Acharya Tulsi
Anuvrat is a movement to awaken public consciousness. It is a movement' that attempts to establish moral values, a movement to raise the standard of character. Anuvrat is a movement, which is not inspired by politics, nor it is related to religious beliefs. It does not insist on a particular way of worship nor does it abstain from any other way of worship. It is a criterion of righteousness for resolving to live a good life. It is an ideal of loftiness for the person who is desirous of living a lofty life.
The anuvrat movement grew stronger along with the independence of the country. The sound of anuvrat was heard by millions, thousands of people praised the idea of anuvrat. Hundreds of people adopted the path of anuvrat. Hundreds of workers accepted the challenge of fighting against the darkness of the age by holding aloft the lamp of anuvrat.
The journey of four decades was completed. In the fifth decade the country is again looking with hope at anuvrat The Indira Gandhi National Integration award made anuvrat the headline news. The responsibility of the active participants in the anuvrat movement increased all the more. It is also a coincidence that for the whole of this year, we have fixed one day in every month as the anuvrat day. It has been decided to observe the second day of the bright fortnight of every month as the Anuvrat Consciousness Day. This has been done to give a greater momentum to the anuvrat movement.
As a matter of fact, the annual anuvrat programme in the form of Anuvrat Awakening Week is being undertaken for the past several years. This programme, organised as a network programme was expected to yield quite concrete results. But that could not happen. If the reasons for this are examined, a series of explanations can be given. But it does not seem to be of any advantage. If we just sit back thinking about what did not happen, the roads to new possibilities of this work would be closed. If only once a year, there was at least a discussion about anuvrat in the name of Anuvrat Awakening Week. The monks and nuns found an opportunity to carry out a public programme. Is it a matter of small satisfaction that anuvrat at least provided a big forum to work.
The Anuvrat Awakening Day every month becomes instrumental in making the message of anuvrat explicit. The aim of organising this day is not merely to arrange lectures about anuvrat, Competent speakers are given an opportunity to speak and some people are made the followers of anuvrat by persuading them to fill the forms. Filling the form and taking the pledge to follow the path of anuvrat is a matter of physical detail. The basic thing is the anuvrat philosophy. The most important thing is to go deep into that philosophy and understand it. Accepting the path of anuvrat without understanding its philosophy is like constructing a building without foundation. What does anuvrat aim to do? What does it want to say and what does it want to offer? All these questions have to be understood and explained in the contest of character formation.
It can be asked whether the Anuvrat Awakening Day is a programme for one day in a month. What would be the benefit of a one day programme? I do not think in these terms. A whiff of air is sufficient to change the wave. I am firmly convinced that one day this message would grow louder in hundreds of places as the current of changed times through anuvrat. All directions would echo with its reverberations and the direction of man’s thinking would change.
