When one enters the Pyramid spiritual science counselling academy in Kukatpally, four portraits each of Jesus, Krishna, Hanuman and Mahavtar Babaji meditating, greet the visitor from the walls.
Spiritual verses and pamphlets are strewn all around and an overwhelming fragrance of incense and camphor immediately fills one’s nostrils. One of the rooms in the building is house to around four to five meditators, sitting with their eyes closed in pitch darkness.
While the set-up in every bit resembles a yoga ashram, one is only left to wonder what people in this room would ever have to do with politics, let alone contesting in the upcoming election race!
But the Pyramid Party has been contesting elections from the year 1999. Nothing has ever crushed the party’s spirits in the past two decades when it comes to filing nominations every election season, even though it has never won a single seat till date.
Pradeep Musipatla, the party’s face in the Serilingampally constituency, identifies himself as a senior member of the Pyramid meditation group and is contesting elections for the third time from the constituency.
If one is to skim through the Facebook page of this little-heard political party in Telangana, the party boasts of transforming all the people of India into meditators, enlightened persons, ‘vegetarians’ and peace-loving people through the methodology of ‘electoral politics’.
While spirituality and politics is an oxymoron in itself, Pradeep says there a strange connection between the two – which apparently is also the Pyramid party’s agenda during every electoral fight.
“When a person practices meditation, he becomes a natural leader because meditation gives one health, clarity and expanded intellect. So the prime motto of the Pyramid party is to meditate and choose the right leaders. For example, in 2009, when I was contesting from the Sananthnagar constituency, we distributed around 4 lakh pamphlets which helped us spread the message of meditation and vegetarianism among people. One big transformation we could achieve is that a lot of educational institutions in the area stopped serving non-veg food items in its hostels after receiving the message of ‘vegetarianism’ through our pamphlets,” Pradeep claims.
Pradeep, a BTech and LLB graduate, has some interesting claims on global warming. When asked if food isn’t a matter of choice, Pradeep says that while the party is not trying to impose a particular food habit among people, there has been little doubt that vegetarianism has always been the scientific way of living.
“Our intestines are not meant to digest non-vegetarian food, unlike the carnivorous animals. According to the law of karma, eating non-veg food equates to violence. What are we doing by eating non-veg? We are inflicting violence on the animal kind! One of the prime reasons for all the terrorism that is happening in the world is non-vegetarianism. Thirdly, there are certain scientific researches being done which proves that non-vegetarianism is one of the primary reasons for global warming. Huge acres of land have been cultivated into animal farms to breed animals for meat. So if a person is aware of all this and loves nature, he/she would definitely follow vegetarianism,” Pradeep explains.
While politicians are banking on bad roads, overflowing drainage and frenzied construction in the Serlingampally constituency to campaign against the sitting MLA, the Pyramid Party has a different outlook.
Pradeep asks for a minute to search for the party’s manifesto, which resembles a book on spiritual meditation, to read out the party’s electoral promises to the people. A room filled with his party members listen to him with rapt attention, because it’s probably for the first time that somebody from the party is reading it aloud.
“To construct good lavatories, to use information technology efficiently, to give good drinking water, to remove illiteracy, to give primary education to everyone, to facilitate holistic health, to instill the value that ‘farmer is the God’, to cleanse the legal system,” so goes the three-page manifesto of the Pyramid party.
Pradeep has not only contested elections in Hyderabad but has also fought the electoral battle in Pondicherry, in an attempt to save the union territory from its supposed image of being a liquor haven.
“Our motto is not just to win elections. Our primary aim at contesting elections is to spread the message of meditation, vegetarianism and spiritual science. Politicians now think only about how to make money. Religion has divided people and spirituality can unite people. When spiritual people enter politics, the entire energy in the political system will change. Spirituality will bring oneness in life and compliment others’ lives. The symbol pyramid itself signifies secular spirituality, where all people can come, sit together and meditate. This is the kind of dream the Pyramid party envisions,” Pradeep explains to us, sitting under a pyramid-like structure mounted on the roof, the source of the party’s unending gems of wisdom.
Click here to follow TNM's coverage of the Telangana Assembly Elections 2018.