Dayanand Bharati

Author: Dayanand Bharati

  • Gurudīkṣā Is Not Baptism

    Part I: Distinguishing Dīkṣā from Baptism Author’s Note This reflection is not written to challenge Christians, question Christian belief or practice, or argue against Christian baptism. Christians are free to understand and practise their faith according to their convictions and their reading of Scripture. My concern is with fellow Hindu bhaktas who follow Bhagavān Muktināth…

  • Arrested Nature

    I have always preferred nature as it is, untouched by human intervention. Whenever I create or buy a work depicting natural scenery, I tend to choose one without buildings, dams, boats, ships, or any other human construction. There is something deeply beautiful, to me, about nature being allowed simply to remain itself. That is why,…

  • Conviction versus Opinion: A Tale from Gandhiji’s Life

    All those who even now attack Mahatma Gandhi’s life and mission may sometimes forget something important. Whatever Gandhi stood for was not simply an ideology borrowed from Scripture or copied from the lives of other role models. He certainly learnt from Scripture, from other people and from the traditions around him. But his convictions increasingly…

  • Service in Absence

    There comes a time, after active engagement with others for a common cause, when our inner conviction may lead us to withdraw from that shared activity. Such withdrawal need not mean that we have abandoned either the cause or the people with whom we once worked so closely. On the contrary, there may be circumstances…

  • Giving and Feeling

    We are all familiar with the reverence Mahatma Gandhi gave not only to Christ, but to the great religious figures belonging to each and every religion. But the way he describes the relationship between such great teachers and their followers is worth noticing. Whenever I hear someone say, “I received Christ” or “I accepted Christ”,…

  • Keep Religion Where It Belongs

    I had read some material about Partition before, but recently, while reading the actual words of Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Rahmat Ali, I found myself thinking about something beyond the political history of Pakistan. Their words made me ask a more fundamental question: How much of human social life can religion actually carry? As an…

  • Who is the little one?

    The One Who Is Lost—and the Good Shepherd Who Seeks Kenneth E. Bailey is one of the writers whose works have helped me greatly in reading and understanding the Bible. I have read most of his books, and therefore what follows is not an attack on Bailey. It is simply a question that arose in…

  • BT Songs 1766 to 1770

    BT Song 1766 There is a saying that a friend is someone with whom you do not need to explain yourself. Yet such understanding grows through the mutual understanding that develops between two people in friendship. But when it comes to God, there is no such requirement. Even before we attempt to explain ourselves, He…

  • Bilingual Discourse and Cross-Cultural Fertilisation:

    Only for my personal use and not an article Bilingual Discourse and Cross-Cultural Fertilisation: Bilingual Discourse and Cross-Cultural Fertilisation: Sanskrti and Tamil in Medieval India, ed. Whitney Cox and Vincenzo Vergiani,  Pondichery, Institut Francais De Pondichery Ecole Francaise D’extreme-Orient, 2013 Preface. Whtney Cox and Vincenzo Vergiani. Pp.vii-x …It is equally the case, however, that modern…

  • Vilification and Exaggeration

    Either exaggerated vilification of India or exaggerated praise I had never heard of Katherine Mayo or of her book Mother India before coming across Mahatma Gandhi’s response to it. That itself made me reflect on how works written with strong prejudices can, over time, lose the influence they once possessed. Gandhi’s response, however, is more…