Advantages for Advaita

There was a time when teachers of Philosophy said that true Indian thought is basically Advaita supposed to be thought of Upanishads. Advaita was made to look like National Philosophy of India! They also sent a silent, yet powerful message that other Schools of thought are based on Theology, not pure philosophy, modelling on Western Philosophies.

While most of such dialogues happened outside India in English, local religious heads of Vaishnava thought were not aware of its consequences later on young minds, who were for a large part English educated and trying to move abroad for various reasons. Gurus ranging from Ramana till Chinmayananda, preached Gita and Upanishads as pure Advaita Vedanta while others are ‘Sects’ which spread locally! Later, most among English knowing students and scholars agreed, as maximum number of Books on advaita were readily available than other two schools, which confined to Kannada and Tamil. 

Since we do not know exactly when Shankaracharya’s Advaita trickled across the subcontinent, it was possible through Christian Missionaries like Maxmuller. Originally, they made a study of Buddhist thought and Advaita but ignored Vaishnava schools like that of Ramanuja- Madhvacharya for reasons best known to them! Hence there continued a wider but not accurate information carried through English language. This again received a massive support from the likes of Dr S Radhakrishnan, Prof. M Hiriyanna and a gamut of their students across India. While Dvaita remained in Karnataka and Ramanuja thought in Tamil Nadu.