ASCETICISM, derived from the Greek word askesis, connotes the `training` or `exercise` of the body and the mind. Asceticism or ascetic practices belong to the domain of religious culture, and fasts, pilgrimages, ablutions, purificatory rituals, vigils, abstinence from certain foods and drinks, primitive and strange dress, nudity, uncut hair, tonsure. shaving the head, circumcision, caved welling, silence, meditation, vegetarianism, celibacy, virginity, inflicting pain upon oneself by whips and chains, mutilation, begging alms, owning no wealth or possessions, forbearance and patience, equanimity or impartiality towards friends and foes, eradication of desires and passions, treating the body as something evil or treating human life as a means of achieving ultimate release or union with God all these are subsumed under ascetic practices.
MORCHA, in Persian murchah or murchal meaning entrenchments, fortification or battlefront, has, apart from its usage in military strategy, entered Indian political vocabulary via the Gurdwara Reform or Akali movement of the early 1920`s. In that prolonged agitation for the liberation of Sikh historical shrines from the control of a corrupt priestly order, the Akalis, as the reformers were then known, came into clash with the British rulers and mounted peaceful resistance fronts to assert their rights. These assuming the form of mass mobilization, meetings and marches to force the matter at issue, were styled morchds.
AMAVAS (AMAVASYA), massia in Punjabi, lit. a combination of ama, i.e. together, and vasya, i.e. stationing, signifying coming of the sun and the moon together in one line, is the last day of the dark half of the lunar month when the moon remains entirely hidden from our view. The twenty-eight naksatras, considered to be the wives of the moon, are the lunar mansions or stations through which the moon passes as does the sun through the twelve signs of the zodiac.The life of an individual is believed to be deeply influenced by the naksatra through which the moon passed at the time of his birth.Thus, different days such as panchami (fifth), ekadasi (eleventh), puranmashi (the fifteenth day when the moon is full) and amavas assumed a special significance in the Hindu tradition.