Story

Why a Dharmic Culture Engine and Why Now?
Culture is the bedrock of civilization, and it continues through the passage to the next generation. Research shows that cultural transfer happens from the grandparents to the grandchildren. Most ancient societies organized socio-economic structures around this insight. In the modern, industrial world, grandparents are missing, and children often grow up with single parents. 

This has resulted in the cultural institutions becoming a function of the State and Market, ignoring the Community. We are no longer sure we can pass the values and worldview we cherish to the next generation. Urgent intervention is the need of the hour. 

Such intervention requires a complex multi-layered and strategic engagement. It encompasses Cultural Storytelling, Education, Policy Design and more.

What is Bṛhat?
Bṛhat is a culture engine that powers culture creatives which draw from a deep pool of Dharmika heritage, research and design culture-compatible public policy and Indian Knowledge system-based frameworks for education, and ecology and builds leadership with cultural cognition that’s essential to the Overton window shift. We convert individual, collective and institutional cultural intent into action.

Who is Bṛhat? 
We are a small team of people who are united in the passionate belief of two things-

1. There are several things critically and fundamentally wrong in the world today- at the individual, national and global scales.
2. To each of these problems, the only real and redeeming solutions are to be found in Dharma.

With these convictions, we came together as individuals asking their life trajectories – what can I do about this? As Bṛhat, as a collective unit, we are finding there is much that can be done. Our work is essentially an undertaking to bring individual, institutional and collective cultural intents to manifestation.

In education, ecology, policy, storytelling and media, organization and design- in all these fields and more, we are a creatives, research and leadership organization that:

1. Draws from the deep pool of dharma to create cultural content in written, audio and visual forms. Our creative output across multiple channels represents culture, civilization and the essential Hindu consciousness.
2. Lays a roadmap for creating culture-compatible policy and culture-rooted organisational capability. Here our work on policy research and frameworks is intended to enable dharmic operating systems to life, through which we can reorient State and society to operate with IKS as the code.
3. Builds culture-cognition that can last the generation, because all efforts at culture in action boil down to cognition embodied inter-generationally. Our projects in design thinking, organizational leadership and IKS furtherance are intended to serve this cause.

We back ourselves with these ambitions with the same 2 convictions mentioned at the start, and growing confidence in our ability to compound through collaboration. We come to Bṛhat from disparate backgrounds, ranging from cultural anthropology, Vedanta, cinema, game design, finance, product, journalism and medicine. Together, we believe we have the opportunity to serve a cause higher than ourselves, and in our hearts we are certain- who if not us, when if not now?

How do we intend to solve this? Our actions manifest in 3 ways:
– Create elevating visual (Bṛhadmṛdaṅga) and literary stories (Dhīti) that foster cultural belonging; research on education, and ecology; Meta thought frameworks on cultural phenomena, ways to canonize ideas, resources and build interactive avenues for collective Hindu consciousness, cogitation and network

– Curate heritage experiential journeys (Bṛhat Anveṣī); NEP relevant IKS curriculum and framework

– Consult for creative mass-media, product and service enterprises in need of deep cultural research, culture compatible public policy frameworks. 

What have we done so far?
In our 180 days of operations, we have produced and designed several programs, initiatives and content that further our mission, of being the engine that transforms ideas into manifestation, that bridges the gap between yearning and realization, the one that perpetuates a civilizational moment. 

Some of our key initiatives/action areas:

1. Dhīti: Is Bṛhat’s blog for essays and short reads covering culture, policy and leadership. We believe that  by drawing from the deep pool of dharma for creative storytelling, enabling the roadmap for culture-compatible policy and seeding the cognition required to bear culture forward, we can create the self-perpetuating civilizational moment. Some samples here:

https://brhat.in/2022/05/26/quest-for-harmony/

https://brhat.in/2022/06/19/conserving-the-texts-transmitting-the-knowledge/

https://brhat.in/2022/08/15/indiancivilizationalconsciousness/

2. Bṛhadmṛdaṅga: Video content space that voices deep cultural aspects of our civilization, reflecting fundamental aspects of cultural art and aesthetic. Rasa, bhāva, kalā – they are woven inextricably into all aspects of dharma. Here we try to express them in video and narrative form. We created bite-sized videos (targeted primarily for the social media audience) which were visual explorations of universal human emotions under Rasas, then followed it with a series on the Metaphors of Indian arts and some select poem recitals in Hindi.
   Read more about the initiative: https://brhat.in/brhat/culture-creatives/brhadmrdanga/

A few of the videos we released:

• Introduction video of Bṛhadmṛdaṅga initiative
• Rasas (episode 3 – fear)
• Metaphors of Art Series (purusha)

3. Bṛhat Draṣṭā:

Shared online learning platform dedicated to great minds and schools of thought- darshtas and drishtis. Building the learning pathways for individuals to develop svayambodha and shatrubodha – the two wheels of civilization. 2 courses were completed on the firekeepers of civilization – Shri Ram Swarup and Shri Sita Ram Goel. 

Read more about the initiative: 

https://brhat.in/brhat/leadership-development/brhat-drasta/ 

The Firekeepers of civilization online course pages:

https://brhat.in/courses/ramswarup/

https://brhat.in/courses/sitaramgoel/

4. Bṛhat Anveṣī : Guided travel and discovery platform to some of the most important cultural assemblages in India contemporizing the tradition of traveling to sacred kṣetras, where both inner and outer quests for discovery are quenched.

Read more about the Temple tours Program:
https://brhat.in/brhat/culture-creatives/brhat-anveshi/ 

2 tours completed: Some delegate stories and experiences in video format from our 1st Chapter – The Karnataka Hoysala temples (2 trips of a 25 member cohort each) are here: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avph4IjI6Ig&list=PLMUDDn9Mulpxxqr6Gd-8H0NBNg9I84vR7

Next chapter travels to Odisha in Feb ’23 

5. Fractal Maṇḍala: Building a contemporary expression of Indian history, ontology, epistemology and teleology to reconnect deracinated minds.

As memory is to consciousness and consciousness to the individual, so history is to civilization and civilization to the group. Long-read essays on civilizational emergence, the 4 aphorisms for dharma and itihāsa, preliminary schema for synaptic reconnection to civilizational consciousness.

6. Ṛta in Design: We live in a world of design- from hospital or airport layouts, the screens we interact with all day, or even the policies that affect our lives. And what is culture, if not the deliberate and well-crafted collective design of a people? A Sanskriti? In our mission to further dharma, we must have a blueprint for introducing dharma into design thinking and design in general. Ṛta in Design is our project to serve this cause. In July 2022 we launched the initial document- An Introduction to Ṛta in Design. And in December 2022 are preparing the complete guide- The Ṛta in Design System for Design Thinking.
7. Bṛhat Open Library: 150 texts and growing, the Open Library is a repository of readings, books, papers, scriptures and more covering all things dharma. A continuous project and an essential yeoman service. The Open Library is currently preparing a search-friendly Vedic corpus.

Special sections: The Aryan Issue, collection point for all papers and material on issue of Aryan migration/invasion | Repository of Scripture: holds all the Mahapuranas and growing

8. Scrolls of Āryavarta: In dharmic story-telling, as one draws from ancient tales and lore, what stops us from experimenting with the latest media and innovations? With AI-rendered art, one can actually create vistas that help us time travel. We can imagine the Bharat of our lost past- the once-was, and even leap into alternate futures- the could-have-beens. The Scrolls of Āryavarta is a project of collaborative creation. Here we weave historical and speculative fictions using AI-rendered imagery and narrative structure, to take us into a lost but shared Bharata. And we see it as a gathering point for all dharmic lore. Currently holding more than 50 works of AI-rendered art, imagined genealogies from the Puranas, and speculative maps.