Dadi Prakashmani Scholarship Runner up

Personal Statement

Muskaan Kapoor

To satisfy my passion for writing and be a meaningful participant in social change I chose a career in journalism. However, working with a leading Indian newspaper for the past several years now, I have come to realize that the moral corruption eating into our social pillars, including the media, and the inability of humanitarian works to alter inner human condition is rendering all efforts futile. The only real service unto humanity at this time can be the revival of human conscience.p>

The experience of staying away from home for years has made me value spirituality much more. My parents came into knowledge when I was still in school and I have reaped the benefit from my connection with Baba and the spiritual family ever since. I have seen Rajyoga transform all the three members of my family, including my brother who works as a scientist in a defence organisation, into extremely resourceful human beings and have personally experienced God’s support and direction in times of emergencies.p>

I re-chose this path myself because Godly knowledge imparts meaning to my life when everything around is becoming hollow. The mental churnings while writing for Purity magazine have strengthened my spiritual experience but I am hungry to contribute much more to service. The application to the Prakashmani scholarship is my attempt to figure out a place from where I am expected to deliver in His greater plan.p>

Dadi Prakashmani – The Jewel of Love and Light

At Shantivan, Mount Abu, countless souls continue to draw sustenance from the memorial of Dadi Prakashmani, who is remembered as a heart comforter, a healing mother by most, and yet the truth is that the simple lady clad in white steered the world into an unparallel spiritual revolution sweeping continents, countries and islands.p>

When the corporeal founder of the Brahma Kumaris, Brahma Baba, left his mortal coil in 1969, he handed over the baton to Dadi. At that time, the organisation was still in its nascent stage. From there, Dadi nurtured the spiritual family with her personal care and together took it forward on the road to massive expansion under the guidance of the Almighty. Motivated to spread God’s message and reach His inheritance to all His children wherever they may be, Dadi made BK spiritual centres available to masses beyond nationality, religion, race, colour and gender. She included people from all walks of life and started wing-based services. As the network thickened abroad, services also made their way to the remotest corners of India. Under her guidance, women who dedicated their lives to serve humankind trained to become strong soldiers of the spiritual army that survived against odds anywhere, shielded by their principles and God’s love.p>

Whenever she met any of us, Dadi inquired about our wellbeing with such personal care that we felt we belonged to her. Such an experience was common to many and a meeting with her was sure to last a lifetime. She was thorough with the names of most surrendered sisters and considering that the spiritual family had grown by leaps and bounds and that Dadi met innumerable souls all through the day, a personal connection spoke of her large accommodating heart. A leadership with such inclusiveness is most missed in the world today where neglect and isolation is turning minority groups into rebel forces. So deep are the scars of regional and social isolation that years of special reservation and economic benefits for backward classes are unable to unify the social fabric.p>

While she remembered people, Dadi forgot their deeds. Recounting their experiences, many people explicitly remember how Dadi would alert the ‘wrongdoer’ and the very next moment become warm with him/her. She could never hold onto anyone’s negativity and would simply forget it. Such clarity and simplicity of character shone with extraordinary brilliance amid a world saturated with opinion, and burdened with judgments and prejudices.p>

I personally had many deep experiences of being touched by Dadi. I can describe her love as a boundless feeling for which a human being remains perennially hungry. I felt it coming from a place of such truth and purity, one that only a completely honest heart can be home to. It’s the kind of love that can make others submit naturally, one that resembles the power of non-violence in the eyes of hermits that made their enemies disarm unconditionally. It tasted like God’s love that makes everyone confess their hearts. A leadership based on such kindness puts to shame the coercive measures and punitive actions that societies resort to in order to keep things under control.p>

Dadi was a living proof of how non-violent qualities can be practically used to change the course of humankind. She demonstrated love not as a soft feeling that it has come to be known to the world today, but a massive power that can mould and transform lives. Dadi’s leadership can be likened to the queen essence that makes all bees perform their duties automatically, without the queen bee having to do much.p>

Dadi was also a firm disciplinarian who gave utmost regard to Brahmin maryadas. This helped to shape the firm structure of the organisation in its formational years. She knew no other way of life than truth. She said she never understood what made people lie. She demonstrated harmony between thought, word and action and inspired others to do so. When Dr. Satish Gupta, who is currently leading the CAD regression programme that makes use of Rajyoga meditation, high-fibre diet and exercise along with medication to cure heart patients, met Dadi in the experimental stages of the programme, Dadi asked him: “Do you follow the diet and schedule that you make your patients do?” Such a busy doctor that he was, he said “no”. But Dadi made sure that he did what he prescribed and today the programme is meeting great success and reviving hope in families across India.p>

The nucleus of Dadi’s everlasting strength and untiring serving spirit was her complete loyalty to Baba and His directions. That she was an instrument of Shiv Baba’s to be the human custodian of the yagya was so deeply ingrained in Dadi that her aura was always full of child-like lightness. Power loses its capacity to corrupt an individual rooted in trusteeship, an ideal so essential that without it leadership becomes overbearing, narrow-minded and de-rails from the mission of common good.p>

While many people were older to her in the yagya, Baba chose Dadi for her unwavering obedience and loyalty among many other qualities. Dadi always addressed herself as ‘Dadi’ instead of talking in the first person using ‘I’ or ‘me’…’ as if she was always conscious of the difference between herself and her role. And despite this lightness of temperament, Dadi was a firm custodian of yagya resources and particular about utilising even the last grain.p>

We are often apprehensive of leadership going hand in hand with lobbying, sycophancy and favouritism but here was a leader who was as detached from those around as much as she cared for them. Though always surrounded by sisters and brothers, Dadi remained attached only to the One above. However hectic her schedule, she would squeeze in time to revise the Murli many times over. While she worked as a dedicated leader, she would quickly slip into her wings and be off to Baba once she was done. Her angelic stage became more and more visible during her final years.p>

Dadi’s personality was thus quite a perfect mix of feelings and firmness, freedom and principles, love and law, involvement and detachment. In most of the yagya history pictures, she can be singled out as the one with the broadest smile. Her light nature is evident in her meetings with several heads of state, captured in black-and-white and in colour, where distances of role and power seemed to have fizzled out in candid talks. The warm expressions of visitors reveal how a truly transparent human being can draw others beyond barriers of position, formality and gender.p>

A leader’s legitimacy to lead is proportional to his people’s choice and seeing how everyone eagerly awaits to receive an embrace from the stage on Dadi’s remembrance day, I bet she had won each one’s ‘heart vote’.p>

Benevolent leaders are like saints, they live forever. Their saplings bloom into flowers long after they are gone, and continue to bear fruits manifold. Their life bears a torch to newcomers. The love and leadership of Dadi Prakashmani is fondly remembered by all of us. In our hearts is inscribed a leader and a visionary who dared the masses to dream big about themselves and the world, a mother who nurtured with pure love and a jewel that radiated virtue. To the world she demonstrated what a woman can do when God is her companion.p>