ABSTRACT
This chapter explores Vidyasagar's religious beliefs; the 'evidence' actually depends on Chandicharan's construction of Akhiladdin. It actually helps account for the Chandicharan's story about Akhiladdin appears in a chapter dedicated to Vidyasagar's 'religious views'. Akhiladdin provides the proof of Vidyasagar's religious beliefs, are meant to provide a kind of moral compass to guide Indian national aspiration. In the story of Akhiladdi's song, we see Chandicharan and other commentators have latched onto the Baul as one such prototype, an authentically Indian figure who could account for both the origin and the meaning of Vidyasagar's proverbial independence and humanism without any Western influences. In Karunasagar Vidyasagar, Indra Mitra repeats Chandicharan's story in order to suggest that Vidyasagar's fondness for Akhiladdin's song - so redolent of the devotee's ardent longing for God - proves he believed in God. Akhiladdin's song invoked a nameless deity dwelling at the heart of all experience, a figure who could be both mother and father, evanescent yet eternal.
