Statue of Equality : a Complete detail of events happened today

Today started with devotees performing aradhana of Lord Lakshmi Narasimha at around 9:30 AM. At around 10:30 AM, the Dharmacharya Sadassu (Confluence of Saints from all sects / ideologies) started.

Blessed is the Pravachana mandapam today to receive the holiest of saints in saffron from all over India. Every holy sadhu was respectfully welcomed with a Poorna Kumbham by the scholars as if to depict the completeness of their Jnana, knowledge.

HH Chinna Jeeyar Swamiji inaugurated this confluence of saints by a Vedic prayer. He set the context for this 2-day event and explained the process that will be followed for this sadassu. All saints who graced this occasion were introduced by Swamiji and a couple of coordinators.

After introductions and setting the context, the eminent group of saints and their followers moved on to partake the prasadam in Thadiya:ra:dhana mandapam. After the lunch break, this group will be divided into four break-away groups to brainstorm on the topics given, so that each saint gets enough opportunity to put together their thoughts and recommendations in detail. The groups were divided on the basis of language in which Sadhus are most comfortable – Two of the breakaway groups are formed of saints who are from northern parts of India and are fluent in Hindi. One group of Telugu and Kannada speaking saints and another group of Tamil and Malayalam-speaking saints will move to the conference venue for group discussions in JIMS Homeo college adjacent to the ashram. In the evening at around 5:30 PM, their recommendations will be presented again to the public in Pravachana Mandapam (main stage) by respective group leads. Among the four topics given to these groups, first two topics will be discussed in detail today and the other two topics will be discussed and summarised tomorrow (9th February).

The goal is to present the recommendations to the rulers of country so that they can be implemented. Based on this discussion, the final proposal will be submitted to Hon. Home Minister Amit Shah who will be gracing the Sri Ramanuja Sahasrabdi Samaroham.

The four topics on which these groups will be debating are as follows:

1. Relevance of Sri Ramanauja's ideology of Equality in present-day context

2. "Worship our own, Respect all" - A practical approach. (How can this be implemented in today's society)

3. Relevance of native system of farming for a healthy society (How do we revive vedic-based agriculture so that our future generations can eat healthy and non-toxic food)

4. Need of value based family system in promoting patriotism and holistic development (How can we preserve the joint-family system by which future generations can imbibe our culture from elders and be grounded to our roots).

Subsequently we had some cultural events. Few of them are as follows:

• Soumithri sisters from Bhadrachalam performed a nice musical performance.

Discourses from eminent persons included:

• Sriman V S R Murthy garu, an eminent educationalist and volunteer of Sri Sathya Sai Seva organization spoke about the Bhakthi movement.

• Untold stories

• Thadiyaradhana

o Today, for bala bhogam (breakfast), 22,000 people were served Coconut rice, Tamarind chutney and Boondi (sweet).

o Raja bhogam (Lunch) was served for around 55,000 people upto 3 PM today. There was rice along with Tomato dal, Brinjal curry, Potato curry, Tomato rice, sambar, chutney, Badusha for sweet, and butter milk.

o During the Aradhana exercise of today morning, HH Ashtakshari Sampath Kumara Ramanuja Jeeyar Swamiji explained that this act of partaking prasadam, which is first offered to Lord, is called as 'anu-ya:gam'. Sage Narada had asked Lord Srimannarayana once thus – "Swami! The devotees offer you food in the process of Aradhana. But we see that none of it is consumed by You. How do we reconcile to this fact?" Lord then explained to him – "Narada! In My archa:vatha:ra, I consume food just by the eye-sight. So the moment the food is shown to vigraha, it is consumed by Me by sight". Then Narada asked another question – "O God! This looks unfair. The devotees take so much trouble to make tasty food in so many varieties, for offering to You. They would like You to enjoy the taste and smell of food too. How is that done by You?". God then explained – "Narada! I enjoy the taste and smell when my devotees partake the prasa:dam". Thus, the prasa:dam we take should always be consumed keeping in mind that it is God in the form of antharya:mi within us, that we are offering to. That ensures that we take food that is fit for God's consumption.