1. Narak Chaturdashi or Narak Chaudas used to be the most memorable day of the Diwali season. Yes, even more exciting than Diwali. The run up to the great day was even more enjoyable than the great festival itself. This was the day some even dreaded a lot.

#NarakChaturdashi
2. For very early in the morning, before sunrise, the elders in the household would wake up everyone for the sake of taking a coldbath before the Sun would come up. Everyone competed to bathe first even before sunrise.
3. For the last one to take bathe was called ‘Lanka ka Gadha’, the donkey of Lanka. It was supposed to be an activity which would drive away ‘alasya’ or laziness from our lives, both mentally and physically.
4. Children especially dreaded the day but I scarcely remember a Diwali when we failed to complete this ritual. At least once in a year we all experienced what it meant to wake up in brahma muhurta and lead the day as does one who is given to sadhana.
5. It was an important experience. Even the late risers of any class or community had the experience of a practising Brahmin at least once every year. We knew the feeling, the sheer confidence, satisfaction and good sense that a simple cold bath in the morning instilled in us.
6. Festivals in this way gave everyone of us a window into a lifestyle which wasn’t necessarily ours. Even if forcibly, we were confronted with a different way of life, giving us a strange experience which lasted for the rest of our lives, as if giving us an option.
7. The rituals which plunged us into activities which we wouldn’t normally engage in enriched our lives, made it less monotonous, more full of different and varying experiences.
8. Then came freedom, prosperity & choice. Parents stopped ‘enforcing religion’ on kids. Kids retreated into private rooms, TV & internet. Every day became same as other, filled with entertainment & more entertainment. As the morning generation receded, night crawlers came out.
9. Narak Chaudas was a sign of morning culture. Kali & Krishna is said to have killed Narakasura this day. May the collective alasya of the Hindu society is killed on this day and we rebuild all Hindu temples that we ever lost. नरक चतुर्दशी की आप सभी को बहुत बहुत शुभकामनायें|

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More from @PankajSaxena84

3 Nov
1. What does Gurugram Hindu victory mean? - Roll back of Public Iz!@m and Private Hinduism Paradigm
In a very important victory for Hindus, they have now won the Gurugram battle. Thread.
2. They were beaten up, threatened personally and by the law for doing what they were doing: to not let the RoP spread and spill on to the roads and then into their homes. And they persisted in their demands.
3. They didn't just put up a great resistance they didn't let up. And the courts have now rolled back all 108 public nam@z sites except the few waqf board ones. This is a very important victory for a very important reason.
Read 12 tweets
2 Nov
1. Tradition is more easily destroyed than understood. While buying gold & silver on #Dhanteras might not have been the original tradition, it is so for a while now and it has resulted in Indian women individually possessing a sizable amount of gold reserves in the world.
2. This tradition alone has helped India to weather global economic recessions better than other cultures and nations. Even a poor woman with barely a roof over her head in India will often fish out some ornament for an emergency.
3. But tradition is a fragile thing. The secular progressives have been campaigning that women should buy iron instead of gold on Dhanteras. This is not the place to go into the sheer ridiculousness of the suggestion, but such campaigns do have an effect.
Read 5 tweets
2 Nov
1. On Dhanteras - Why Should we Flamboyantly celebrate Hindu Festivals?

It is of existential importance to Hindus that we flamboyantly celebrate our festivals. Let us see why on this #Dhanteras of 2021.
2. What remains of one’s social life when one shifts to a great city where he does not know anyone? The weekend trip to the mall, monotonously uniform fare of shopping for grocery at supermarket, for clothes in the middle stories, then dinner in the food court.
3. With no family to visit, to function to attend to, no festival to celebrate – all the markers that contribute towards culture – they are under threat of becoming uncultured. Without having any चरित्र that makes them part of a culture and civilization they become चरित्रहीन.
Read 10 tweets
31 Oct
1. I am afraid this is a misinterpretation of Panchayatana Puja on the lines of 'intra-pagan multi-culturalism'. The Temple is not a place for virtue-signaling.
2. This vision is also born out of a misunderstanding of Panchayatana Puja. The author should read more of the concerned Agamas. The Panchayatana worship incorporates the major Hindu sects which are already prevalent and all of which are relevant to the devotees of the region.
3. With no Native Americans in India it would be utterly meaningless to build temples to their gods here. The temple is not a museum where you display similar items along with what is found locally.
Read 11 tweets
12 Sep
1. Hindutva or Hindu Dharma?

Twitteracharyas with faux-shastriya concerns obsessing over the word 'Hindutva' need to hold their pseudo-traditional horses a little bit. Not everything new is bad.
2. Hindutva is a very useful word in contemporary world which reinforces the need for Hindu society to be aggressive. Using it doesn't mean one is just being political. Politics is an integral part of life, whether you hate it or love it.
3. I never tire saying that politics follows society and so we shall try to awaken Hindu society first. That doesn't mean we shall completely ignore politics. Those who are up to it shall of course positively engage with it, all the while refraining from depending on it too much.
Read 6 tweets
16 Aug
1. The Carrot and the Stick in the Afghan Game

We might be tempted to feel sympathy for the Afghans who are fleeing the Taliban, but we should not be. For it is all an elaborate game even if not all the participants are quite aware of it.
2. Most Izl@mic countries alternate between an absolute Iz!@mic theocracy like the Taliban rule and a quasi-Iz!@mic rule like the rule by the 'secular government' of Afghanistan which was just ousted.

#Taliban
3. The Iz!@mic theocracy does what it does: implement Shariat ruthlessly. At first it just generates overseas sympathy and the useful idiots in the welfare states and millennial ruled countries start feeling for the ‘victims of repressive regimes’ in countries like Afghanistan.
Read 20 tweets

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