Varun Raghav
Note : This is a response to an article written by Mr.Devdutt Pattanaik and published in the Mumbai Mirror. “Who is a Hindu? – What they don’t tell you about Advaita”. The response appeared as a discussion thread in Infinity Foundation’s IF Satsang Mailing List.
In his piece, Mr.Pattanaik has accused Advaita of being projected as the de-facto philosophy of Hinduism as part of a political project to synchronize various sects of Hinduism. Here, I argue that neither is Advaita considered the de-facto philosophy of Hinduism nor are people who preach Advaita doing it as a part of a political project.
Let us examine the claims made by Devdutt:
1)“The idea of it being the foundation of Hinduism is relatively new, with origins in writings of the 19th and 20th century Hindu writers” – No one has ever claimed Advaita as foundation of Hinduism. Advaita is very often in discourse because of 20th century New Yogis – basically yogis who had an interaction with Western scholars were into Advaita – Swami Vivekananda and Ramakrishna Mission, Ramana Maharishi (he was not exactly seeking active engagements, but it came on it’s own), Aurobindo Ashram, Chinmaya Mission,Theosophical society and so on. Because of this influence, Westerners may tend to see Advaita as core philosophy of Hinduism. And even that statement is not fully true. The author seems to have forgotten about Hare Krishna Movement, which has numerically more members than those following Advaita. So Westerners like those from Russia, Germany – nations with substantial Hare Krishna population – will see Krishna worship as core of Hinduism.
Also it needs mentioning that none of the above persons are concerned with “Hindu” identity. In fact, a person who is a true follower of Advaita considers himself beyond any identity – including religious, national. So it is unfair to call people who propagated Advaita as “Hindu” writers. In fact, many practitioners of Advaita were specific in mentioning that Advaita belonged to humanity as a whole. Thus from a political perspective of uniting Hindu castes alone, Advaita does not make any sense.
Ultimately, there are Advaita waadis, there are Sri vaishnavas, there are Ram Bhakts, there are Krishna worshippers, there are Devi/Shakti/Amman worshippers and each have their own “foundations”. There are Arya Samajis who preach Vedas as fundamental to Hinduism, there are some BJP Hindu leaders who project Ram as central to Hinduism. All these narratives co-exist peacefully within Hinduism.
2) Advaita is monotheist Vs Vishistdvaita is polytheist – This is laughingly false. Adi Shankara is the author of “Bhajagovindam” – tribute to Vishnu (as Para Brahmam), he is also the author of “Aigiri Nandini” – tribute to Devi. He never emphasised, or worshipped the Single Formless God. His focus was on making people aware of the trappings of the material world – a common goal shared by all teachers of Vedanta.
Vishistadvaita is not fundamentally polytheist. It also believes in the One Single Brahman with multiple manifestations. The focus on “One Single Brahman” is not lost. Even Shri Ramanujacharya upheld the principle of “Aham Brahmasmi”. Today this is misunderstood as a wholly Advaita principle. Here is what Vishistadvaita thinks of the phrase.
“Thus, the meaning of “aham brahma asmi” according to their philosophy is that “I am a drop of Ocean of Consciousness.”, or “I am soul, part of cosmic spirit, Parabrahma”. Here, the term Parabrahma is introduced to avoid confusion. If Brahman can mean soul (though, Parabrahma is also the soul, but Supreme one – Paramatma), then Parabrahma should refer to God, Lord Vishnu.”
–Hinduphobic Wikipedia
Ahaṁ Brahmāsmi then means “I am the Absolute” or “My identity is cosmic,”(Advaita)
can also be translated as “you are part of god just like any other element.” (Vishistadvaita)
Thus, Vishistadvaita too emphasized the equality of atma-s and Ramanujacharya was himself for seeking out the advaitin Kanchipurna as his guru.
3) “The British constructed Indian history by saying that Muslims had come to India and destroyed all things Hindu.” – Probably one of the very few times, they were saying the truth. If I see a person I hate selling drugs and I take a video exposing him, my evidence doesn’t become irrelevant just because I had previous enmity with the person.
4) “Shankara was also seen by orthodox Vedic brahmins as a nastika as he rejected marriage” – Where? By whom? Now the author is confusing events. It is true he was shunned by the native Namboothiri community as the local Namboothiri (Malayali Brahmin) community was not in favor of sanyaas. Moreover, they followed Mimamsa philosophy, while Shankara studied Vedanta. Mimamsa followers focused on karma, whereas Shankara was more concerned with jnana. (“संप्राप्ते सन्निहिते काले, न हि न हि रक्षति डुकृञ् करणे” – Rules of Grammar will not save you). Thus , the clash between Adi Shankara and the Namboothiri community was more of Mimamsa Vs Vedanta , not Astika Vs Nastika . And if Shankara was a nastika, what would explain the reception he got elsewhere in India? Moreover, there is no passage available anywhere where he was called a “nastika”.
5) “In Manusmriti, a nastika is one who rejects Vedic rituals, which includes marriage” – “which includes marriage” is probably a line added by the great contemporary AdvaitIdiot Sri Devaduttananda Pattnaika Swamy. Nastika is a person who rejects Vedic rituals. One must realise that there are various Vedic rituals. There are some like Sandhyavandana which are performed daily. There are some which are performed once or twice in a lifetime like marriage rituals or death rituals for parents. It is not possible to do marriage rituals daily. This definition of nastika is ridiculuous. So does a person who died early before marriage become “nastika”? Nastikas were persons who performed marriages without Vedic rituals, not ones who did not marry.
6) “Shankara’s writings do not link him with temple culture. His link to temples and pilgrimage are later traditions.” – When one makes a claim, one must provide sources and also give explanations. If Shankara did not promote temple culture, by whom and when were the mutts started? How come a Malayali priest performs pooja at Pashupathinath and some other North Indian temple (Badrinath or Kedarnath?) What about Sharada Peeth? What about “Aigiri Nandini” , a widely chanted strotra , a classic example of Bhakti towards Devi?
7) “Many Brahmins referred to Shankara as crypto-Buddhist or the prachanna-buddha” – I agree, ancient India had a great culture of debate, these accusations are nothing new. Even in the modern day, we have commentators describing Mulayam Singh Yadav or Digvijay Singh as crypto-Muslims. This does not make them Muslims. These statements only prove that India was a truly open and democratic society where people had the freedom to mock and criticize others.
8) “So now great efforts are being taken by Hindutva to prove Shankara lived before the Buddha” – Who did it ? I too can make a statement- “So now great efforts are being made to blur communism’s violent past”. In fact, every communist I know is proud of the communist uprisings. Communists in Kerala celebrate the uprisings every year. Accusing that your opponents are ashamed of their deeds when they aren’t is an idiotic tactic. Neither are communists ashamed of their violent past, nor are Hindus falling over each other to claim that Shankara lived before the Buddha. Adi Shankara himself criticized Buddha in his works, so no serious scholar will ever make such baseless theories.
Devdutt Patnaik (aka Sri Devaduttananda Pattnaika Swamy of the AdvaitIdiot parampara) is full of factual errors, and true to his parampara exhibits poor understanding of Vedanta and whips out wholly made-up fake stuff which he passes off as “deep insightful knowledge”.
This relentless manufacture of unverified, insiduous, fake-scholarship is Devdutt’s well known oeuvre.
A hinduphobic myth-maker of truly EPIC proportions.
With 60+ books and hundreds of episodes for TV , it is a sad reality that Indian content publishers, and the general audience have very low “viveka” , unable to discriminate between real Hindu truths and Devdutt’s venomous Hinduphobic content packaged as the truth.
The article in the Mumbai Mirror is another case of this sick genre of absolutely singular idiocy – #AdvaitIdiocy.
😂😂😂😂😂😜😜 Sri Devaduttananda Pattnaika Swamy of the AdvaitIdiot parampara).
Very well researched article.
Thank you you Sir for this well researched rebuttal
Thanks for a well written & meaningful blog.
Awesome reply brother.. keep it up.. This Idiot Devdutt Pattanaik should be shown his place whenever he opens his mouth..
Ignorant people are responsible for the fraud Devdutt’s popularity. High time he is brought down by knockouts in fair and open debates.
Well described about Daitt Dutt Pattnaik.
The truth is Buddha (1900 BC) came after Adi-Shankara (2000 BC). Stories on Adishankara going around and debating mandana mishra and converting people back to hindu fold are also fake. Even though, I do not agree with whatever the child of Wendy Doniger says, there are some flaws in the article as well. So called “Scholars” still rely on whatever evidence available. But are those true evidences? eg Bhaja Govindam. This is a fake creation by East India company agents. Everything else in the article is digestible.
1. Motive of colonizers was to revive long dead Buddhism during the later days of colonialism. So, they distorted dates of Adi-shankara and Buddha
2. Colonizers initially tried to inject blind Bakthi yoga (like Christianity) by creating fake Bakthi movements (starting with Ramanuja) . When that failed to create enough conversions they tried to revive Buddhism which also failed.
Well done. Another thing, from the Mumbai Mirror article:
“Ramanuja, who established major Vishnu temples of South India, rejected Shankara’s idea that the world is a delusion. He valued the material world, and its many differences. The deity in the temple was seen as a real image of God (unlike how Hindutva sees a temple: memorial to a historical figure like Ram).”
That is another mistake. Both of them base their views on the same shruti and smriti, all of which teach the same thing, i.e., that the world is illusory. What that means is taught differently by Shankara and Ramanuja but both agree that the world is an illusion. The idea that Ramanuja doesn’t believe the world is “a delusion” and that it is “real” is a mistaken idea. Ramanuja taught that the world is real but that it is misunderstood by those under a “delusion” caused by maya. The people under the spell of maya’s delusion see the world as something which it is not.
Like we can agree that the color of the sky being blue is real but also a person would be delusional if they thought the sky is made of something blue. The truth is the sky appears blue in clear sunny sky because of certain qualities of chemicals interacting with our vision. The sky is in reality invisible to our eyes but an illusion of blueness is created for us to see a nice blue color. In the same way the Vedanta teaches that the world while being an illusion is also real in sense. The hand feels things and to say those things it feels like a tree or a phone are not real, is not what Vedanta means of the world being an illusion.
Vedtanta teaches that there is an invisible power which manifests the world and controls it from inner dimensions. Like how the invisible mind controls the visible body in typing on your keyboard, similarly Vedanta teaches that there is an all-pervading consciousness/mind which is clothed by everything of the world and thereby creating an illusion of the world as going on without any visible control. Just like the person typing on his keyboard doesn’t reveal the truth to your vision of the existence of an invisible mind controlling the typing by the body, everything going on the world is also controlled from an inner invisible dimension. To not know that is to be in illusion. The illusion of Vedanta is the illusion (maya) of the world as something different from what it really is.
Just like the sky appearing to be blue is an illusory perspective of our eyes interacting with light and chemicals because the sky is in reality invisible, our world (people, animals, insects, nature, etc.) appears to all be independent from anything outside itself to our vision when in reality everything is manifested from and controlled by the same inner dimensional all-pervading field of energy/matrix (an example in quantum mechanics is the Higgs Field).
The world being an illusion is in the sense of a person under the influence of ignorance not seeing or understanding the world for what it really is. Like a young child watching a movie doesn’t understand that the movie is not real, it is an illusion, that in reality there is a director responsible for everything you see or hear in the movie, our world is an illusion in the same way. The illusion is not having the proper knowledge of what reality is and how it functions as an extension of the power and control of a director i.e., all things, nature and people are manifestations of, and under the complete control of the same thing. Which is what all followers of Vedanta have as their common teaching. The delusion is in not knowing that, in seeing the world (people, places, things) as a duality in the sense of being different from and not under the control of a director, not knowing the world is a movie writ large and that everyone and everything is manifesting the direction of the same inner dimensional power. The main difference between Shankara and Ramanuja is in how they teach about that, not that they teach different things entirely.
A person under the “delusion” of maya would not know that what Devdutt Pattanaik wrote, or anyone else writes, or what I write, that it is all a manifestation of the same controlling principle. Tat Tvam Asi. You are a manifestation of God’s will in all and everything. A person who does know that then knows that everything and everyone they experience are manifesting Brahman/Vishnu/Shiva/Devi/God directly at all times and by that knowledge becomes qualified to have God reveal that truth directly to you through that control, i.e., samadhi, moksha, etc. ; >)