At that moment, monotheism—the idea of one god—was on the rise. When Sanaka arrived in Germany as the Indian delegate, the authorities and member countries had put up new restrictions for India to enter.

Sanaka ground his teeth whenever he remembered how they had first laughed at his explanation of the Vedic ways and then mocked the bonds between the sacred texts and religious life. They asked for ‘scientific evidence’, saying that the methodology used by India wasn’t appropriate. Sanaka tried to show religious enlightenment as evidence of the knowledge, but the other delegates only saw enlightenment as a step backwards, not as an achievement.

The Indian delegate was laughed out of the setting, and he returned to Vanyasa humiliated. He sought counsel from his fellow yogis, but none of them wanted to take action against the non-believers.

‘That’s not what our faith directs us to do,’ Aranyani had said upon Sanaka’s return. ‘Ours is the oldest religion for a reason. Its primary source of power is peace, and the ultimate aim is to understand yourself.’

‘I know, but what they said is blasphemous, devi! How can you not be offended?’ Sanaka said. ‘They had an active agenda. How can you sit back when others besmirch the name of our Fathers?’

‘Our Fathers don’t need us to protect them,’ Aranyani said. ‘What they’ve done, what they stand for, cannot be undone by the mere words of a few men. True knowledge outlasts all time and hatred. Those in the West are only beginning to understand what our forefathers knew aeons ago. Forgive them, for they have much to learn.’

‘So . . . we do nothing until all our gods are replaced, all our temples razed, all our yogis forgotten? Until there are no more Hindus left?’ Sanaka asked.

‘What do you want to do, Sanaka?’ Aranyani asked.

‘The fruit of the Kalpavriksha is for all agents of Indra to benefit from. We cannot be selfish. Atmayog should be weaponized by the plain dwellers to further the cause of Hinduism. India must be allowed to become once again a source of knowledge and power for both the subcontinent and the world . . . as it once used to be.’

‘As noble as your plans may sound, they require the imposition of our faith upon others. They require bloodshed and manipulation. And that is what is so wrong, that is what makes it so antithetical to our belief system. Father would never approve of it. You cannot forget. All faiths must live in unison. In fact, how we treat others determines how our faith is viewed. Never forget that, brother Sanaka.’

It wasn’t so much her words as the fear of Indra that had stopped Sanaka from taking any radical action back then. But as he had predicted, one by one, many foreign faiths gradually found their homes in India. A couple of centuries after he had spoken, in the 1800s, the country’s colonization at the hands of the British further reduced the status of its sacred texts, until they devolved into myths and mere objects of study. According to him, the West had successfully caged the ‘golden bird’ by devaluing its scholarly work and focusing on the shortcomings of the subcontinent.