. . . The need for recapturing the Rishi Vision is paramount for Bharat poised on the threshold of the 21st century. Unfortunately a notion had been created and been uncritically propogated that the Rishi was against the world, was otherworldy, and was indifferent to the woes and evils of the world like poverty, disease, squalor,cruelty, suffering and injustice. This was a canard spread by the vile colonizers to despiritualise Bharat. In fact there were great Rishis who fought against injustice, inequality, oppression and against all forms of cruelty. Sage Visvamitra, Sage Parasurama and Sage Yajnavalkya were shining examples of Rishis taking up issues of the day and fighting for injustice. . .

. . .Nor did the Rishi justify poverty and suffering in the name of karma. The theory of karma was just another logical proposition based on the law that every effect must have a cause. Cause modified is effect. Thus every action produces an appropriate result. It only establishes the fact that the individual by his thoughts and actions creates his destiny. Karma theory futuristically understood becomes a liberating, revolutionary concept. It empowers human beings, enabling them to choose their responses and actions and their destiny. But during those fateful thousand years a shackled society interpreted the same karma theory to justify its fate and pathetic conditions in terms of the past. Thus rationalising its inability to mould its
present by choice of appropriate actions to become
master of its destiny. . .