Art of Living (AOL) has attained global acclaim for the kind of knowledge it spreads among people all over the world. Its chief Ravishankar Guruji popularly known as Sri Sri Ravi Shankar has decided to take AOL to the last man in the society. DNA posed a few questions to him. Excerpts from the interaction:

COMMERCIAL BREAK
SCROLL TO CONTINUE READING

Does AOL considers fighting corruption through sessions on virtuous living?Corruption is a disease. I have experienced through the ways and methods of AOL that it is possible to cleanse it totally. Usually, politicians and bureaucrats spread this disease. By virtuous living, it is possible to root out the thought of corruption from the psyche of a person.

There are politicians and bureaucrats among your disciples. Do you think they have pledged to lead a clean life?My friends in the movement of AOL, be it politicians or bureaucrats, are not corrupt by nature. If they were not, they would not have believed in AOL.

There is a general perception that these kinds of movements work only with the elite and educated…That is a wrong perception; we have worked in 118 villages all over the country and in two particular cases, we have found our movement has influenced the public life in rural areas. In Jharkhand, several gram panchayats have resolved in their meetings to field the Yuvacharya, the young leaders of AOL, for contesting panchayat elections, taking into consideration their clean way of life. For the urban poor, we adopted 188 slums in Bangalore out of a total of 400. In many places, we have achieved total social harmony and empowerment of youth and women. My wish is to adopt all the 400 slums in Bangalore.

There are still many social dogmas and evil practices in the state. Do you have a solution?About Madae Snana, there is nothing written in our ancient scriptures. It could have been a practice accidentally or inadvertently started by somebody. It could be a revolution of kinds against extreme socio-religious customs. As regards to honour killing, witchcraft and black magic, they are all social evils, deserved to be banished totally, either with the iron hand of law or by a large social movement.