical to understand for analyzing geopolitics.
Dive into the shadowy world of the Deep State—its hidden structures, powerful networks, and the far-reaching impact on global events and control.
To know who we are, we need to know what started it all. Let us close our eyes and contemplate. Nothing short of that will work.
“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” ― Albert Einstein
Identity establishes the attachment for survival. If you identify with something, anything for that matter, its loss will define your existence. In your mind.
One, who is free and liberated has no time or need for that.
Protection can never be of a person, for that which is sure to die can never be saved, even by the Divine. Aspiration can only be to dissolve what is divine into the Divine in every perceptible way.
Mata Gujri and her two grandsons had died in the custody of Wazir Khan – who was pursuing and attacking Guru Gobind Singh’s panthis. At that time, the Guru turned to his Guru, the Formless, Stainless and Self-reliant. Primal, Blemish-less, Endless, and birth-less. That which was the manifestation as Brahm, Vishnu, and also Shiva, the Adi Yogi.
To understand the panth of the Khalsa, one needs to understand its architect.
The foundation of Khalsa Panth, not religion, was laid down by Guru Gobind Singh. Not because it was a new way to be, but because it was the need of the hour. Many Spiritual Masters have understood the contemporary situations with clarity that only unencumbered beings can.
Clearing out the nonsense, they can see what is needed.
When Guru Gobind Singh’s family - his father, his kids, his mother - and his colleagues had been tortured and killed by Aurangzeb’s associates and generals, he was praying to the one eternal consciousness and divinity.
In his powerful poem titled Benti Chaupaee, he calls out the enemy and what he would prefer happened to those inimical forces.
ਦੁਸ਼ਟ ਜਿਤੇ ਉਠਵਤ ਉਤਪਾਤਾ ॥ ਸਕਲ ਮਲੇਛ ਕਰੋ ਰਣ ਘਾਤਾ ॥੩੯੬
dusht jitai uthvat utpata skal mlaich kro run ghata
दुष्ट जीतइ उठवत उत्पाता सकल मलेछ करो रन घाता
The evildoers who arise to create destruction, kill all those Mlechh (Islamic invaders*) in the battle.
* Mlechh was the Sanskrit word used for foreign invaders, specifically those who did not follow Dharma. Not as in a religion, but in its social and spiritual construct. Rules of wars being one component. This word was used for the Greek invaders in earlier times and later in Guru Gobind Singh’s time it was used for the Islamic Invaders.
He was asking for strength from the Supreme Eternal consciousness, also known as Hiranyagarbha in most scriptures, for the destruction of अधर्म - Adharma. Entities that did not follow the rules and laws which align with the one eternal being.
The reason for creating the panth - which essentially means a path and not religion - was to raise a group of co-travelers on the difficult but necessary journey that he had undertaken.
Gurus, you see, are not doing things for others or for a frivolous exhibition.
They do what is needed for those times as their offering to life and the life-force that pervades the existence.
It is needed so they do.
For, think about it - what needs of others or even yours are important enough to give away the lives of your kids and mother after your father has been publicly tortured and beheaded?
That which is temporary - body - cannot be protected.
To ask for help for that - his mother or his kids - was a waste of time for the Guru.
What he was raising his voice for was for the life force to align against that which was the source of destruction. The disgust for Mlechhas came from that understanding.
The co-travelers who laid the foundation of the पंथ that Guru Gobind Singh set out to create were not chosen by him at all. When he asked for five people who could give their lives for the पंथ as he took them inside the tent one by one, emerging every time with blood on his sword, he was sharing the intensity that his band of co-travelers had to possess.
When Bhai Daya Ram from Lahore went in, he could do so when the love and trust in the integrity and the purity of his Guru’s way was greater than his own need for survival.
His walk up to his Guru was a walk away from survival. To a step into eternity. When his Guru was greater than his own physical existence.
Similarly, Bhai Dharam Das from Hastinapur (Meerut), UP and Bhai Himmat Singh from Puri, Odisha and Bhai Mohkam Singh from Dwarka, Gujarat and finally Bhai Sahib Singh from Bidar, Karnataka walked up, as the certainty of their physical end and birth into eternal path became crystal clear.
Not everyone took those steps. Only five did that day.
The test - give up the need for the physical temporary existence and align with the eternal. The Khalsa - खालसा पंथ - or the path to the pure and eternal.
Except one, none of those who held Guru Gobind Singh higher than every possible security in life was from Punjab. One spoke Brij bhaasha, one Oriya, one Gujarati, and the final one Kannada.
That is what made the first set of co-travelers of Guru Gobind Singh.
Singh is not born. Singh is one who holds the eternal dharma higher than even his death. Birth is not what defines a Khalsa, his intensity for dharma does. For, that goes beyond death.
What started the first band of travelers on the Khalsa Panth was not allegiance or narrow relationship to Punjab or Punjabiyat, but the intensity to give up all for the lofty work of the Guru.
If the Sikhs, who imagine Khalistan as their goal and some synthetic concept of Sikhi as their ideal, and trample on the concept of India as the way to establish their allegiance, think they have anything to do with Guru Gobind Singh or his path, they can’t be more dishonest. In fact, they are doing the most spectacular job of trampling on the very being of Guru Gobind Singh.
Just as Adi Shankara established the four centers of Dharma in the four corners of this land called India, Guru Gobind Singh established his path with the induction of four amazing beings also from the four corners of India.
The Guru who was born in Patna and left his physical existence in Nanded, Maharashtra had as much importance for an establishment linked to Punjab as his life’s work did for that piece of land.
We had discussed in exhaustive detail as to why the signs of Biden playing obedient soldier of Xi Jinping were evident in his first call to the Asian leaders. In those calls, he had replaced the Free and Open Indo-Pacific vision of the QUAD (US, India, Australia, and Japan) to Secure and Prosperous Indo-Pacific region. Please read this newsletter edition for a factual understanding of why this shift has been considered so significant - Issue #184: Biden = End of US Power = Chinese Global Supremacy
Interestingly, Biden is having to walk back some of that pusillanimous comments. In his discussion with the Japanese PM Yoshihide Suga, Biden discussed the Indo-Pacific region. And not the “Secure and Prosperous Indo-Pacific” but “Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP)” as Japan had outlined it initially and Australia, India, and the US had confirmed as the future vision for Asia.
Interestingly, after the push from China, the Biden administration was already abandoning the Free and Open Indo-Pacific stance and jumping off to the China-backed “Asia-Pacific” stance. (Read Issue #200 - The Obedient Poodle)
The global leadership, not just from Asia, but even in Europe, is firmly behind the “Indo-Pacific” vision of Asia. Something that French President Emmanuel Macron ensures he comes on air to assert in this unusual, and unprecedented, address to India. Almost as if sending a coded message to the Indian establishment.
In the coming days and months, as the Biden administration gets warmed up to the changing world that President Trump left behind, where the rules which were prevalent until President Obama’s rule are no longer in currency.
Many powers in the world have woken up.
Supreme Court refuses protection to Tandav cast: Web series 'Tandav' actors, makers, including Saif Ali Khan and Ali Abbas Zafar likely to face arrest after Supreme Court on Wednesday turned down their pleas for protection from arrest. A three-judge bench headed by Justice Ashok Bhushan only issued a notice on clubbing of various FIRs registered across the country and asked actor Zeeshan Ayyub and others to move to High Courts for quashing of FIRs or bail in the matters. Senior Advocate Fali S. Nariman requested for an order of no coercive action against the cast and producers of the web series. However, the bench refused to grant relief. (Source)
Kisan Org withdraws: The All India Kisan Sangarsh Coordination Committee (AIKSCC) on Wednesday stated that it is withdrawing from the ongoing farmers' protest after the agitation turned violent on Republic Day. The organization stated that it found the way the protest was held as "unacceptable". "We are discontinuing our agitation but our fight for farmers' rights will continue," ANI quoted AIKSCC leader VM Singh as saying. (Source)
Physical impact of COVID: Changes to the tongue, the hands or the soles of the feet could give an early indication of Covid-19 infection, Spanish researchers found in a study. Some patients reported swelling of the tongue and the appearance of patches, in what has been dubbed "Covid tongue", which on many occasions was associated with a loss of taste. Another symptom was a burning sensation and redness on the palms or soles of the feet, which in some cases was followed by the appearance of small blemishes. (Source)
Russia Groomed Trump: Donald Trump was cultivated as a Russian asset more than 40 years ago which exploded into a decades-long 'relationship' of mutual benefit to both Russia and Trump, a shocking new book claims. Trump was rescued multiple times from multiple bankruptcies by boatloads of Russian cash laundered through his real estate in the 80s and 90s, the author asserts. Russian money also picked up the tab for buildings franchised under Trump's name. (Source)
Swearing and Intelligence: Being told 'you curse like a sailor' is usually not a compliment, but scientists who have studied swearing for decades say using foul language is actually beneficial. Numerous studies have found using taboo words may be a sign of intelligence, honesty and creativity, as well as a way to withstand pain. (Source)
The power of India’s spirituality is not in miracles or conquests. But embedded in everyday lives. The ways that make even the poorest value dignity over fighting for others’ money.
The reason why a large urban center even in Delhi can function without people tearing each other apart with police stations manned with a dozen hawaldars carrying lathis (not guns) on bicycles, while in New Orleans all hell broke loose after Katrina is because there is something else at work. Something that we have not even acknowledged.
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