Mysuru: The 5th edition of the Mysuru Literature Festival’s second virtual session entered the second week with a thought-provoking discussion on Spirituality, Ancient Indian Knowledge, Quantum Physics and Vedanta by the well-known author Ashwin Sanghi with writer Anuja Chandramouli.

The Curator and Director of Mysuru Literature Festival Shubha Sanjay Urs introduced the guest speakers while Trustee Thankam Panakal welcomed the authors and viewers.

Anuja began by declaring that she is a fan-girl of Ashwin’s books and called him a brilliant and charming person. In turn Ashwin called Anuja as a combination of sugar and butter, who can grill him to bring out good answers.

The first question was about ‘Spirituality and Science’, both being considered as two opposing factors in today’s India and name calling of those who incline towards Spirituality as “sanghis’ or right-wing people and those who cheer Science as liberals.

Ashwin declared that India has always been a land which accommodated plurality. The word liberal comes from the word ‘liberalis’ which means to be free; so when there is freedom then there will be varied points of view.

He opined that in post-independent India some people became the guardians of history for upholding their own political objectives. Like one wears a 3D glass to view a movie so that the points of view merge, in the same way we must allow different ideas to merge and celebrate plurality of thoughts, he said.

“Yesterday’s politics is today’s history and today’s politics will become tomorrow’s history,” he simplified.

To answer a question from Anuja about the ancient Indian concept of Brahman and how he relates it to Quantum Physics,

Ashwin quoted Heisenberg and Bohr and reiterated that the concept of Quantum Physics which deals with any particle form changing into wave form, had been thought about in the Upanishads when soul and physical body could actually be just different forms of the same “one.”

Scientists try to silence their intuitive mind and only work with their rational mind and the spiritual people silence their rational mind and work only with their intuitive mind, he said with a bit of regret because according to him, both should be working together.

For a question regarding the concept of Ardhanareeshwara, Ashwin said that ancient India defines entities as “Neti Neti Neti”; that which is not. Like Shiva is what is not Shakti, Darkness is what is not Light and Death is what is not Life but the two entities are not the opposites.

He insisted that it is the responsibility of the generation of young Indians to be balanced and not completely discard all our ancient wisdom. For example, we have the concepts of shoonyata, cataract surgery etc.  Not having a balanced approach could end up in ‘ideological extremism,’ he said.

When Anuja asked him about the reason for the obsession of ancient seekers to achieve immortality and also to acquire endless gold through alchemy, she also laughingly added the modern-day greed for chocolates and fried food. Ashwin went along with her mood to mention his whiskey greed!

On a serious note, he gave examples of terracotta soldiers of China and Egyptian pyramids to show that all humans in ancient times were seeking immortality.

Asked about the challenges in writing, he said that he writes commercial fiction and hence it is a challenge to keep the denser ideas within the commercial limits and to write stories which can be visualised easily.

He spoke about twitter and other social media where ideas are thrown about in short versions and that we don’t pay attention to nuances. We need to slow down and listen to nuances to understand fellow humans, he felt.

Being a very articulate speaker and a person of varied views Ashwin spoke about a gamut of subjects like veganism, climate change, cruelty to animals, tantric way of worshipping and the hypocrisy of economic might.

Finally, he said that the best to prescribe is not to prescribe anything at all.

He summarised his books as stories which educated, entertained and enlightened.

Mysuru Literature Festival     

Virtual session

Date: October 24

Time: 7 pm

Spy series

Panellist: Adrian Levy

Adrian Levy is an esteemed journalist, a writer of non-fiction books and a documentary film-maker. He specialises in the long form of investigative work. Currently working for ‘The Guardian’ he has also been featured in ‘The Observer’ and the ‘Sunday Times.’ ‘The Meadow’ and ‘The Seize’ are some of his books, the latter is based around the 2008 attacks in Mumbai.  He has produced documentaries which have been broadcast by the different BBC channels. In his illustrious career as a respected journalist and a writer, Adrian Levy has been showered with several prestigious awards, like The British Journalist Award at the One World Media Awards, British Journalist of the year in 2004 and the Amnesty Media Awards Best Documentary for the film “Kashmir’s Torture Trail.”

Moderator: Ajay Shukla

Ajai Shukla is a familiar face for all Television viewers of India. He is a retired Colonel of the Indian Army who became a journalist and he regularly writes articles on and takes part in discussions about defence policy, defence economy and strategic affairs.

A graduate from National Defence Academy – Khadakwasla, he trained at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. He was part of the UN Peacekeeping force in Mozambique for a year. He has written chapters in three anthologies of essays on defence and strategic issues. He is currently writing a book on China’s intrusions into India and another on Arunachal Pradesh’s assimilation into India’s political mainstream.