Acharya Prashant is a philosopher and author, an alumnus of IIT Delhi and IIM Ahmedabad. He is among the most widely read philosophical columnists writing in India today, with more than 190 published columns ranging across climate and consumption, elections and ideology, caste and religion, gender, education, geopolitics, technology, and the inner life.
What unifies this range is a single method: tracing every public crisis back to the unexamined self that produces it.

FOR COMMISSIONING EDITORS
In this special Janmashtami feature published in Rajasthan Patrika, philosopher and author Acharya Prashant explains why the true Krishna is not an idol to be worshipped from a distance, but Truth, the Self, and Realization (Satya, Atma, Bodh) itself.

Freedom is not a gift, but an achievement that each individual must earn. Political independence can be inherited, but mental freedom and freedom from the false self require constant effort.

Raksha Bandhan can be a reminder to collectively safeguard the Discretion and Compassion that give life its true meaning. Let this festival transcend the mere exchange of gifts and become an Intent—where we protect each other’s Sovereignty and the dissolution of the false.

Guru Purnima is not a celebration of any individual or tradition. It is a tribute to the one who gave us the vision to see, and left us when we learned to see. It is a tribute to the word that taught us to love the truth. The one who came close so that we could learn to walk alone without bowing.