TODAY MARKS the seventh anniversary of The Dharma Dispatch. In keeping with our tradition, this is the day for contemplation, introspection, stock-taking and offering our gratitude to everyone and everything that makes our sacred work possible.
This year’s anniversary couldn’t have arrived on a more auspicious occasion; so I guess The Dharma Dispatch is, in a small way, blessed by the Devatas. Today is the start of the sacred Navaratri Utsava following the Mahalaya Amavasya, where as Hindus we discharged our Rna that we owe to our Pitrs — ancestors.
At the outset, I wish all our readers a very auspicious and prosperous Sharannavaratri. May the collective blessings of the Devi in all her divine forms be upon you.
Like every other year, the past year too, has been largely uneventful, boring even. But boring is a way of life at The Dharma Dispatch. In a world obsessed by compulsive attention-seeking and spectacle where even experience is curated, filtered, exaggerated and broadcast loudly and incessantly without consent, we deliberately chose boredom, staidness, simplicity, minimalism and non-intrusion.
This choice is not terribly original. It is the inspiration we sought from the time-honoured Sanatana method whose hallmarks include tranquility, quietude, contemplation, and transcendence. These are precisely the traits that make for building up generational work — something that outlasts our petty little durations on this earth. To what extent our work at The Dharma Dispatch measures up to this standard is for posterity to judge.
IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER, these are some of the highlights of the work we offered to the Sanatana community last year. A significant percentage of our readers wrote to us comparing them to milestones.
Topping the list is our mammoth twelve-part series, a detailed exposition of Ghar-Wapsi. We’re fortunate to relate that this has received an extremely favourable and positive response from a huge cross-section of the Hindu society including but not limited to the Sadhu-Sant Samaj.
Another essay series that received a similar response is the short biography of Murshid Quli Khan, one of the most awful tyrants in Bengal’s history. In fact, we received an email from a Hindu resident of Murshidabad (named after Murshid Quli) confessing that he was “surprised to hear that such a name existed in the annals of Bharat's history. This work is on one of the most perfidious people who ruined such a important and rich region that lives in that position to this day.”
Next, our series elucidating D.V. Gundappa’s contribution to renunicate poetry met with critical acclaim from various quarters foremost of which includes a moving note of appreciation from Shatavadhani Dr. Ganesh, one of contemporary India’s cultural treasures.
Our historical essay showing ancient India’s deep connections with Greece via an engraving of the figure of Bharata Mata on a silver dish, which was found in Lampsacos, became a discussion topic in a Turkish university.
Likewise, our seven-part essay series on Saartha, or the system of mobile caravans in ancient and pre-medieval India, was made as prescribed reading in several private and public universities in India.
Our four-part series on the tragic history of the once-magnificent Gandikota fort elicited a deluge of response, quite obviously, from the Telugu states. One anguished response came from a lady who said she “vowed to visit Gandikota just to witness the scale of Mir Jumla’s ravaging of this impregnable fort, which had been a jewel of the Vijayanagara Empire.”
Sometime last month, we received a rather touching message from a college student who read our long form essay about how the silk-weavers guild of Mandsaur restored a ruined Sun Temple in the city during the Gupta Era. His message narrated how that essay inspired him to travel to such glorious civilisational sites, now lying in ruins, and document their current plight.
Even more moving was the personal visit in December 2024 of a young gentleman from Tiruvannamalai who said — and showed — that he distributes printouts of various Dharma Dispatch articles related to Hindu history and culture to his townsfolk.
Although we don’t measure any metrics, it is our duty to inform our readership that The Dharma Dispatch now clocks a million-plus pageviews a month, all of it organic.
Over the past two years or so, many of you wrote to us requesting to do podcasts. And we are delighted to inform you that we’ve honoured your request. Since late-2023, we have renewed our focus on podcasts, publishing at least one episode per week on The Dharma Dispatch YouTube channel. If you haven’t subscribed to it, please click this link and hit the Subscribe button. At the moment, we have published 297 episodes on a wide variety of topics related to Hindu history, civilisation and culture.
And that completes the round-up for the seventh anniversary of The Dharma Dispatch.
As with each year, on the seventh anniversary of The Dharma Dispatch, we offer our heartfelt gratitude to all our donors who continue to support our journey and value our civilisational vision. Our thanks are also due to everyone who have become inseparable companions on our sacred journey of Hindu civilisational reclamation, cultural resurgence and spiritual reinvigoration. Above all, The Dharma Dispatch is not only a sacred work but one that is imbued with Ananda or unqualified joy.
Lastly, we have the customary request from all of you. The Dharma Dispatch seeks your voluntary contributions to help us offer more back to the Sanatana community. You can contribute in the following ways:
1. For direct bank transfer, visit the Support page
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|| Sri Rama Jayam ||
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