Spiritual leader warns Indians to confront uncomfortable truths before it’s too late.
Our Bureau
Kolkata
In the wake of the sudden disappearance of The Bengal Files from West Bengal theatres just 24 hours after its global release, spiritual leader Sadhguru has delivered a sharp and urgent message to the people of India: “We will die anyway… but we don’t want to die stupid.”
The film, which explores sensitive and controversial episodes from Bengal’s history, was allegedly pulled from theaters in West Bengal due to political pressure. According to the filmmaker, cinema hall owners were discouraged from screening it, effectively censoring the film in the very region it seeks to depict.
Sadhguru did not mince words in addressing the situation, cautioning Hindus and the wider Indian public against ignoring history. “Watch the movie. Know your history,” he urged. “We will ignore it to our peril.”
The Cost of Silence
In his statement, Sadhguru drew a stark contrast between those he describes as “fanatics” and the general public. “Fanatics have tremendous energy. Good people, unfortunately, are often like dead people in this context,” he said. He emphasized that those with divisive agendas are not only active day and night but are also willing to die for their beliefs. “I’m not asking you to die for it,” he added. “I’m asking you to live for it. But if we don’t live for it, they may make sure we die for it.”
This, he suggested, is not merely about a film or political censorship. It’s about the broader cultural and historical narrative of India—one that has been steadily eroded or deliberately forgotten.
A Shrinking Civilisation
Tracing the historical trajectory of the Indian subcontinent, Sadhguru stated, “We must understand, from Azerbaijan right up to Cambodia, there was Hindustan. Now, it has shrunk to this size.” The erosion of this civilizational footprint, he argued, did not happen overnight but was the result of centuries-long planning and commitment by groups with long-term agendas.
“They are willing to wait 100, 200, even 500 years for their intentions to be fulfilled. What about us?” he asked. “If we don’t do what needs to be done at the right time and try to do it tomorrow—it will be too late.”
Historical Amnesia and Stolen Narratives
Sadhguru called out India’s collective amnesia toward its traumatic past—famines he claims were engineered, mass killings, the destruction of thousands of temples—events that have been “simply erased as if they did not happen.”
“Somebody has stolen the narrative,” he said, warning that without collective memory, a nation becomes vulnerable to repeating its past mistakes. “This is a time where we must get the narrative back to truth.”
The issue, he said, is not merely about mourning the past, but about learning from it to secure the future. “Mistakes that have been made—we cannot fix the past,” he admitted. “But how do we ensure there is a future?”
A Wake-Up Call to the Nation
Urging the government, state authorities, and citizens alike, Sadhguru said, “This is a lesson that the Government of India and every state government must learn—and above all, the people of Bharat must learn.”
He criticized the passive culture of moving on too quickly. “We have this survival mechanism—erase history from our minds. If we get breakfast today, we are happy. But if you just live in the moment without memory or a sense of the future—that’s not wisdom, that’s stupidity.”
Final Words: A Personal Commitment
In a powerful closing, Sadhguru made a personal declaration: “We will die anyway, one way or the other. But we don’t want to die stupid. That is my commitment. What is yours?”
His message is not just a call to view a banned film. It’s a broader, more urgent demand: to awaken, to remember, and to act—before the opportunity to do so is gone.
