Hindu Nationalism & Advaita

[Vidyasankar Sundaresan]

Swaminathan Madhuresan <smadhuresan at YAHOO.COM> wrote:

>But is it not the advaita monk, Vidyaranya of Shringeri who started
>this all?

Perhaps. I'm sure you know enough about South Indian history. The old
dynasties had all been decimated or had lost any claim to legitimacy. What
would you have liked for 14th century south India? Anarchy?

>By organizing disparate upstarts from different castes
>under one umbrella to form Vijayanagar empire?

For one thing, the early 14th century, with its fresh memory of the large
scale destruction caused by Malik Kafur, was quite different from the late
19th century of British India.

Secondly, you should perhaps pay attention to more recent studies of the
formation of Vijayanagar, e.g. the two volume book from Heidelberg, edited
by Dallapiccola and Zingel-Ave Lallemant.

Thirdly, India has always been full of different castes, and throughout the
world, new dynasties have been formed due to the success of "upstarts."
Charlemagne was an upstart, Babur was an upstart, the Tudors were upstarts,
Shivaji was an upstart and the Maravar and Kallar chiefs in Tamil Nadu were
upstarts. As you can see, upstarts ruled the world in a monarchical setup.
What is your point?

>May be Vivekananda got
>the clue from Shringeri??

Why speculate? Read Vivekananda's works for yourself and see where he got
his clues from.

Vidyasankar


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