Tribute to a Great Unifier
Politician and retired bureaucrat Pavan K. Varma’s latest book springs from a concern about Hinduism. He detects a rising brittleness in the assertion of Hindutva, resulting in exclusion, hatred and, often, violence. He calls it the “evangelism of ignorance” and a dumbing down of thought.
“When religions are divorced from their philosophical moorings, they often reach their lowest common denominator,” he says. “I see that happening around me and it’s a tragedy. I did not want to remain a mute spectator to the devaluation of a great religion.”
Varma began to look towards Adi Shankaracharya (or just Shankara) out of a need to recover Hindu traditions that are inclusive and eclectic, that emphasise debate, are willing to agree to disagree. Though Shankara is closest to our times among the great founders of Hindu philosophy and most Hindus know his name, they don’t know much about him.
So is this a biography or another treatise on philosophy? Neither, to the ordinary reader’s relief. It changes shape as you go along. The book opens with a 58-page travelogue in which Varma travels to all sites linked with Shankara. This is apt, because Shankara was a great traveller. Born in Kerala in 788 CE, he covered some serious ground, before dying at 32 in Kedarnath in the Himalayas. He established the four famous mathas in the four directions; Varma says their location works like India’s civilisational map. Along the way, Shankara managed to have memorable debates on knowledge (shastrarth) in Maheshwar in Madhya Pradesh, Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh, and in Kashmir.
Varma comes across as both a believer and a sceptic—a duality he handles deftly. Again, Varma gets his cue from Shankara, whose philosophy is called Advaita, or non-dualism. Varma is empathetic and objective; this allows him to describe what is known with as much ease as what cannot be ascertained about the seer. Varma dismisses the hagiographies of Shankara that describe him as an avatar of Shiva.
Shankara’s journey of ideas is far more complex than his travels. His critics are varied. Some accuse him of reinforcing Brahmanism, others of and undermining it. Some call him the destroyer of Buddhism, others call him a ‘cryptoBuddhist’. Therein lies the complexity of his influence.
“At one level, he remained consistent in his logic. At another level, he synthesised and accepted the varying practices of Hinduism in many areas,” says Varma. His inclusiveness did not dilute his logic, Varma insists. Shankara preached a direction where worldly limitations do