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Kandukuri Vīreśaliṅgam

A figure from the books

#KandukuriVireshalingam

Kandukuri Vīreśaliṅgam · 1848–1919

In the books · 1 chapter

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Who this is

Philosophy (Advaita Vedānta), Malayalam and Sanskrit poetry, and the quietest and most consequential religious revolution in modern Indian history.

“A man forbidden to enter temples lifted a stone out of a river and called it Shiva; when the priests objected, he said he had installed an Ezhava Shiva — and within fifty years the state that had measured human pollution in feet threw open its temple doors to everyone.”
— The Great Indians, Ch. 185

The big idea, in the book's words:

“He took Advaita — the doctrine that all being is one Self — off the bookshelf and enforced it. If all is one, caste is not merely cruel; it is a factual error. So he consecrated temples nobody had authorized, opened them to everybody, and gave Kerala a one-line constitution: one caste, one religion, one God for man.”
— The Great Indians, Ch. 185

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