A cleansing ‘agent’ called Kalki

Polar vortex, El Nino, diplomatic scandals, former judges and famed editors under fire for sexual harassment, the brazenness of the Maharashtra government in shielding some of its own in the Adarsh scam, the victorious Aam Aadmi Party initiating a different kind of law enforcement and governance, Twitter turning into a dhobi ghat for washing private linen resulting in the shocking death of the vivacious spouse of an influential politico. These are some of the unusual things happening around us. Things we have never experienced before.

What should we believe? Who can we trust? These are questions we do not know the answers to. We are going through very uncertain times – be they natural or man-made cataclysms.

In my quest to ferret out a cultural connection for this incertitude, I was surprised to find out that all this was chronicled long ago, even before 16th century CE, in the Kalki Purana – a prophetic work in Sanskrit that details the life and times of Kalki, the tenth and final of the Dashavatara (the ten avatars) of the Hindu deity Lord Vishnu – to occur in the future, perhaps towards the end of Kali Yuga (the current period 2013 to 2030, or 2047 by some calculations). Kali Yuga and these years are corroborated by the Mayan Calendar!

The work primarily captures the onset and exponential increase of evil and sin on the earth during the Kali Yuga, or the Dark Age – the last of the four stages the world goes through as part of the cycle described in the Indian scriptures. (The other ages are Satya Yuga, Treta Yuga and Dvapara Yuga. Greek mythology also alludes to a cyclical transition of ages – from golden, to silver, to bronze, to the nadir of the iron age.)

Kalki is said to bring an end to the darkness of the Kali Yuga, destroying evil and sin, and beginning a new yuga (age) of sinlessness and peace known as the Satya Yuga.

If one reads the extracts reproduced below from the Kalki Purana on the reason why another avatar of Vishnu is needed, one can only marvel at the foresight of the seers of so many thousand years ago, for everything that is said in there brings out the Kali Yuga we are living in so clearly.

“There will be rulers reigning over the Earth who will think of themselves as modern and superior; they shall rule through leaders of nations, and these leaders shall be men of vulgar, corrupt disposition, having a violent temper, and ever addicted to falsehood and evil. They will seize upon the property of their subjects; (sic) they will display but little of spiritual conscience.”

“In all nations, wealth and spirituality will decrease day by day until the entire world will be corrupt, crooked and depraved. Then property alone will confer rank or high reputation; money will be the only object of devotion and dedication in people; the vicissitudes of physical sexual desire will be the only and fleeting bond of union between the sexes; women will be regarded as nothing but objects of sexual gratification; and falsehood will be the only means of success in litigation.”

“The natural Earth will be venerated only for its mineral treasures (such as oil); (sic) external clothing will be the only distinction of the level of evolution of human beings; dishonesty instead of genuine productive work will become the short-lived means of subsistence for people everywhere; weakness and irresponsibility will cause more and more people to depend on charity and the state wherever they can; immorality and personal corruption will be the new false religion; fine clothes and bodily physique will be the only human dignity; and only water in faraway holy places will be sacred, for the local water will be increasingly polluted. (sic) More and more people shall be exposed to increasing extremes of freezing cold or hot droughts and fires from chaotic wind, sun and rain.”

The ancient philosopher Nostradamus in his prophecies, religions like Christianity and Islam – all three have a mention of an avatar coming down on earth to put an end to the world’s evil. Even Sikhism mentions another guru who could be the Kalki counterpart. All of them roughly have the same period of the cleansing. All of them, including the Hindu scriptures, anthropomorphize the avatar. So the next Avatar in Hinduism is equivalent to and of the same nature as the Messiah in Judaism, Second Coming in Christianity and the Imam Mahdi in Islam. And the believers of all faiths fervently hope for and wait for this divine human form to descend on earth and purge it of all its evils.

Kalki translates to ‘Eternity’ or ‘Destroyer of Filth’. The Puranas foretell that he will be atop a white horse with a drawn blazing sword. His birth date is roughly in the months of April and May. The year of birth is a conundrum and has several theories. But it is believed the avatar has already been born. And indeed there are signs around us that portend it.

The name Kalki is actually a metaphor for eternity or time. Its origins may lie in the Sanskrit word ‘kalka’ which means foulness or filth. Hence, the name translates to the ‘destroyer of darkness and ignorance’.

Isn’t it time we connect the dots rationally and not let our minds take a leap of fantasy?

If there is a destroyer of ignorance that we all know today, it is the World Wide Web. And yes, the Internet has been responsible for starting revolutions as we know of in Egypt and the Occupy movements. Not only this, the World Wide Web and Twitter all are summer babies, born in May. Also, the black Kalki atop the white horse who draws a golden sword could be nothing but the convergence of the races (black, white and yellow/brown) to ride the world together to cleanse it. And perhaps 2014 represented by the horse in Chinese astrology extends the metaphor further and may just be the beginning of the end of Kali Yuga.

Now would you still argue that Kalki is a human form and not a metaphor? Is it not in our hands to enlighten ourselves, arm ourselves with the correct information and reach out to the world to start the cleansing? Current upheavals that disturb us today, are preordained. They are unsettling, yes, but can only pave the way to a peaceful Satya Yuga.

(The writer is founder and CEO of The Key Consumer Diagnostics Pvt Ltd, a Mumbai-based qualitative research company)