After the Reformation period, particularly influenced by Christian missionaries, two significant trends emerged in the Hindu intellectual world. The first was resistant Hinduism, which sought to preserve traditional values and beliefs, opposing reforms such as the abolition of Sati during Raja Ram Mohan Roy’s time.¹ Another trend, mostly in South India and Sri Lanka, countered Christian missionaries’ attacks on Hinduism.² In between the two came a third trend, a more accommodative approach, became known as the eclectic approach.³ This involved selectively integrating elements from various religious traditions, creating a form of textual eclecticism.
This intellectual movement can be traced back to Raja Ram Mohan Roy, often considered the father of the Reformation in India. Well-versed in Persian, Greek, and Sanskrit, and closely associated with the Mugal King (who granted him the title “Raja”),4 Ram Mohan Roy pioneered a form of religious synthesis. His works reflect efforts to blend various traditions, uniting Western rationality with Eastern spiritualism.5
Following Raja Ram Mohan Roy, the Brahmo Samaj emerged as a significant movement, diverging in some aspects from Roy’s initial vision. The Brahmo Samaj, alongside the Reformation, paved the way for the rise of Neo-Vedanta. Neo-Vedanta gained prominence, particularly after Swami Vivekananda’s influential address at the Chicago Parliament of Religions. Under Vivekananda, Neo-Vedanta positioned Vedanta as the foundation for global spiritual unity, transcending individual religious traditions. As Vivekananda proclaimed, “Vedanta is the rationale of all religions. Without Vedanta, every religion is superstition, but with it, everything becomes religion.” Neo-Vedanta framed Vedanta as the essence of all religions, asserting that no religion or scripture could be complete without it.6
Simultaneously, the Theosophical Society introduced a trend emphasizing personal revelation and intuition. J. Krishnamurti, after departing from the Brahmo Samaj and rejecting the Messiahship imposed on him by Annie Besant, promoted a lifelong search for personal truth.
This emphasis on personal experience over scriptural revelation led to varying interpretations among educated Hindus in the post-Neo-Vedanta period. While they sought to uphold tradition, they insisted on personal experience. This dichotomy is reflected in scholars like Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, who highlighted the centrality of experience in religion. Radhakrishnan is often quoted as saying that “the essence of religion is the experience of truth.” However, this perspective has faced critiques, particularly from Christian theologians.
D.G. Moses, in his work Professor Radhakrishnan and a Parliament of Religions, counters Radhakrishnan’s emphasis by asserting, “One’s spiritual belief cannot be absolutely divorced from one’s spiritual experience”7 (p. 11). He adds that “without some doctrine, without some philosophy, consciously understood or unconsciously accepted, there cannot be a definite religious experience”8. Moses argues that the essence of religion lies not merely in the experience of truth, but in the truth about one’s experience. This raises an important debate between personal intuition and scripture as the ultimate source of spiritual knowledge. Vivekananda also emphasized the primacy of individual spiritual experience in his teachings. Yet, a critical question arises: who determines if an experience is true or not? If personal intuition is mistaken, it could challenge the very foundation of faith in Scripture as Truth, making truth itself appear relative.
However, though truth is relative, it is still better to have a stable Scripture as the foundation than to rely solely on personal experience, which could be subjective, like a slippery slope without something to hold. Moses further points out the limits of religious experience, even in its most profound forms. He writes, “And no one who has had the awful religious experience of standing face to face with the infinite Reality could ever be audacious enough to claim that he has known everything that is to be known”9. This recognition of the limits of personal experience underscores the importance of having a foundation in Scripture. Moses also highlights the psychological aspect of religious experience, quoting E.S. Ames’ Psychology of Religious Experience: “God is not known, He is not understood; He is used”10. This psychological analysis of religion suggests that while religious experience can offer peace to the soul, it is not necessarily perfect. As Moses summarizes, for the peace of a religious soul, “it is not necessary that its insight be perfect, but its faith must be sure”11. This further strengthens the idea that faith anchored in Scripture offers greater stability than an experience that may be fleeting or subjective.
As a Hindu bhakta of the Lord, I found an advantage in following the Lord while keeping Muktuveda as the foundation of my bhakti—balancing both without prioritizing one at the expense of the other. This balance highlights the importance of navigating the complexities of discernment, where experience and scripture must work together in harmony, without relying solely on either. Interestingly, in the life of a common Hindu, scripture—even their own sectarian texts—rarely occupies as central a role as it does in other “Religions of the Book.”
When exploring lesser-known scholars influenced by Neo-Vedanta, one noteworthy figure is Algondavilli Govindacharya, who serves as an excellent example of balancing tradition and dialogue. Francis X. Clooney’s summary of Three Lectures12 introduces his work and portrays him as a model for interfaith dialogue and eclecticism. However, without engaging with Govindacharya’s other writings, Clooney’s assessment risks oversimplifying the depth of his contributions, particularly his firm grounding in the Sri Vaishnava tradition. While Govindacharya’s ability to integrate Eastern and Western traditions is commendable, his unwavering adherence to his foundational beliefs is perhaps a more nuanced example than Clooney’s framing might suggest.
From Clooney’s summary of Govindacharya’s approach, it is evident that learning from other traditions and engaging in dialogue are essential. However, these endeavors should not compromise one’s foundational beliefs. Dialogue and synthesis enrich spiritual understanding, but faith must remain anchored in scripture. Without this foundation, we risk losing stability while navigating spiritual complexities.
Conclusion:
The dialogue between different religious ideas is necessary and enriching, but it is crucial to keep our faith rooted in the scriptures that serve as the foundation of our tradition. This is the essential lesson I take away from the Srivaishnava tradition, as well as from the broader intellectual movements that have shaped modern Hindu thought. It is important to note that Clooney provides only a summary of the views in Govindacharya’s three lectures, not considering his other writings, which could offer deeper insights into his firm conviction in the Srivaishnava tradition.13 While Srivaishnavism may acknowledge personal experience as valuable evidence of the divine, it remains deeply rooted in scripture, particularly the Divyaprabandham, which is regarded as the Tamil Vedam14 and serves as the foundational text for the tradition.
Dayanand Bharati
Hyderabad, 26-11-2024
Notes
1 Though Raja Ram Mohan Roy with true spirit of reformation attempted to abolish Sati with the help of British administration and co-operation of Christian Missionaries, facing stiff opposition from the traditionalists who preferred it in the name of tradition, Prof. Arvind Sharma exposes the role of British that they have done it keeping only their commercial interest not with any spirit of reform their subject. Throughout their presence in India beginning from East India Company till the end of their Raj, they have done everything only keeping their commercial interest as they have done wherever they colonized other people. I give full information from Sharma:
…She {Indrani Chatterje} has documented the fact that, in pre-British India, the widows were supported through revenue-free land grants by the local rulers, Hindu or Muslim. When the East India Company took over the function of collecting revenue, it started cancelling all eleemosynary allotments of this kind to maximize its profits. The widows then committed Sati as a form of cultural protest, to which the British were as culturally insensitive as the Chinese are to Tibetan self-immolations. The fact that many of the widows were committing Sati in their middle age, many years after the passing away of their husbands, seems to confirm this. Therefore, the British finally decided to ban it. If these facts are kept in mind, then the abolition of Sati, far from being a humanitarian act, begins to look more and more like a cover-up of commercial rapacity.{Indrani Chatterjee, ‘Monastic Governmentality, Colonial Misogyny, and Postcolonial Amnesia in South Asia,’ History of the Present: a Journal of Critical History 3:1 (Spring 2013) pp. 57-98}— Arvind Sharma, The Ruler’s Gaze: A study of British Rule over India from a Saidian Perspective, Noida, HarperCollins Publishers, 2017, p. 101
2 R.F.Young and S. Jebanesan, THE BIBLE TREMBLED: THE HINDU-CHRISTIAN CONTROVERSIES OF NINETEENT-CENTURY CEYLON, Publications of the De Nobili Research Library, Edited by Gerhard Oberhammer, Institute of Indology, University of Vienna, Volume XXII, Vienna 1995.
3 ‘….that we use eclecticism to denote not patterns and processes of historical change, but a particular method of change—a method based on conscious selection—and the systems of criteria and classification that may (or may not) guide this method. To follow this distinction, syncretism names a historical process, while eclecticism names a method of interpretation and appropriation.— Brian A. Hatcher, Eclecticism and Modern Hindu Discourse, New York, Oxford University Press, 1999. p. 8
4 ‘… the title Raja was not hereditary but conferred on him [Ram Mohan Roy] by the Mughal emperor, as whose envoy he died on a visit to Britain….— J. L. Brockington, Sacred Thread, A Short history of Hinduism, Oxford, 1996 (1981, Edinburgh University Press). p.173
5 …By upholding Christian ethics against the prevailing indifference of the Bengali intelligentsia, and propagating the ‘Precepts of Jesus’ {Rajaram Mohan Roy} he became the first exponent of what Father Fallon called ‘non-Christian Christianity’. Certainly, he was the first intellectual product of cultural interaction between Hinduism and Christianity….— Shashi Joshi, Mission Religion and Caste, Shimla, Indian Institute of Advanced Study, 2010, p. 88
6 “Vedanta is the rationale of all religions. Without Vedanta every religion is superstition,” but with it, “everything becomes religion.” [Algondavilli Govindacharya, Three Lectures on Inspiration, Intrusion, and Ecstasy (Wesleyan Mission Press, 1897)Citations are from lecture 1, 11, citing Viekananda, the Madras Mail, February 6, 1897 p. 7] in Francis X. Clooney, SJ, The Future of Hindu-Christian Studies: A Theological Inquiry, New York, Routledge, 2017 , p. 54
7 D.G. Moses, Professor Radhakrishnan and a Parliament of Religions, Madra, CLS, 1950, p. 11
8 ibid. pp. 11-12
9 ibid. p. 11
10 Edward Scribner Ames, The Psychology of Religious Experience, Houghton Mifflin Company, located in Boston and New York, 1910, p. 314
(p. 314)
11. Moses, op. cit. p. 12
12 See my selected notes from the summary of The Three Lectures by Govindacharya at https://dayanandbharati.in/algondavilli-govindacharya/.
13 ‘If remembered today, it is generally for his still useful writings on the Srivaisnava tradition, The Divine Wisdom of the Dravida Saints (C. N. Press, 1902a) and The Holy Lives of the Alvars (G. T. A Press, 1902b). His later Mazdaism in the Light of Vishnuism (G. T. A. Press, 1913) is an explicitly comparative study that shows the curiosity and inquisitiveness of this Srivaisnava scholar.’—Clooney, op. cit. Notes, 27, p. 85.
14… New concepts like ubhaya Vedanta, that is, dual Vedas; the Tamil Vedas, that is, the Prabandham; and the Sankrit Vedas and prapatti were evolved, which were all inclusive….— Devotion and Dissent: The Biographical Process of Ramanuja in Shrivaishnava Tradition and History. Ranjeeta Dutta, pp 74-97, in, Vijaya Ramaswamy, (ed.) Devotion and Dissent in Indian History, New Delhi, Foundation Books, 2014, p. 89
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