Rethinking Shankara

Did Shankaracharya support the caste system? Absolutely yes, because most of his philosophies have a direct or indirect inclination towards building up a hierarchical society inside Hinduism. Even though some of the Hindu activists try to disguise him as a secular man of the ancient period. It is crystal clear that the revival of the old tenets of Hinduism including the Varna system, Caste ideologies and untouchability towards the Shudras is, doubtlessly, done by Shankaracharya, through his teachings throughout India, proposing the philosophy of Advaita.

Shankaracharya, one of the great philosophers of ancient India, was born in 788 AD in Kaladi, as the son of Shivaguru and Aryanba. Since childhood, he desired to be a sanyasi and soon became an ascetic, leaving the home to visit the whole holy temples of India. Besides, he wrote several texts related to the four Vedas and Upanishads. Globally, he became famous for putting forward the philosophy of Advaita (non-dualism). Occasionally telling, this was also at a time the Hinduism was being extinct due to the influence of Buddhism. To defend them, he introduced the tenets of Advaita and debated with all the Buddhist scholars along the length and breadth of India. There are three important writings of Shankaracharya which became both famous and controversial:-

1-Shankar’s Commentaries on ten Upanishads, known as, Brahmasutra Bhasya

2-Bhagavad-Gita

3-Shrudis

Recently, after the ascension of BJP power in Indian politics, they try their best to exalt Shankaracharya in our nation; by suggesting to make his birthday, May 11, as national philosopher’s day, and three years before, another scheme to celebrate 2017, as the year of Shankaracharya all over the country. As a part of its camping, the govt. offered a huge donation to all the temples, to be part of this ceremony. Once, Mr Shah said, “Shankaracharya united all the Indians”. I don’t know what unity does he mean…

In fact, who is Shankaracharya? What did he contribute to the development of our nation?. Libin Thathapilly, in one of his speeches, depicts him (not mentioning Acharya) as the actual rebuilder of the caste system and untouchability in India. There have several stanzas in his commentaries that point out the exact form of the caste system, as he says, Shudras are not allowed to recite Vedas, the permission for sanyasi and Moksha is only for Brahmins, not of any other castes. Even sometimes he downgrades the all other three Varnas and women too. Then, he continues, it is upon each Varna to commit to succumb his duty in this world to attain the entry of heaven in the next birth. Although, some scholars argue that Shankaracharya never meant to establish the caste system, but to create a Varna-based system, not by birth, but by his actions.

Unfortunately, none of those social circumstances could adapt to this definition, but followed the caste system, that had begun by Vedas and Upanishads, which implies his intention on Varna or caste. Vivekananda Chudamani, written by him, is the perfect example of the caste system. It contains only a few lines that conclude, the human word can be coined only on a Brahman, who performs all prayers and rituals of the Vedas, excluding all others from the circle of human definition.

Besides, as mentioned above, one of the important works is the commentaries on Upanishads. According to the background of writing these commentaries, he didn’t comment for all the Upanishads. But, interpreting some stanzas which would accord with his ideas, summarizing these are the interpretations of all the Upanishads, so, let’s stop here. Therefore, Mainer Williams once said, “Shankar’s commentaries are never to be a complete interpretation of the Upanishads”.

While coming to the supporters of Shankara, they retort that Shankaracharya never attributed to a caste system, but, always preached for Human liberty and equality. Let us prove it. Firstly, they argue that Meanankshi Panchakam, intended to be his, contains only five lines, which says a story that one summer noon at Varanasi Sri Shankaracharya after taking bath in the holy Ganga, was proceeding towards the temple of Lord Vishwanath along with his disciples. The great Acharya saw an outcast, Chandala, coming with his dog in his way. He told the Chandala “get away, get away – move away, move away”. Then, he asked “do you wish to move matter from matter or do you mean separate spirit from the spirit? Does it make any difference to the sun when it is reflected in the waters of Ganga or the waters of cesspools in the streets of Chandala?. These two questions made him too astonished and he accepted him as an indeed guru of Jagad Guru. Here, as they allege, Shankara accepts Chandala as his supreme guru, never looking to his caste and shapes the philosophy of Advaita. Prescribing this, they ask how can be this secular man, the writer of this Meenkasha Panchakam, to write the Bhagavad-Gita or Shrudis. Indeed, the question is how can be he the writer of this short book, while composing thin books like Bhagavad-Gita, Brahmasutra Bhasya. In contrast, they ask the opposite question to us. Another reason is that there is not much evidence that it is written by Shankaracharya as Narayana Guru negates his credibility to this panchakam. He also refers to him as ‘Shankara is a reasonable man, in philosophical dimensions, while in creating a good society, he is an idiot” pointing out he is responsible for the re-emergence of caste in India.

Secondly, they argue that there is no use of the word caste in Bhagavad-Gita except in one verse; on an occasion when occurred a clash between Arjunan and Karna, in which the Maharishi got furious at Arjun on his action against Karnan. Excluding this verse, no other 700 verses contain the word ‘caste’ nor a reference to it. As they pointed out, it doesn’t owe the word ‘caste’, but the word ‘Varna’ occurred many times, which stands in the same meaning of caste or attributes itself what meant by the caste system and untouchability. I don’t know how they got sudden amnesia on knowledge of the synonyms stands for the same meaning. Their third argument is based on Advaita Vedanta, Vedanta means any hermeneutics that attempts to provide a consistent interpretation of the philosophy of Upanishads. According to Advaita metaphysics, Brahma appears as the world because of its creative energy (maya) – the world. More precisely, what you see with your eyes is not real, it is an illusion of its true existence that is the god. It also proposes the equality of everybody (Brahma) before God, and thus, Advaita Vedanta advises equality among human beings. Unfortunately, it is not done practically as well as, in subsequence with this, the Varna System got strengthened while the philosophy grew more with giving some hollow ambiguities. In my personal view, the Advaita is a bunch of unimaginable lies and thoughts rather than polishing them as a bunch of great thoughts that are not imaginable with our naked eyes and thoughts. For instance, it is like saying what is Zero? it is neither nothing nor something, then, what thing?...

Inevitably, it is clear that Shankaracharya tried to establish caste hierarchization in India. For more authenticity, Shankaracharya had established for Mathas in four parts of India: Jyotir Math (Uttarakhand) – Atharveda, Dwarakapitha (Gujarat) – Samaveda, Shraddha Peetham (Karnataka) – Yajurveda and Sovardhana Matha (Odisha) – Rigveda. The Guru of all these Mathas are Brahmans, never became any other caste throughout these centuries, as well as the disciples are also Brahmans with detaining the permission for Shudras to enter these Mathas. Then, what equality did he contribute to society even preventing the entrance for every varna?

In total, Shankaracharya’s ideas and philosophies bear a quite resemblance to the ideologies of the caste system. Vyavaharamala, a 14-15 century written text, proves that there already existed, extreme untouchability towards the Shudras, disapproving their appearance in public roads, and other common ceremonials. One of the modern writer Pavan Varma wrote an elaborate text on Adi Shankaracharya and his philosophy entitled “Adi Shankara: Hinduism’s great thinker”. But, it seems more related to his philosophy rather than his personal life. It is very pathetic to know that Shashi Tharoor, Sukumar Azhikode, K. Damodaran, all of these liberal writers have approved the reason of Shankara, with paying not much attention to the crucial and fathomless wrong messages of his philosophy even Nehru wrote in his book, the Discovery of India that our past is ever magnificent, ruminating the legendary of these four Vedas and Advaita philosophy. Nevertheless, the Ambedkar like personas opposed them and rectified the greatest mistake that ever India repeated. In modern times, the great orators Libin Thathapilly, C. Ravi Chandran and T.S Syam Nayar, studied Shankara and Advaita very well and summarized “Shankara Vedanta is the revival of the caste system and untouchability in India”. In essence, the further studies and research upon us to scrutinize how well Shankara built the road to the caste system, on how well he deviated the course of history from that of Buddhism and Jainism, who propagated for the peace of our land to that of Brahmanic evil. Now, we are responsible to eliminate the misconception of Shankar’s social justice as earlier as the BJP tried to root it.