ABSTRACT
This chapter is written in the form of the differences in and agreements on ideas related to the Vedanta between Narayana Guru and his disciple Nataraja Guru. The chapter turns on the difference in their respective attitude towards the Bhagavad Gita as a philosophical exegesis for Monism or Advaita. Narayana Guru’s reservations toward the Gita stem from the fact that it meets with a violent conclusion (the battle of Mahabharata), which he found it difficult to endorse as a means for discursive knowledge is met with silence in the interpretations of his disciple. Notwithstanding the masterly effort by Sundar Sarukkai (see Chapter 5) to philosophise his teacher’s spiritual gleanings, Nataraja Guru fails to register significance of the break with theistic Monism that Narayana Guru achieved in his negative response to the Gita as a philosophical text. In the larger picture, the chapter tries to argue that this break also signifies his break with the Brahminical social order or the caste system and the initial steps taken towards the composition of a multitude, which would take its place in a future nation.
