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Selling spiritualism at the WSF
Rahul Kumar
Spiritual and socio-religious organisations with their roots based in Hindu philosophy are promoting yoga, meditation, vegetarianism and an alternative economic model as a solution to the economic and environmental ills.
Diverse spiritual organisations have set up their stalls and besides the usual distribution of literature are selling vegetarian food, singing hymns and holding yoga and meditation sessions for WSF participants who have converged at the north Brazilian town from all over the world.
´´We prepare vegetarian samosas at the ISKCON (International Society for Krishna Consciousness) centre in Belem and bring these to the WSF every morning,´´ said Govinda Shakti Devi Dasi, a Brazilian national and an ISKCON devotee at their vegetarian stall. Her stall is also selling t-shirt and buttons with peace messages and her colleagues are doing street plays on the subject.
At an adjacent stall, members of the Vrinda Mission, a movement based in Sao Paulo, cook food at their stall. They call their stall ´´a restaurant´´ and spend almost the entire day cooking and serving various varieties of food, which include both Indian and Brazilian. Madhava Ananda Das, who joined the movement in Chile, is preparing kibes, a favourite Brazilian snack.
´´Our kibes are different because these are vegetarian. The original kibe is a meat-based food but this one is made of mandioco and corn,´´ says the young Das. The stall also serves a freshly-cooked lunch that has rice with vegetables made the Indian way.
Across the road is a stall that belongs to a group promoting vegetarianism. VEM is selling information materials in support of its campaign, preaching kindness to animals and focusing on environmental problems.
Bhakti Vedanta Mangala Swami is a Chilean national who manages the temple and the cultural centre of the Vrinda Mission at Sao Paulo. He is not not only promoting vegetarianism, he is also responsible for promoting Krishna consciousness. As a priest, his work begins right in the morning with the recitation of holy chants and dance, apart from addressing gatherings on spiritualism.
Mangala Swami says: ´´Our mission has taken up a number of projects in Brazil, which include teaching various kinds of yoga, bringing about a food revolution and also helping people tackle their social and psychological problems. We are presenting these projects at the WSF. We are showing a way out to the people that vegetarianism and the right spiritual path can resolve the planet´s ecological problems.´´
Also spreading another kind of spiritual philosophy is the Proutist Universal (PU) group, with its headquarters based in Kolkata in India. With its Brazilian headquarters based in Belohorizonte, the priests of this group are giving lectures, prescribing solutions to the economic crisis and teaching meditation to the activists and students. Dada Gyanananda, who joined the group in 1984 hails from Congo but has been in Brazil for ten years now. He has visited India many times for additions to his spiritual knowledge.
Gyanananda says: ´´We are providing people an insight into an alternative way of living and managing the society. Today we have a serious crisis which has been caused by capitalism. We cannot have corporations which are bigger than the state. Even the communist philosophy is not adequate. We, therefore, believe in harmony of the society through an economic system which is founded on a profound understanding of humanity. We believe in cooperatives.´´
Gyanananda´s colleague Acharya Ranendranandra Avadhuta is a chemical engineer from Malaysia. Avadhuta says: ´´We believe in establishing a new socio-economic system in which people form cooperatives and build for themselves a self-sufficient economic unit. We are currently networking with similar other spiritual organisations, environmental groups in the Amazonia as well as land-based movements.´´ He adds that the group has opened up schools as well as many centres all over Brazil that deal with art, culture, music and yoga.
To be able to better reach out to more people, the Vrinda Mission has started translating hymns, mantras and prayers into languages that in use in Latin America, Portuguese and Spanish. As Ananda Das says: ´´Now we are making our own songs in Portuguese also. We work a lot with artists as Sao Paulo is a culturally rich city. We have exhibitions on art, painting, photographs. Music and meditation combined with natural food and culinary programmes help us get in touch with the younger generation, particularly those who are looking for answers.´´
ISKCON devotee Govinda feels that the participants at the WSF have given them a good response. She says: ´´Every night we show films on vegetarianism. Last night we screened a movie on the Ganga river also. I think people are beginning to understand that eating meat is responsible for ecological devastation, though earlier people were not aware of the consequence of eating meat. Our samosas are so popular that we sell them by evening. I think we are winning people´s hearts through their stomach.´´
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 Historical challenge
The capitalist crisis and five presidents gathering in Belem, attest to the big challenge before this Forum: become an effective global force for change, says TerraViva editor Alejandro Kirk. |
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 Story of An Indian Lost in Brazil
Journalist Rahul Kumar travelled all the way from India to find out that he looks local in the Amazonian region, where heat and mangoes resemble home. |
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