Abhay Chauhan

Hindu, not a Political Hindu

[Abhay Chauhan @ItIsAbhay]

22 जनवरी 2024 को यदि प्राणप्रतिष्ठा हुई और राम लला की 1950 वाली स्वयंभू मूर्ति को *मुख्य* गर्भगृह में स्थापित न करके अन्य मूर्ति स्थापित की गई तो भाजपा अगले 10 वर्ष में रसातल चली जायेगी।

और धर्म का नया नेता उठेगा।

जय श्री राम।

[History Of Rajputana @KshatriyaItihas]

Kitne besharm log hai ye.

Police ne khud usko Ajayveer Singh bola hai, scammer ka phone number Ajayveer ke admit card me hai, Admit card par sign Ajay Gurjar ke naam se hai, Scammer ke phone number par Snapchat account Ajay Gurjar ke naam se hai and these people have the audacity to hit back on us?

[Abhay Chauhan @ItIsAbhay]

@PataalPuri कैसी चुनौती ज़रा बताओ मुझे? शिवपुराण गोरक्षनाथ भगवान को शिवावतार बताता है। गोरखवानी स्वयं भी शिवावतार ही बताती है। गोरखपंथी भी हरि-हर में अभेद मानते हैं।जब दूल्हा-दुल्हन राज़ी हैं फिर तुम किस गोरखपंथी से मिल आए जिसने ब्राह्मण धर्म के प्रति खुदको चुनौती बता दिया?

[Abhay Chauhan @ItIsAbhay]

@prthwii हाँ, इसकी दादी के ब्याह में वैदिक और पौराणिक मन्त्र भी नहीं पढ़े गए थे। इसके दादा ने सीधी रजिस्ट्री करवा ली थी दादी की, मैं उस रजिस्ट्री का गवाह था।

[Abhay Chauhan @ItIsAbhay]

@ParamjeetBerwal हाँ, इसकी दादी के ब्याह में वैदिक और पौराणिक मन्त्र भी नहीं पढ़े गए थे। इसके दादा ने सीधी रजिस्ट्री करवा ली थी दादी की, मैं उस रजिस्ट्री का गवाह था।

[Abhay Chauhan @ItIsAbhay]

@inderjeetbarak Low IQ and the fascination of making everything that happened between 1857 and 1947 about “आज़ादी की लड़ाई” go rather hand in hand.

[Abhay Chauhan @ItIsAbhay]

@HetPatel1369001 @shydev69 Sherlock?

[भूमिका @BhoomikaSpeaks]

If my being seen hand in hand with my brothers and sisters bothers you so much, maybe the problem isn’t where I’m seen.. it’s that I stand by my people, through every win and loss. And I’m proud of that. Play harder games nakul Dhull 🤏🏻

[M. Nageswara Rao IPS (Retired) @MNageswarRaoIPS]

He is absolutely right. Why should a Muslim love or respect a Hindu, whom his religious doctrines condemn as a Kafir?
Religion is the primary and permanent foundation of identity and unity for any group of people. Language, geography, and socio-economic status are distant, temporary secondary factors. When will Hindus understand this fundamental force that drives the world?

[Rajeev Kaul @LazyRaj2]

@dtptraffic @DelhiPolice
10s of DTC buses & 50+ trucks break down daily on Delhi Roads. Havent seen you putting out their photos or videos ?
Is this some kind of Mischief or trying to get an upper hand??
Reconsider putting out photos of Army Trucks unnecessarily, text advisory would do!

[Sajjan Bhadauria @SajjanBhad818]

@Yogesh_PSingh ताक़त हाथों में भी चाहिये यार 🌽 छीलने के लिये!

[Shiwam Singh Dodiya @Scion_of_Agni]

The ironic part is that he quotes D. Vajrācārya's Collection of Inscriptions but this jackass doesn't even read that Vajrācārya had already clarified that in many Inscriptions of his work the word Rājaputrā stood for Rājputs. But Doodhvaṃśī Nareśa forgot to read it.

[ 2/3 ]

[Grok @grok]

Ancient Buddhist texts such as the Mahaparinibbana Sutta record the Licchavis of Vaishali explicitly claiming Kshatriya status, equal to the Buddha, when seeking a share of his relics. Manusmriti classifies them as Vratya Kshatriyas. The later Nepal Licchavi dynasty claimed the same lineage and used Rajaputra in inscriptions for princes and envoys of the ruling house, a title meaning king's son consistent with Kshatriya royalty.

[M. Nageswara Rao IPS (Retired) @MNageswarRaoIPS]

Civilisations survive not by inheritance alone, but by deliberate acts of re-foundation. On this auspicious occasion of Adi Sankaracharya Jayanti (Vaisakha Shukla Panchami), I share a brief reflection from one of my forthcoming books. Read on: 👇

Adi Sankaracharya and the Institutional Armour of Hindu Civilisation

If Vyasa furnished Hindu civilisation with its metaphysical and narrative foundations, Adi Sankaracharya supplied the institutional structures that enabled those foundations to endure. His appearance in the early medieval period coincided with a moment of acute internal vulnerability. Ritual communities had grown provincial, sectarian rivalries were intensifying, philosophical schools were drifting into isolation, and the civilisation’s intellectual unity was weakening. Though external invasions had not yet reached their full force, Hindu civilisation was losing its internal cohesion and, with it, its long-term resilience. Adi Sankaracharya’s intervention must therefore be understood not as routine philosophical innovation, but as a response to an emerging civilisational crisis.

His achievement was not confined to the articulation of Advaita Vedanta. His lasting contribution lay in constructing a decentralised yet coherent institutional framework capable of transmitting doctrine, disciplining monastic life, coordinating scholastic authority, and knitting together the diverse ritual and philosophical worlds Hindu civilisation contained. Without such institutional consolidation, Vyasa’s textual and metaphysical architecture might have diffused, rendering it susceptible to erosion.

What follows analyses Sankara’s intervention in sequential layers: first, the metaphysical adjudication that established his authority; second, the reconstitution of Hindu monastic institutions; third, the integration of martial preparedness into ascetic life; and finally, the endurance of these structures under centuries of political catastrophe.

1. Internal Fragmentation and the Limits of Philosophical Pluralism

Sankara recognised that ideas do not survive without institutions to guard, interpret, and transmit them. Philosophy cannot protect itself from political disruption; scriptures cannot defend their own continuity; metaphysics cannot withstand organised external aggression. By the time of his emergence, Hindu philosophical life—though intellectually rich—had become dangerously dispersed. Competing schools developed in relative isolation, ritual communities hardened into localisms, and monastic authority was increasingly fragmented. The problem was not diversity as such, but the absence of a unifying metaphysical and institutional centre capable of integrating plurality without dissolving coherence. For Hindu civilisation to be institutionally rebuilt, its intellectual authority first had to be decisively clarified.

2. Sankara and the Philosophical Resolution of the Buddhist Challenge

One of Sankara’s most consequential yet insufficiently theorised civilisational interventions lay in his systematic engagement with Buddhism at the level of first principles. By the early medieval period, Buddhist traditions had achieved significant regional and institutional prominence, supported in part by royal patronage and monastic networks. Yet this prominence remained circumscribed and did not translate into civilisational primacy. Its pramāṇa-theory and dialectical methods, though influential within specific scholastic settings, remained comparatively limited in scope, while the Hindu śāstric traditions preserved a more comprehensive and enduring metaphysical and epistemic framework. The deeper structures of civilisational continuity—ritual practice, social organisation, and scriptural transmission—continued to be anchored in the Vedic order. Buddhism’s visibility within elite circles thus coexisted with, rather than displaced, the broader and more resilient foundations of Hindu civilisation.

Sankara’s engagement with Buddhism proceeded not through sectarian polemic, but through disciplined philosophical reasoning within the shared framework of śāstric debate (vāda). Accepting the demands of pramāṇa-consistency, inferential rigor, and dialectical accountability, he addressed central Buddhist positions—articulated across diverse schools such as Madhyamaka and Yogācāra—on their own terms. His method was not merely refutational but diagnostic: he examined whether the epistemic and soteriological ambitions of these systems could be coherently sustained within their own ontological commitments.

A central point of tension arises at the level of epistemology. If all cognitions are strictly momentary (kṣaṇika) and no enduring knower (pramātṛ) is admitted, the continuity required for memory (smṛti), recognition (pratyabhijñā), and cumulative knowledge becomes difficult to account for. Buddhist attempts to address this through causal continuity (santāna) explain succession but do not fully secure identity across time, leaving unresolved the basis upon which knowledge can be said to persist, accumulate, or belong to a subject in any robust sense.

Related tensions appear at the level of ontology. The denial of enduring selfhood (anātman) and the critique of intrinsic reality (niḥsvabhāvatā), while philosophically powerful in dismantling naïve essentialism, complicate the grounding of agency, moral responsibility, and liberation. If the subject is reducible to a transient aggregate (skandha), the coherence of bondage and release becomes difficult to stabilise; if all phenomena are devoid of intrinsic reality, the status of knowledge as disclosing anything determinate becomes philosophically delicate. In this respect, the internal ambitions of Buddhist thought—to secure valid knowledge, ethical continuity, and liberation—press against the limits imposed by its own foundational theses.

Sankara’s Advaita Vedanta responds to these tensions by systematically articulating—on the basis of the Upanishads—a non-dual framework that integrates epistemology and ontology. Without abandoning the discipline of pramāṇa, it posits a non-dual substratum (Brahman) as the necessary condition for the possibility of knowledge, continuity, and liberation. The empirical world (vyavahāra) is neither dismissed nor absolutised; it is situated within a dependent order whose intelligibility is grounded in an underlying non-dual reality. This allows Advaita to preserve the validity of cognition, the coherence of ethical life, and the meaningfulness of liberation, while avoiding the instabilities that arise when these are grounded in strictly momentary or non-substantial ontologies.

Sankara engaged Buddhism at the level of first principles by exposing tensions within its epistemological and metaphysical commitments. His critique did not eliminate Buddhism as a historical tradition, but it significantly destabilised its standing within the shared śāstric arena by undermining its ability to coherently ground knowledge, agency, and liberation on its own terms. This intellectual destabilisation rendered the tradition structurally vulnerable, diminishing its capacity to withstand subsequent socio-political shocks. It is within this context of weakened philosophical and institutional resilience that the later processes of decline must be situated.

Buddhism’s subsequent decline in India was not monocausal but arose from a conjunction of internal attenuation and external coercion. Within the shared śāstric intellectual arena, it progressively forfeited philosophical authority and competitive vitality, thereby eroding its institutional coherence and social embeddedness. Externally, its normative commitment to pacific ahiṃsā did not translate into durable structures of political sovereignty or organised military defence. Consequently, during the protracted centuries of Islamic invasions and rule—marked by systematic iconoclasm and the destruction of monastic centres—Buddhist institutions and populations proved especially vulnerable. Monasteries were destroyed, and Buddhists were either converted to Islam or eliminated under conditions of sustained coercion and violence. Although Hindu communities suffered in equal measure, their philosophical traditions did not absolutise pacific ahiṃsā; rather, they sanctioned the legitimacy of force and violence in the protection of self, society, and dharma. This, in conjunction with a comparatively broader social base and a decentralised institutional fabric, enabled more effective resistance and greater civilisational continuity. The residual survival of Buddhism in India was entirely contingent upon the protection and patronage extended within Hindu society.

With the reaffirmation of Vedic philosophical authority in a coherent and systematic form, the conditions were created for the reconstitution of Hindu monastic and pedagogical authority under Sankara’s leadership.

3. The Reconstitution of Hindu Monastic Authority: Mathas and the Dasanami Order

Sankara translated metaphysical clarity into institutional form. His four monastic centres—Sringeri, Puri, Dwaraka, and Jyotirmath—were not merely theological schools but civilisational anchors. Their geographic distribution created a four-cornered civilisational grid through which no region was left outside the ambit of a shared intellectual core.

These Mathas stabilised monastic training, formalised lineage transmission, coordinated scholastic authority, and prevented Hindu philosophical life from disintegrating into mutually isolated provincial traditions. Each Matha developed regional affinities and pedagogical specialisations, yet all remained united by a common doctrinal foundation. In this respect, Sankara did institutionally what Vyasa had done textually: he created unity without suppressing genuine plurality.

One of his most decisive contributions was the organisation of the Dasanami order. By codifying ten monastic appellations and formalising rules of conduct, initiation, and hierarchy, he gave Hindu monasticism a stable internal identity recognisable across the subcontinent. The Dasanamis became custodians of metaphysical lineage, guardians of ritual continuity, and repositories of canonical authority—providing a civilisational backbone without which Hindu intellectual life might have remained fragmented and vulnerable.

4. Śāstra (शास्त्र) and Śastra (शस्त्र): Akhadas and the Militarisation of Ascetic Defence

By institutionalising the fusion of śāstra (authoritative knowledge) and śastra (disciplined martial force), Sankara ensured that Hindu ascetic institutions would not remain philosophically refined yet materially defenceless. Equally significant was his role in reorganising the Akhadas—martial orders of ascetics combining spiritual discipline with military training. In the centuries marked by Islamic iconoclasm and political upheaval, these Akhadas formed the most important indigenous defensive network available to Hindu civilisation. They protected temples, defended pilgrimage routes, accompanied merchant caravans, and safeguarded sacred sites.

Their existence reflects Sankaracharya’s clear understanding that spiritual authority and physical security cannot be separated. A civilisation whose institutions cannot defend themselves will eventually lose both their knowledge systems and their freedom. By institutionalising the fusion of śāstra and śastra—wisdom and disciplined power—Sankara ensured that Hindu civilisation would not remain intellectually sophisticated yet militarily defenceless.

5. Institutional Survival Under Political Catastrophe

Sankara’s broader civilisational mission extended beyond philosophy and monastic order. Through extensive travels, public debates, reconciliation of sectarian rivalries, and reorganisation of ritual practice, he forged among disparate Hindu communities a shared consciousness of belonging to a single civilisation defined not by political borders but by a unified metaphysical tradition. This civilisational self-recognition later formed the psychological foundation of resistance to external conquest.

During the long era of Islamic invasions, iconoclasm, systematic violence and demographic destruction, Hindu civilisation survived through two parallel forms of resilience. Hindu kingdoms—Rajput, Chola, Hoysala, Kakatiya, Vijayanagara, Ahom, Gajapati, Maratha, and all others—fought sustained wars that prevented complete demographic erasure across vast regions. Yet political power alone was never sufficient. When kingdoms fell or borders collapsed, it was the non-territorial institutional network consolidated by Sankara—Mathas, Akhadas, temples, and scholarly lineages—that preserved texts, rituals, sacred spaces, and civilisational memory.

Together, armed resistance by Hindu polities and the institutional durability supplied by Sankara’s reforms enabled Hindu civilisation to withstand pressures that annihilated many other ancient civilisations, preserving it as a living organism rather than an archaeological memory.

6. Adi Sankaracharya as the Second Architect of Hindu Civilisation

Through Sankara, Hindu civilisation gained not only philosophical clarity but geographic articulation, institutional durability, martial preparedness, and a sense of collective embodiment. His reforms were not merely intellectual; they were technologies of civilisational survival. In the long arc of Hindu history, few figures contributed more to preserving the civilisation as a living, self-reproducing order.

In this sense, Vyasa and Sankaracharya stand as complementary architects. Vyasa articulated the metaphysical foundations; Sankara built the institutional armature. Vyasa gave Hindu civilisation its mind; Sankaracharya gave it the organisational body capable of withstanding centuries of upheaval.

Happy #adishankaracharyajayanti.
#ShankaraJayanti
#SankaraJayanti

[M. Nageswara Rao IPS (Retired) @MNageswarRaoIPS]

For all RW slaves!

[Abhay Chauhan @ItIsAbhay]

@Mrsinha Take a deep breath and realise that you are not offended but Mr Sinha wants you to be so he keeps getting paid.

[Abhay Chauhan @ItIsAbhay]

@INCIndia These incompetent morons will make sure that Modi wins yet again. 55 years in a political family and this nincompoop Rahul doesn’t understand this paints his own image as a joker and an unserious misfit in politics. Doesn’t yet realise that insults don’t sell in Indian politics.

[idrw @idrwalerts]

PNS Hunain (F-273) has a displacement of approximately 2,600 tonnes and Collision likely happened with INS Kolkata or sister ship (Still Pending Verification ) which has a 7,400 t displacement nearly 3 times more in size and strength.

What was CO of PNS Hunain thinking ? Did he watch too much of latest AI Slop Propaganda of DGISPR ?

[Yashasvī Pratāp @yashasvipratap]

A satirical dialogue by Bharatendu Harishchandra on "Reform" Movements and Sanskritisation published in November 1873.

Found it funny, I guess you would too...

[Ashutosh Ujjwal @Ashutoshujjwall]

फ़मफ़्या ये है कि फ़रकार के इफ़ फ़ैफ़ले फ़े कैफ़्लेफ़ इंडिया का फ़पना फ़त्यानाफ़ हो जाएगा।

[KadwaSach @kadwasachindia]

Stan Swamy - charged with UAPA for engaging in naxal activity and aiding Koregaon violence

Saibaba - UAPA for aiding naxal activity

Gulfisha/Umar/Sharjeel - Delhi Riots conspiracy

Your heart bleeds for the wrong side Ms Swara. Sad to see years of national service by your father couldn’t instil and iota of allegiance to this country in you.

You’re a case study.