Greetings Reader,

I read a social media post recently that said we shouldn’t be comparing ICE to Nazis because ICE isn’t shoving people into gas chambers and stealing their jewelry.

If anyone thinks we should wait until it comes to that before making such a comparison, they were clearly not paying attention the day they covered the 1930s in history class.

We may not have to wait very long, though. They’ve gotten as far as murdering people in public with the whole world watching; I shudder to think what’s going on in the detention centers, where there are no witnesses.

And no accountability: the Grifter in Chief’s architect of immigration enforcement policy has made it clear that ICE officers won't be prosecuted for anything they do, no matter how egregious it may be.

People of color are the obvious targets of this round of ethnic cleansing, but the message is clear: anyone who dares to contradict the version of reality spilling out of the White House is risking their life.

Which means that it’s never been more important for everyone, from politicians to poets, to scream truth to power at the top of their lungs.

Of all people, society’s spiritual leaders have the highest moral duty to speak out. The wisdom literature of the bhakti-yoga tradition says that when there's a calamity in human society, the sages must answer the call to action:

Despite the imperative to take action, the most immediate and accessible of which is speaking up, some members of the bhakti-yoga community have told me that they feel justified in remaining silent.

I’m not convinced. Here’s why:

• Silence in the face of adharma — unrighteousness — is itself adharma. Bhakti warns against using spirituality as an excuse to avoid the being as active and vocal as possible in the defense of dharma (as per the verse quoted above).
• The basic principle of dharma is truthfulness. When tyrants disregard the law, normalize gratuitous violence, make people disappear into opaque prisons, and tell blatant, obvious lies to conceal or justify what they're doing, silence isn’t just inaction; it's acquiescence to falsehood.

• Truthful speech means calling out “alternative facts” for the fictions they are, demanding transparency when the truth is being hidden, and pushing back against obvious lies when the truth is self-evident.
• Bhakti rejects playing it safe. Saying nothing about state-sponsored cruelty isn’t neutrality; it’s self-serving renunciation that protects one’s own comfort while others are being harmed:

Truthful speech is a devotional responsibility. Silence is an abdication of moral responsibility.

Silence is not transcendental neutrality; it’s complicity: silence always helps the oppressor and abandons the oppressed.

Silence says bhakti is irrelevant; that it doesn’t have anything to say about the rationalized cruelty of pathological political ideologies.

I for one don’t believe that bhakti-yoga is an escapist practice nor do I think that bhakti-yoga's spiritual philosophy does an end-run around material problems. Bhakti philosophy doesn't tell us all to just climb the ladder of transcendence and leave the world behind. If it did, Krishna would have told Arjuna that leaving the battlefield and going off to the forest was a great idea.

But he didn't. He told Arjuna to stay on the battlefield and fight in defense of dharma, which is how Krishna helped Arjuna solve his spiritual problem and his political problem at the same time.

Bhakti-yoga isn’t partisan, but it’s definitely political. Even the most basic philosophical teachings of bhakti — such as, “we are eternal spiritual beings, not these temporary material bodies” — have clear political implications.

I’ll do my best to keep an open mind: everyone still has the right to remain silent and if anyone can think of a good reason for bhakti-yogis to sit silently on the sidelines while children in Minneapolis are afraid that their parents won’t be there when they get home from school and parents in Maine are afraid that their children won’t come home if they send them off to school, I’d be interested to hear it.

On the other hand, if you think as I do — that this is an all-voices-on-deck emergency — then tell me: What should proponents and practitioners of bhakti-yoga be saying right now? Who should they be saying it to? Where, when, and how should they be saying it?

Hoping you and yours are safe and sound,

- Hari-k