Hyderabad: Call for Vyasa Pournami celebrations in fishermen colonies

Hyderabad: Chilkur Balaji Temple head priest CS Rangarajan has called for a grand celebrations of Vyasa Pournami or Guru Pournami on July 13 organised by fishermen's community in two Telugu States.

The fishermen community rightfully claims that they are the descendants of Satyavathi, the mother of Sage Veda Vyas and the great grandmother of Pandavas and Kauravas. According to the epic, Satyavathi, the attractive daughter of a fisherman, had her son Veda Vyas from a Sage Parasara Maharshi.

Later, when King Shantanu desired to marry Satyavathi, her father agreed on condition that their children should inherit the throne of Hastinapur. Accordingly, after his death of King Shantanu, Satyavathi ruled Hastinapur along with her sons Chitrangada and Vichitravirya.

Rangarajan said, to bring back the ancient connections of different disenchanted communities into our fold, these steps were being taken. To identity of fishermen clan with the great sage Veda Vyas who belonged to the same clan, a call had been given by the Chilkur Balaji Temple to educate and revive the grand celebrations of Vyasa Jayanthi on July 13. Apart from Matsyakara Samkshema Samithi, different organisations from the AP and Telangana have chalked out programmes on July 13 in a grand scale to celebrate Guru Pournami.

In 2018 Chilkur Balaji Temple had conceptualised the Munivahana Utsavam to show that the Sanatana Dharma does not discriminate among elevated and downtrodden strata in society. It was nearly 2,700 years ago that Tiruppanalwar, born in a 'lower caste', was carried from the banks of the river Cauvery into the Srirangam Ranganatha Swamy Temple by a priest, which was hailed then as 'Munivahana Utsavam'. In the present circumstances, when discrimination in the name of caste and class had become rampant, the same scene was enacted in 2018 at Hyderabad, where CS Rangarajan, the temple priest, carried a dalit devotee, Aditya Parasri, into the Ranganatha Swamy temple in Jiyaguda amid fanfare.

"The idea is to show that Sanatana Dharma treated everyone as equal before god and the so-called discrimination crept into the system in the recent times," said Rangarajan.