Vijay Pandurang Bhatkar, known as the architect of the country’s initiative of supercomputing that has developed Param series of supercomputers, has complimented the ‘Kumbh Sandesh Yatra’ undertaken by GCOT, a not-for-profit organisation founded by the alumni of Osmania University, for spreading the message about the significance of Kumbh Mela.
The yatra led by founder of Gramodaya Chamber of Commerce and Technology D. Vasanth Kumar, a native of Zaheerabad, has reached Pune on March 8 after it was flagged off at Hyderabad on February 19 by Telangana Jagruthi president K. Kavitha. “The yatra has so far completed a distance of about 3,700 km after covering places such as Tirupati, Chennai, Puducherry, Tiruchi, Rameswaram, Madurai, Kanyakumari, Bengaluru and Hubballi, it has reached Pune”, Mr. Vasanth said speaking over phone from Pune on Monday.
Speaking to the Kumbh Sandesh Yatra team Dr. Bhatkar, who is also the Vice-Chancellor of Nalanda University and chairman of Vigyan Bharati, a body of scientists, and Unnath Bharat Abhiyan, said nation-building through the empowerment of villages was UBA’s aim as that of GCOT.
“Gandhiji had always asked intellectuals to travel along the villages in the country as being done by GCOT and UBA,” Dr. Bhatkar told the yatra team that met him, adding that spreading the message of significance of the indigenous socio-cultural planning system for development of the country was the common mission of both UBA and GCOT.
On the significance of Kumbha Mela, Dr. Bhatkar said it was an occasion on which people from different places and backgrounds come together and take a holy bath at a particular time (‘muhurta’) and it has a strong scientific reason. “It’s like an ancient type of vaccination as people who take the holy dip include those who suffer from various diseases and received antibodies with the holy bath together with other people”, Dr. Bhatkar told the GCOT team. He described such gatherings as great venues for sharing scientific and cultural ideas.
The yatra team that includes M. Srinivasa Reddy, Avinash Rai, A. Madhusudan, A. Ramaswamy and others also met Rahul Karad of MIT School of Government and Vishwanath Karad of MIT World Peace University at Pune who complimented them for creating awareness among people about thee concepts, customs and traditions of Kumbh.
