Sanatan Sanstha uses several front organizations like Hindu Janajagruti Samaj (HJS) and Spiritual Science Research Fondation (SSRF). These organizations cannot be called offshoots of the original sanstha as their ideology is the same and they operate from the same premises. It is difficult for the common person to understand the reason for having such parallel organizations. Both these offshoots have differences created so that common man thinks that they are independent ones. It is a very cunning move followed by many organizations, spiritual or otherwise. People look at endorsement and if an organization is endorsed by another one, its value increases in our mind. Do we ever check if both are related?
Hindu Janajagruti Samiti
Sanatan Sanstha focuses its efforts on spiritual development while Hindu Janajagruti Samiti focuses on raising Hindu issues. They have even defined Hindu to mean the removal of darkness. They stress that the samiti and Sanatan are not connected. On one of their webpages devoted to the establishment of Hindu Rashtra, they state
“That the Hindu Nation will be established is an undisputed fact as per the times, and organisations like Sanatan Sanstha are taking care of the fight at the spiritual level essential for achieving this goal.”
HJS focuses on topics not covered by the sanstha. They are more into raising issues concerning Hindus and the persecution of Hindus the world over. They have different Facebook and Twitter accounts. They are mainly associated with five activities
- Dharma shiksha – education on Dharma
- Awakening of Dharma
- Dharma Rakshan – protection of Dharma
- Protection of the Nation
- Hindu unification
Routinely Sanatan Sanstha and Hindu Janajagruti Samiti support each other’s activities as if they are independent institutions. They even have different organization structures. Anyone connected with either of them know that they are one and the same.
Spiritual Science Research Foundation
Sanatan Sanstha and Hindu Janajagruti Samiti are the public faces while Spiritual Research Foundation operates behind the scenes. SSRF provides the scientific spin to the activities of Sanatan Sanstha. They aim to “bridge the gap between the known and the unknown”. They operate behind the scenes and acknowledge that Dr Jayant Athavale is the founder member. As most of us don’t read the fine print, we assume that the research foundation and the sanstha are different entities.
SSRF does not provide any detailed scientific data to support their findings. The research is always cloaked in misleading terms. Take for example this quote from one article dealing with spiritual healing
“Spiritual research has shown us that up to 80% of the problems in a person’s life can have their root in the spiritual dimension.”
There is no explanation as to how they reached the figure of 80%.
They carry out spiritual research on many things like
- Afterlife
- Death and Dying
- Ghosts
among other things.
Many of the articles on the Sanatan Sanstha website aim to give the scientific reasoning behind Hindu traditions.
They also reason that scientific and spiritual research cannot be compared to each other as the principles of scientific research cannot be applied to spiritual research.
The different affiliated organizations seem to provide Sanatan Sanstha a cloak of respectability as they endorse each other. All the three organizations are same.
This is a guest blog, I, Amruta Acharya, have not written it. The author does not want to share his name and I respect his need for confidentiality.
No comments:
Post a Comment