Can ancient wisdom be integrated with modern times?

My recent visit to Chinmaya Vishwavidyapeeth (University) near Kochi prompted much food for thought and reflection. The Vishwavidyapeeth was last year accorded the “deemed-to-be-university” status under the UGC Act. This recognition, provisional for five years under the “de novo” or new category, may be confirmed by the favourable recommendation of an experts’ committee. The university has two campuses, the Chinmaya Naada Bindu Gurukula (CNBG), Kolwan, near Pune, for the performing arts, and the Chinmaya Eswar Gurukula (CEG), at Veliyanad, Ernakulam, which I visited, devoted to Sanskrit, Indian Knowledge Traditions, and Indic wisdom.

The sthalamahatmaya (greatness of location) of this campus derives from the faith that it is the birthplace of Sankaracharya, arguably India’s greatest philosopher, also credited with organising and establishing much of what we know as Hinduism today. Though details of the great teacher’s life are sketchy, he is believed to have been born hereabouts in 788. The Adi Sankara Keerthimandapam, with a shrine and eight-story tower at Kalady, as well as a recently established university in his name, commemorate his advent. The other version of his birth story claims that he was born in the Melpazhoor Mana, his mother’s maternal home.

The 8-acre property, which houses the Adi Sankara Nilayam, was bought by the Chinmaya Mission in 1990, following a visit by Swami Chimayananda. The Swami had a strong sense that this was the actual birthplace of Sankaracharya. The local legends and narratives seemed to support such a theory. The Namboodiri Ilom (ancestral Brahmin house) built in the famed Kerala Nalukattu (four courtyards) style, was the Tharavadu or homestead of his mother’s family. According to local belief, this is where Sankara’s upanayana (investiture of the sacred thread) and vidyarambha (preliminary learning) also occurred. In addition to Vishwavidyapeeth, the property houses the Chinmaya International Foundation (CIF), which Swami Chinmayanada established to bridge ancient Indian knowledge and modern society. 

The painstaking restoration and renovation of the original structures were directed by Chinmayananda himself: “The building is not being changed; the very same foundation has been retained; even the walls have not been changed. Only the roof has been repaired. The building is as it was 1200 years ago. Everything is the same…the designs; the wooden carvings are all the same.” Verdant foliage and ancient trees shade a water pond and temple complex with shrines in traditional style dedicated to Ayappa, Rama, Krishna, Vettakkorumagan (Kirata Shiva, the family deity of Melpazhur Mana), Nagayakshi and Bhagavati. Though the new academic and administrative complex is noticeably uninspiring, even jarring, it is thankfully separated from the main complex. Apart from the birth room, where an eternal lamp to Sankara stays lighted, there is also a meditation hall and memorial to Swami Chinmayananda. The complex is worth a visit on its own, as is the nearby Pazhoor Siva temple on the banks of the Periyar.

The Vishwavidyapeeth has already started courses in Vedanta, grammar, philosophy, Yoga, Hindustani classical, Bharatanatyam, Indian theatre, plus programmes in contemporary studies, and management studies. More heartening are the young, highly motivated, and brilliant faculty members, conscientiously recruited by the mentors and trustees from all over India, after a rigorous selection process. I was told that only the competence of the candidates mattered, no extraneous considerations.

The Chinmaya Vishwavidyapeeth is an experiment, one that needs to be supported and encouraged. But a continuous process of thinking, reflection, and innovation are also needed to understand what the prayojana (ultimate objective) of such efforts are. Can ancient wisdom be integrated with modern life when they belong to fundamentally different, even contradictory, universes of meaning, value, belief, and thought? Modern life, as we know, is driven by technology, with even science increasingly taking a back seat. The danger in half-baked efforts at integration often produces experts neither in traditional texts and traditions, nor in modern knowledge systems. 

Often “tradition” means only dress and culinary codes: taking one’s shoes off before entering a classroom or drinking water without touching one’s lips to the tumbler. Similarly, expertise in traditional disciplines is often merely textual, with nitpicking on the meaning of particular words or splitting hairs over minute interpretations. Even knowledge of Sanskrit, though immensely useful, is not sufficient to train people in thinking creatively or critically. In fact, many don’t understand that the very texts and traditions that they consider as pre-existing were rediscovered quite recently. They were simply not available widely or part of any “national” discourse for centuries. The processes of mediation are, thus, hardly taken into account, let alone interrogated. Even awareness of how many of these issues were tackled in the nineteenth century is lacking.

Even when it comes to Sankara, how little we actually know! We are more reliably informed that a young Arab conqueror, born nearly a hundred years before, destroyed the last Hindu kingdom in Sindh. Sankara (788-820) does not mention that invader, Mohammad-bin-Qasim (695-715). It is as if they belonged to two totally different worlds. Instead, Sankara is credited with routing Buddhism, when the real threat, whether intellectual, cultural, or political, perhaps lay elsewhere. Where is the hermeneutics which can help connect them with each other and with what emerged in Europe and India after the 18th century? Only such an effort can really live up to Swami Chinmayananda’s dream of connecting “the past and present, East and West, science and spirituality, pundit and public.” 

The author is a poet and professor at JNU