Thread by @shrikanth_krish

On the attacks on Shankaracharya

While vitriol and abuse are completely unacceptable, one section of the H-Right is going to the other extreme and taking the stance that Pontiffs should be beyond all criticism

To my mind this kind of a stance is a shame

Even the great Adi Shankara himself, arguably the greatest Acharya of the Hindu world in the past 1500 years, has been criticized not just obliquely but frontally by many thinkers over the past 1000 years

To the extent that he was dubbed as a crypto-Buddhist by some

Here's a post that outlines some of the criticisms of Adi Shankara by Dvaita and Sri-Vaishnava thinkers over the ages -

hinduism.stackexchange.com/questions/1724…

Note that these criticisms emanate within the Vedanta fold. Not necessarily always from the Mimamsikas or the Sankhya school

Goes to show that even within Vedanta there has been a great deal of intellectual sparring (not always on the most polite terms)

If Adi Shankara could be "criticized", so can his spiritual successors

In fact I believe that intellectual sparring between sampradAyas happens less in our times than in centuries past - arguably because of the need to put on a united Hindu front

Perhaps that is warranted. But this facade of unity should not be at the expense of toeing a single line on all matters - Vedantic and secular.

Even within a sampradaya, there are sub-sampradAyas with significant theological differences

E.g. Within Sri-Vaishnavism, you have the Thenkalai and Vadakalai school, which differ profoundly on matters as fundamental as Divine grace and human agency

Even when it comes to the way temples should be run and conduct of rituals, there is diversity

E.g. Sri-Vaishnavism may seem like a relatively cohesive sect, but there is no unanimous concord on the conduct of rituals (Contd..)

Some temples adhere to Pancharatra Agama (Srirangam), while others to the more ancient Vaikhanasa Agama (Tirupati)

And this Agamic division in ritual practice is totally independent of the sectarian divide of Vadakalai and Thenkalai I spoke about earlier!

Even when we talk of matters like gender, Varna - while most sampradAyas do respect the idea of Varna Vyavastha, the devil is in the details and the rigor of application of certain ideas

Which varies across geographies

And across Smriti texts

While we all know of the significant differences that exist between say Manu Smriti and Yajnavalkya Smriti, even the same Smriti text often lends itself to different interpretations

E.g. the two major commentaries on Yajnavalkya Smriti - Mitakshara and Dayabhaga - don't agree on several points

Resulting in vastly different civil laws in medieval and early modern India between regions that adhered to Mitakshara and those that adhered to Dayabhaga

None of this is to justify rank abuse and disrespect towards Acharyas by all and sundry

But to claim that a certain Acharya is THE definitive word on all things traditional, is to completely miss the point of the Sampradaya focus in Hinduism

What makes Hinduism exceptional is its Sampradaya orientation

The ideas don't stem from a single Papal figure. But are outcomes of traditions zealously guarded and followed by relatively small groups

This is not to deny commonality in ideas. Or to deny the existence of a single banyan tree that is distinctively Hindu (as opposed to say Christian, Muslim or even Buddhist).

But by discouraging debate, and intellectual sparring, we are ironically making our banyan tree similar to other tall, concrete structures that lack the flexibility and the expanse that our tree possesses

Post-Script : The retort to whatever I have said above usually is -

Hey...you need to be learned to question the Acharya

But usually the implicit view here is - you need to tick all the "Trad" boxes, one of which is also being a conformist

Also the establishment puts a very high premium on "external" signs while assessing how "learned" a person is.

Do you know Sanskrit? - that's a usual gotcha question. As though Sanskrit alone can signal scholarship

But in our times, scholarship is not always ensconced in traditional Mathas.

It may stem from amateurs who may be evolutionary biologists. Or maybe students of law. Or even project managers in IT firms

Sure, these men may not necessarily tick all the "trad" boxes. They may not conform to all the AcharAs and niyamas mandated in traditional texts

But they may be able to provide insights and commentaries on texts that may elude insiders

The Hindu establishment cannot blind itself to diverse influences which may enrich it in unforeseen ways

To cite a famous e.g - one of the most popular Sri-Vaishnava upanyAsakAs in India today is an engineer from BITS - @dushyanthsridar - who now lectures full time on Hinduism

So yes, maThas are important. And the important ones like Shringeri, Govardhan, Uttaradi, Ahobilam etc can boast of several centuries of history at the very least

The heads of these mutts are no doubt special people in more ways than one

But the debates on all matters HIndu cannot be straitjacketed by a few personalities or even the odd text

That debate has to be a living one for the religion to hold relevance (not merely an ossified recantation of old nostrums and paradigms)