Mr Advani’s heavy, indigestible Karachi Declaration is actually in alignment with the deepest Hindu philosophy, if you consider it from a scriptural perspective. In the Brhadaranyaka Upanishad, 4.5.6, lawgiver and author of the Shukla Yajur Veda, Rishi Yajnavalkya taught his wife Maitreyi that “a wife does not love her husband for his sake but for the sake of the Self.”A fine exposition on this disturbing conclusion is found in the Panchadashi (Fifteen Chapters), a post-Adi Sankara classic on Vedanta by Vidyaranya, Pontiff of the Sringeri Math from 1377 to 1386 CE. The volume of his work that I cherish is from the dear old Sri Ramakrishna Math, Mylapore, Chennai, with Sanskrit verses in Devanagari and English translation and notes by Swami Swahananda. The Panchadashi’s fifteen chapters are grouped in three quintads: Viveka-panchaka (discriminating the real from the non-real), Dipa-panchaka (expounding the nature of that enigmatic Self) and Ananda-panchaka (on the incredible lightness and happiness achieved by understanding the way we are).Vidyaranya Swami’s purpose in writing the Panchadashi was to explain Vedanta rationally while remaining rooted in faith. You may disagree with his views on the importance of sons, for instance, but you touch a fine mind at work — and do fly the fearless phagwa, Mayawati will hold the pole.Anyway, the Advani angle in the Panchadashi comes from Chapter Twelve in the last quintad. Taking up the point that a wife’s love is not for her husband’s sake but for her own, Vidyaranya explains that similarly the husband’s love is also for his own satisfaction and not for hers (a liberating truth, if we dare grasp it: we’ll never feel rejected again). Thus, even in the mutual love between husband and wife, the incentive is one’s own desire for happiness. A child, when kissed by its father, may cry being pricked by the latter’s bristly beard. Yet, the father goes on kissing it — not for its sake, but his own.Infinite love, says that diamond-hard mind that won’t waffle sentimentally, is always felt for the Self, which is primary in every context; as for whatever is related to it, there is just moderate love, and for all other things, there is no love whatsoever. Other things are of two kinds: to be either hated or ignored. So things fall into four categories: loved, dearly loved, disregarded or hated. And we slot a thing or person into one of these categories according to the effect they produce on us under particular circumstances. So when a tiger confronts man, it is hated. When it is away, it is disregarded. And when it has been tamed and made friendly, it causes joy: thus it is related to man and is loved. Therefore, if Mr Advani makes pro-Jinnah remarks.
