Collated by Tusar Nath Mohapatra
https://evergreenessays.blogspot.com/2026/07/subliminal-secrets-in-savitri.html
I am seeing heated debates about the recent Christopher Nolan film “The Odyssey”, particularly around casting choices. I’m not planning to watch it, but the controversy highlights a deeper confusion worth addressing.
Myth vs. Fiction : A Crucial Distinction
A myth, in the academic sense, is not merely a story. It is a body of traditional, sacred narratives passed down through generations within a civilization. These stories are set in a distant, often primordial past. They explain the origins of the world, its gods, and its heroes, and its ancestors, and they provide meaning, identity, and cohesion to the people who inherit them.
Fiction, by contrast, is a story that is consciously invented by one or more authors and is explicitly presented as such. The audience knows (or is expected to know) it sprang from imagination, not inherited tradition.
The fact that a myth cannot be verified by the historian’s toolkit (contemporary written sources, multiple independent attestations, archaeological corroboration) does not make it “false”. The only thing that matters for myth is its culturally significant role it plays in a civilisation - that the people of that civilization who carry it, do treat it as true and sacred. It shapes their worldview, ethics, binds them tight as a single people and creates a sense of self. In this framework, the Ramayana and Homer’s Odyssey are myths, not fiction.
Why Casting Matters
Because myths are sacred narratives tied to a specific civilizational heritage, the identity of those who embody them on screen is not irrelevant. Arguments that “it’s just fiction, so anyone can play anyone” miss the point entirely. The Odyssey is not a Marvel screenplay invented last year. It is a foundational story of ancient Greek civilization ; its heroes, values, and cosmology. The same principle applies elsewhere. The Ramayana is not interchangeable fan-fiction; it is a sacred narrative of Indian civilization. Most Indians would rightly object to casting outsiders who do not share that cultural or civilizational context while enacting their iconic roles, especially if it involves deliberate disregard for the story’s sacred ethos. Cultural authenticity in mythic retellings is not bigotry; it is respect for the story’s function.
Even if one is a committed atheist who rejects anything regarding the sacred, the distinction between myth and fiction still remains analytically essential. Myths and fictions operate differently in their transmission and social effect.
The Social Power of Shared Myths
Even Yuval Noah Harari @harari_yuval , who is a full blown atheist and believes myths to be a type of fiction, realises the special function they perform in his book “Sapiens”. He describes myths (which he often calls “shared fictions”) as the unique human technology that allows large-scale cooperation. Chimpanzee tribes fracture beyond a few dozen members. On the other hand, humans build larger tribes, cultures, nations, empires, and civilizations because they believe in common sacred narratives about their origins, gods, heroes, and values.
Secular societies have their own myths too. The tale of a 6-year old George Washington chopping down the cherry tree is not historically true. It was first narrated only by Parson Weems, one of Washington’s early biographers. Yet it endures in the American psyche because it performs a mythic function: it embodies the virtues (honesty, moral courage) the American project represents. Raw, verifiable historical facts alone cannot supply the emotional glue that binds a people.
Closing Thoughts
Even if we do not believe in myths, we got to recognize their special power it plays and respect its integrity. Treating ancient sacred stories as interchangeable with modern fiction, does a disservice both to art and to cultural understanding. A humanities education should sharpen our ability to see these distinctions, not blur them for the sake of casting trends or sco ring ideological points.
https://x.com/i/status/2079606360547991612
Brilliant! Balu explains in What Does it Mean to be an Indian how stories are an important pedagogical tool in forming Indian culture. In the West, stories generally entertain or inform. Our myths cannot be equated to histories in the Western sense.
hipkapi.com/2012/02/16/wha…
https://x.com/i/status/2079749080499343479
Yes, but in this sense the Odyssey (a pagan text from ancient greek culture) is NOT a sacred myth of modern western civilization.. to this civilization it is just one of several (contradictory) myths that the forward looking civ (or counter-civ, whatever) uses as needed.. we dont have to defend their sacredness on behalf of westoids, they themselves do not consider it that sacred :)
https://x.com/i/status/2079648371757998501
I get that and the epics for the West is not as foundational as they claim to be and is just a matter of kanging. But just saying the general principle in case they start doing this for other foundational epics like Ramayana or Shahnamah or Chinese epics and others
https://x.com/i/status/2079648870573961410
Sri Aurobindo wrote a poem Illion in which he has taken a creative liberty to shape up the Character of Achilles which may not tally with what Homer says but definitely he would not be unhappy after reading it. Any creative liberty if it enhances the original work is good.
https://x.com/i/status/2079615711006368179
Some compare Bharat Mata to Bhūdevī (or Prithvi Mata), but this comparison is inaccurate. Bhūdevī is a scripturally recognized cosmic deity representing the entire Earth, not a specific modern country. India is part of Bhūdevī, but Bhūdevī is not Bharat Mata.
A Modern Political Symbol
Where did Bharat Mata come from? She is a modern political symbol.
- Origins: She emerged during the 19th-century Bengal Renaissance through the wholesale imitation of the Westphalian model of territorial nationalism, with the Indian territory personified and deified as Bharat Mata.
- Adoption: The symbol was later adopted by political organisations like the RSS.
While this history explains her political importance, it does not give her religious or scriptural authority.
India deserves our love, gratitude, service, and protection as the cradle of Hindu civilisation. But love is not worship, patriotism is not religion, and a nation is not Goddess.
https://x.com/i/status/2079289741053448522
I did. Couldn't land at a cogent prescription.
Bharat Mata as a mascot has always represented an
Akhand Bharat, even in the iconography of Sri Aurobindo.
Bankim's #VandeMataram is the most graphic of it all.
Does the Encapsulation of PunyaBhoomi Bharat by a Devi, hurts? How?
https://x.com/i/status/2079392846881464452
Bharat Mata emerged as a political symbol in the 19th century. She is not a religious deity. I have explained this distinction clearly and cogently.
https://x.com/i/status/2079398314181828708
Mesopotamia was never the cradle of civilisation. India was.
I spent forty years in international shipping, not academia. When I began researching the history of maritime trade, I had no orthodoxy to defend. I followed the evidence, and it kept arriving in the same place: the Indian subcontinent.
Nineteenth century archaeologists dug in Mesopotamia because the climate preserved artefacts, the biblical sources pointed them there, and the Ottomans allowed the excavations. That is the entire basis for the myth of Mesopotamia as "the cradle of civilisation."
Nobody applied the same rigour to India. Mohenjo-daro was not discovered until 1922. By then the narrative had already hardened.
What was actually there was the largest civilisation of the ancient world. Three hundred cities. Fifty thousand people in each, by 2600 BC. Two thirds of them stood on the banks of the Sarasvati, the central and greatest of the seven rivers described in the Rig Veda, flowing down from the Himalayas before the river vanished entirely by 1900 BC. The Vedic kings claimed territory stretching "sea to sea," from Afghanistan to Maharashtra, some 1.5 million square miles, against Egypt's 13,000. A dock at Lothal built to handle thirty ships of sixty tons, unmatched in Europe for four thousand years. When it was first excavated, it was recorded as a bathing pool.
When the scale became impossible to dismiss, the theory was not corrected. It was replaced with a story of pale-skinned nomads from the steppe who supposedly arrived around 1500 BC and brought civilisation with them. There is no evidence. The chronology doesn't work. The Vedas describe no invasion.
In 2019 a Harvard-led genetic study revived the claim, and the press reported it as confirmation. It was not. The same study found the builders of these cities were indigenous. The Sarasvati river that the Rig Veda described had already dried up before these newcomers arrived. What the study also found is that a small group of men, arriving after the Sarasvati had already dried up, interbred with the existing population and left a genetic signature. That is all.
So, where they chose to dig was mostly an accident of climate and access. The Aryan invasion theory was constructed because an Indian civilisation that owed nothing to Caucasians was a fact the late nineteenth century could not accommodate. Link to full Substack essay with sources in the comments below.
https://x.com/i/status/2079525383330799714
A significant passage in Frits Staal's book, where he points out, that many, if not most, of the teachers listed in the Upanishads have non Indo-European names.
https://x.com/i/status/2079758674093080645
Vedic Symbolism
The Veda uses many images as symbols. What are these?
1) Natural elements: such as water, fire, sky, earth, etc signify something else. For example, water is consciousness, being, etc
2) Positions such as Purohitam, Ritvik, hota etc. For example, the hota can also be a warrior
3) Actions such as offering ghee, samidha etc
But at the centre is the Yajna. It is the key symbol of the Veda.
Then there are certain seed sounds that are their own meanings and symbols. In this way the Veda unites sight, sound and meaning into a vast compilation of hidden significances
https://x.com/i/status/2079735588614209718
Vedic Dictum for Gen Z
Inspiration eats ideation for lunch
Or
Indra’s Vajra rocks the joint
Think I should go to sleep now. This is what happens to your brain when it needs the mitochondria recharged
But seriously, the higher consciousness swooping down into the routine and the dull is the secret, is it not?
All I am doing is trying to present a Vedic Truth in modern style that my son might relate to when he is done choosing tattoos and rings for the tongue for likes on insta
Would love to hear from you
https://x.com/i/status/2079448850612343086
Reclaiming the Cosmopolitan Spirit in India by Titikhya Panigrahi countercurrents.org/2026/07/reclai…
The article argues that India’s current wave of student protests and struggles by marginalised communities reflects the revival of a cosmopolitan ethic rooted in shared humanity. Drawing on Robert Fine’s conception of cosmopolitanism and B.R. Ambedkar’s call to “Educate, Agitate and Organise,” it examines how solidarity across communities challenges social indifference and normalised injustice. From students and tribal communities to families supporting protesters, the piece highlights acts of collective responsibility that transcend individual interests. It contends that education, democratic participation, and empathy remain essential to protecting rights and building a society where every individual’s dignity and future matter.
https://x.com/i/status/2079747546222891283
JP Mahapatra
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… Collectively, these international instruments demonstrate that the protection of
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