16 - Devotion and Dissent in Narayana Guru

Summary

In the history of India, particularly of South India, we see the remarkable life and teachings of Narayana Guru. He confronted the course of history and shook the conscience of the very people who had been exercising the worst kind of social iniquity on the authority of an assumed caste superiority. He boldly encountered the orthodoxy and performed the miracle of arousing self-esteem among the downtrodden. Out of the clutches of an age-old custom, he brought out a new civilization, which is fighting for equality of opportunity and social justice in its own right even today.

Narayana Guru was one of the epoch-making seers of the modern era, who has dynamically effected a radical change in the social, moral and spiritual value–visions and behavioural patterns of his contemporaries in India.

In this essay, an earnest attempt is made to focus on the originality and scientific validity of the Vedantic teachings of Narayana Guru, by examining how he looked at religious differences and casteism, exploring possibilities of impacting discourses on religion and caste, in order to animate processes to undermine religious feuds and caste prejudices. The Guru's religious and social reform activities were an outright application of his philosophy of ‘Oneness of Consciousness’ (according to Narayana Guru – the ultimate reality is arivu or consciousness). But this real causal force behind them is not observed by the historians and people of India.