THE 9 O'CLOCK DEBATE WITH ADI SHANKARA

 

     

A 17 year old taking up Adi Shankaracharya and his Advaita philosophy as the topic for the CBSE board examination project definitely seems possibly imposed than voluntary. While some would look at it as an atrocious attempt to produce a plagiarised work, a few others would consider it as a futile attempt of an over-enthusiastic teen to encroach into a realm exclusively meant for the ‘intellectuals’. The idea of branding anything that is ancient as backward and moreover, outdated has continued for ages now. As Indians who are endowed with an unparalleled privilege to grow up with these great philosophies deeply embedded in our value system, it is extremely underwhelming to realize that many of these are on the brink of extinction. Although I have no professionally vetted research paper to prove my statement and no scholars to quote, the developmental path our country has undertaken over the past decades has completely ignored these great philosophies implicitly if not explicitly. I do not intend to venture into any of his profound philosophies for that might seem nothing more than incoherent statements.

Recalling the nature of dialogue and discussion Adi Shankara engaged in will be useful to some extent in the present world of chaos and violence. Although there are innumerable legends about the debates and discussions that he participated in, his debate with Mandana Mishra is a particular exception. Shankara, a vedantic and Mandana Mishra, a high ritualist were to debate the merits and demerits of their schools of thought. The one who lost would become a disciple of the other. Mandana Mishra’s wife, a scholar herself, was chosen to be the arbiter of the debate. According to popular legend, both of them were given garlands to wear and the one whose garland loses its freshness first would lose the debate (if one gets angry, the body produces heat as a result of which the garland would lose its freshness). The debate lasted for days at the end of which Adi Shankara emerged victorious.

The point of focus here is not the debate itself but the kind of debate they engaged in. There was neither anger nor retribution in this dialogue. This is completely contradictory to the kind of discussions that we see today. Except for constant bickering and rebuking, there is hardly any other way one can imagine a debate taking place today, especially in our country. Nevertheless, it will be wrong to make such a sweeping statement as I am not oblivious of the fact that there exist some highly civilised debates that take place among individuals who hold contradicting and irreconcilable ideologies.

The general perception of debates consisting of hysterical panellists working themselves into a frenzy of rage has to change. Aggression being the unwritten norm of debates and panellists gaining respite by passing vindictive and hateful comments should not be the way, popular debates are characterized in our country. The task to bring back the kind of dialogue prevalent during Adi Shankara’s era is an impossible task without doubt. The kind of issues that we are faced with and the kind of problems that we have to respond to are no longer the same. Times have changed, and so have people. Therefore a partial adoption of these philosophies might do more harm than good.

What is required is to approach them with a scientific mind rather than writing them off as mere mythologies that cease to exist with changing times. This should not apply to Adi Shankara alone. The philosophers and theologians of all faiths need to be treated the same way, analyzing their larger implication on society and humanity. What we have to envisage is not only an egalitarian society but also one where there is scope for different opinions, schools of thought and faiths to thrive unthreatened by one another. I believe that this is the bottom line of what Shankaracharya preached. And I am sure that he wouldn’t mind getting contradicted, as long as anyone can dismantle his theories with an argumentative rigour. Let’s hope that somewhere in the near future debating the Adi Shankara way will become the new 'swag'.