Re:In defence of Dvaita.

[Guest guest]

Dear Friends,

 

I am a keen observer of the postings on Vishvamadhva Sangha and I

am a fairly newcomer to your(our?) list. I am not well versed in Madhva

Philosophy, in fact in any philosophy. I am not a practicing BrahmaNa. Yet

I am not ashamed to call myself belonging to Madhwa community. I have

missed out on learning about our tradition and philosophies as I am

pursuing my profession as a doctor which has taken a great part of my time.

Now I am at the fag-end of my career and as my family responsibilities have

greatly diminished, I find some spare time to read about our tradition and

observe the postings of the VMS and other lists. As far as my position is

concerned, I am at the same level as the second generation of Indians

growing abroad. I have the advantage of looking at our philosophical

tradition from the same point of view as of our newer generation because

both of us do not know much about it. In fact one of the prominent members

of VMS, after reading my postings mistook me for an youngster and sent me

a private email as to how to start reading about Madhwa Philosophy. He was

not wrong about my knowledge but he was very far away down regarding my

age.

Why I am saying all this? It is because the recent postings of VMS

with its arguments and counter arguments puts me off from the whole idea

for which VMS stands. I can very well see how our children are looking at

our arguments.

On one hand we all express our concern about our future generation

especially those who are growing outside India. I see for example postings

on - " Southern Baptists want to convert Hindus and send them to heaven! " ,

" The situation of Kannada in schools in Bangalore. " , " An open letter to the

Pope regarding the conversion of Hindus " . All these postings express our

genuine concern about our future. But suddenly we get postings on bitter

conflicts scooping down to the level of personal attacks. All these do not

look good to our younger generation and actually it drives them away to

other avenues.

We should not become fanatical about our belief system. Of all the

religions of the world, Hinduism is the only one which can tolerate and

recognise other's points of view. Why can we not keep it that way and

improve upon it by respecting the others' points of view with in our own

community? We should start keeping our house in order first before we set

to correct others. I feel that serious philosophical debates should be

carried out only on serious academic list, for example, on 'Dvaita list'

and keep everything simple on the VMS list.

 

Yours sincerely,

 

Rajaram Cavale.