Dr Manish has had an active interest in Indian history and spirituality since he was 21 years old, which is also when he met his Guru, Nakhate Maharaj. However he considers that spirituality (and alignment with so called dharma) is mostly useless unless closely moving with humanity and compassion on the ground in real life. It is easy for those who have not been miserable in life and not been engaged in the service of others for decades to be dismissive of any other sentient being’s troubles as mere “thought” or “nonsense”. Medicine provides him that impetus as nothing moves humans more than the sight of others suffering.

He maintains an extensive personal library of books on Indology. He has studied the dating of the Mahabharata sufficiently enough to be considered as an expert on dating the Mahabharata using ancient Indian astronomy and is considered as a student of Dr Narahari Achar (a physics professor from Memphis who dated the Mahabharata to 3067 BCE).

He is also a director, scriptwriter and cinematographer, who is known for making films on topics which very few within the broadcast and non-broadcast media like to touch. He has made several films including the acclaimed Krishna: History or Myth, Mumbai: Pani Mafia, SaiBaba: An Indian Jesus, Bharat ek Chetna and perhaps his best known film “The Ishrat Jahan Conspiracy (2014)”.

His films can be divided into two principal categories, those which pertain to religion and those which pertain to politics. Apart from his feature length documentaries, he also makes short films which can be seen on saraswatifilms.org.