Vijnanabhiksu: Unifying Hinduism And Indian History

All the philosophers mentioned above attempt to explore Indian philosophy. They all employ different approaches to the issue of the Hindu religion and unity among Indians. However, more has to be done to explore evident realities that underlie the unity of Hinduism, as well as the Indian history. Failure of the philosophers to agree on these two issues leaves a gap to be explored by future scholars of Indian philosophy and history.
The book, Unifying Hinduism, seeks to establish the factors and reality underlying the questions raised above. The second objective of the book is to evaluate the ideologies of a 16th century analyst called Vijnanabhiksu (Nicholson, 2010). Different theorists and scholars have assessed his work, albeit from different
He compares Mahatma Gandhi and Swami Vivekananda. Vivekananda offered ideologies that defended the West. He recognized that India’s levels and reality of poverty could not be ignored. The problem was due to India’s retrogressive spiritual beliefs that deterred economic development. He proposes that the most effective way is to modernize, rather than violating the beliefs of the Indians (Raghuramaraju, 2006). He recognizes that there is a need to adopt material civilization to create employment for the poor. He also believes that Indians have a lot that it ought to learn from their Western counterparts, especially in the economic aspect. However, he proposes that the West should also learn about the basics of the Hindu religion (Raghuramaraju, 2006, pp.47). This mutual balance is the best way to create a beneficial association where the West can bring economic growth to the East and the latter can offer religious knowledge to the former. This ideology highly contradicts Mahatma Gandhi’s approach, which denies that religion and materialism can ever be integrated harmoniously. Mahatma proposes that the features of the materialism and civilization portrayed by the West are a replacement of God’s characteristics (Raghuramaraju, 2007, p. 51). Materialism, according to Mahatma, oppressed both the Westerns and communities out of the Western World. Conspicuously, Mahatma associates materialism with the West, and religion with the East, just like Vivekananda. They only differ on Mahatma’s rejection to adopt materialism in