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Journalism of Courage
April 24, this Saturday Vaisakha Shukla Panchami, is Adi Sankara8217;s birthday. The Government of Karnataka has declared it 8216;Philosopher8217;s Day8217; to honour this long-ago thinker-activist8217;s contribution to the history of thought. He founded his first matham at Sringeri on the green banks of the river Tunga, where he spent 12 of his 32 years. Sankara was moved to found his peetham there because he saw a cobra spreading its hood to give shade to a frog in labour. Surely a place where such compassion existed between natural enemies was holy ground. The first head of this first matham was none other than Suresvaracharya or Mandana Mishra, the eminent north Indian scholar whom Sankara had won over to his cause of bringing 8216;Bharatavarshe8217; into unity of thought.
Sankara taught that reasoning is a part of religion. It becomes fruitful when harmonised with belief in God, and both are applied to our spiritual growth. When we introspect, we solitary beings realise our connectedness to each other and to that One Power that animates us all. All differences melt away, as told in the Upanishads, and we can work together for the welfare of all. In a land riven into regional kingdoms, Sankara set up mathams in its four zones: Badrinath in the north, Dwarka in the west, Puri out east and Sringeri, in the south the Kanchi matham is believed to have been his last rest. To integrate them, he switched around regional pujaris.
No wonder that in The Discovery of India, Nehru said of him: 8220;Adi Sankara CE 788-820 was a man of amazing energy and vast activity. He was no escapist retiring into his shell or into a corner of the forest seeking his own individual perfection and oblivious of what happened to others8230;he strove hard to synthesise the diverse currents that were troubling the mind of the India of his day and to build a unity of outlook out of that diversity. In a brief 32 years he did the work of many long lives8221;.
