Jagadguru Sri Chandrashekarendra Saraswati Shankaracharya Swami 

VEDA DHARMA SASTRA PARIPALANA SABHA (Regd.)
Kumbhakonam
Publication No. 8 Friday, 10th Purattasi (26.9.1947)

 The end of Foreign rule should be acceptance of our hair

The foreign rule is coming to an end. Our people are renouncing titles of foreign government. They are also bringing down their regard for foreign languages. Of all the ghosts that have caught hold of us in the foreigners’ rule owing to excessive foreign influence, the most violent is the ghost of foreigners’ conduct. We are celebrating the foreign influences because of foreigners’ conduct. Let us consider one of them now.

Our people caught in the Nizam’s kingdom in Muslim rule abandoned our national headgear and wore the Turkish cap with hanging threads, thus copying the Muslim culture. The Hindu citizen in Nizam’s kingdom has stopped with satisfying the king by wearing the cap of foreign civilisation. But we, who were citizens of the Whites, have given to the foreign civilisation a portion of our body itself below the cap. We praise the foreign civilisation with our head.

We have given up sikha (tuft of hair on head). The ghost of foreign civilisation has become a part of our body itself. Unless we exorcise this ghost, the slavery under foreign rule would not have completely disappeared. Think with courage, ‘Do we still need ‘crop’ (cropped head)?’ You come to a conclusion yourselves. Let Mother Bharat attain true freedom. Let her enter into your minds and inculcate the true freedom of svadharma and let the last ghost be exorcised.

Hereafter let no Hindu abandon his self-respect and svadharma and take to the evil path of copying a foreigner.
JAI HIND

Why should the shikha not be removed?

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1. For ensuring that auspicious observances to be done with tied sikha and inauspicious observances to be done with loosened sikha do not become fruitless.

2. For avoiding accumulation of impurities on account of relatives’ deaths. Impurity goes off only if shaving the head and tarpanam are done as prescribed.

3. For avoiding treachery against Veda and God arising out of removal of sikha at will, as sikha kept to the chant of Vedic mantra in Choula karma with God as witness can be removed only at the time of sanyasa to the chant of appropriate Vedic mantra.

4. After a man takes bath, the water squeezed out of his upper cloth and water let down in front from the tip of sikha alone reach in the form of tarpanam, his forefathers who might be in narakas as a result of great sins. Hence sikha should not be removed in order not to spoil the little comfort these forefathers would receive this way.

5. Finally, for not celebrating with our head the western civilisation.