Thread by @TheAtulMishra

The Red Swastika on the bonnet gleamed proudly.

He was a proud owner of a cute hatchback. He had spent Rs. 8 Lakh for the top variant of the car and another 40K more to give it the accessories it deserved.

“Are Pandit Ji, aap 51 Rs hi le lo na”, he said again.

The ageing Panditji, with a big Vaishnav Teeka on his forehead finished pouring the “jal” near the car from his Tamra-Patra. The process of pleasing the Isht, Gram and Kul Devta was complete.

“Yajman, nayi nayi gaadi khareedi hai, Brahman ko bhi prasann kar do”, he replied.

The man smiled proudly, he was a proud Hindu. He couldn’t help but wonder how beautiful Hinduism is.

“We don’t even discriminate between living and non living things. And every machine is Vishwakarma for us. “, he thought

I’ll use this line on Twitter, he muttered to himself.

“Are Pandit ji, showroom waalo ne to ek paisa bhi nahi chhoda, ab aap bhi loot lo”, He said.

“Theek hai yajman, jaisa uchit lage”, Panditji said. The man gave him 51 Rs which he tucked in his Dhoti.

The man sped away in his shiny new hatchback. He was a Hindu but not a fool.

This is the story of every new car owner and every pandit in the neighbourhood temple. We don’t negotiate inside malls and big showrooms but haggling Pandits for petty amounts of money is okay.
As long as your new car flaunts a swastika, you can call yourself a proud Hindu.

Being a Pandit is not a profession, it doesn’t have a monthly salary, post retirement benefits or medical insurances. It’s more like a family heirloom passed on from generation to generation. But every year more Pandits are leaving this pious work to go do something more “real”.

And the reason is that we don’t stop haggling. The moment you see a Pandit, you think that he is going to pester you for money. Sorry but that’s anti-Sanatan.

Ramayan talks about the many Yagyas of Raja Dashrath and later Shri Ram and talks about the riches bestowed on Brahmins.

In Mahabharata, Raja Yudhisthira simply opens his treasury for all the Brahmins conducting his Rajasooya Yagya.

Unfortunately, none of it can be seen today. Denying a Pandit of a proper Dakshina amounts to belittling Devtas.

How many of us have done Bhu-Dan, Go-Dan, Suvarn-Daan or at the very least Anna-Daan to Pandits? Very few, I am sure.

Even Proud internet Hindus sometimes behave worse than Periyarites. Anti-Brahmanism is almost always followed by anti-Hinduism jibes.

There is a reason why first the Islamists, then the British and later the communists chose to attack Brahmins. Destroy the custodians of knowledge and a whole civilisation will surrender.

And they did succeed to an extent. Brahmin bashing is cool, even for Hindus.

But if we can’t find Pandits for our children’s Marriages, 20-25 years from now, we will have no one but ourselves to blame.