ABSTRACT
This chapter compares briefly fundamental characteristics of Caitanya Vaiṣṇava religious and social values with what seem to be typical characteristics of the Hindu or Hindutva jāgaraṇa. It offers provisional indications of what we might expect to be typical religio-political relationships to the Hindutva awakening by the respective sampradāyas. The chapter presents two partially contrasting sets of observations of how Caitanya Vaiṣṇavas in the early 1990s were reacting to the pan-Hindu jāgara?a and in particular to the religio-political campaign to demolish a Muslim mosque at the fabled janma-bhūmi of Rāma in Ayodhya. Caitanya Vaiṣṇavas, like many other communities of devotees, strive to maintain a heightened state of affection and relatively egalitarian solidarity with fellow devotees, especially within congregational gatherings. Caitanya Vaiṣṇavas, as we have seen, stress the idyllic Kṛṣṇa—as baby, little boy, amorous youth—rather than Kṛṣṇa as powerful adult warrior-statesman of the Mahabharata epic or almighty Lord of Vaikuṇṭha heaven.
