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.

“There is one Krishna that we have fabricated for ourselves: the butter-thief, sitting on a swing, reveling in Raas with the Gopis. It’s easy to remember this Krishna, because he doesn’t demand anything from us. On the other hand, there is the Krishna of the Gita. In his life you will see nothing but apparent contradictions, because advaita itself means that all dualities are contained within it. The otherworldly image of Krishna that we created has, in fact, taken the Gita away from us.”