In response to a question about the sixteen sacraments (solah sanskar), Acharya Prashant explains that there is a significant problem with how Sanatan Dharma is understood compared to other religions. He states that all other religions have a central scripture, like the Bible for Christianity, the Quran for Islam, or the Guru Granth Sahib for Sikhism. In these religions, you cannot make arbitrary claims; they must be verifiable against the central text. For example, you cannot claim that nose piercing is mandatory in Christianity because it is not written in the Bible. This is not the case with Sanatan Dharma, which he describes as being in a completely different and strange situation. Acharya Prashant elaborates that in Sanatan Dharma, there are thousands of books that are called 'Shastra' (scriptures). The central texts, the Vedas, are not given the same special privilege as the central scriptures of other faiths. He illustrates this by saying that if you find one hundred Hindus reading religious texts, very few will be reading the Vedas. In contrast, if you find one hundred religious Christians, Sikhs, or Muslims, they will be reading their respective central scriptures. He points out that Sanatan Dharma has a 5000-year-old history spread over a vast area from Afghanistan to Indonesia and from Tibet to Sri Lanka. Due to a lack of easy communication, countless small communities emerged, each creating their own books, which were then also called 'Shastras'. Even a group of 500 people could write their own book and call it a scripture. Consequently, anything can be written in these texts and then declared to be Sanatan Dharma. He asserts that Sanatan Dharma is nothing but Vedanta. All other Puranas and Shastras should only be considered valid to the extent that they follow Vedanta; otherwise, they should be rejected. He laments that most of our so-called scriptures are actually anti-Vedanta. He questions the origin of various rituals and beliefs, such as those related to festivals, fairs, Nag Panchami, feeding milk to snakes, birth and death ceremonies, bathing, eating, and shaving hair, asking if these are taught in the Gita or the Upanishads. He points out the irony that the most 'religious' states in India, like Bihar and Eastern Uttar Pradesh, which are often called 'Bimaru' states, are also the most backward. He suggests that the kind of religion they follow, the 'mustard oil religion', is what keeps them backward. He concludes that the only way forward is to move towards pure Dharma, which is Vedanta, and to abandon all other traditions. If traditions are dear, one must first understand their meaning and reject those that are meaningless and not in alignment with Vedanta.