Arise Bharat

A thread by Aandolun Vivek Khatri Guru-Vanshi on X:

Let me offer you a truth many modern Hindus are unwilling to confront: Adi Shankaracharya didn’t “defeat” Buddhism. He absorbed it. He digested it. He aligned it. He didn’t burn its texts or anathematize its monks. He sat across the aisle, listened, understood, and then—outflanked it intellectually. He didn’t kill it. He made it irrelevant.

This wasn’t a quirk of history. This was a civilizational immune response, and one that RSS is attempting to repeat today—this time, not against Buddhism, but against Ambedkarism and caste fracture.

When Shankara arrived on the scene, Bharat wasn’t just debating whether Atman exists or not. It was slowly forgetting that such a question mattered. Vedic Dharma had become ritual theatre—caste-cloistered, spiritually exhausted, and intellectually hollow.

The common man found more clarity, ethics, and compassion in Buddhism’s simplicity than in the priest’s Sanskrit incantations that no one understood. Buddhism didn’t conquer with fire—it conquered with moral elegance and accessible ideas. And Shankara knew this could not be countered by ritual. It had to be countered by clarity.

So what did he do? He entered Buddhist strongholds—from Nalanda to Kanchi—not with rage, but with razor-sharp Advaita. He didn’t say: “You are wrong.” He said: “You’re almost right—but you’ve stopped halfway.” “You say the world is impermanent. I agree—it is Maya. But beyond that illusion is a permanent reality—Brahman—which you’ve chosen to ignore.” This wasn’t just debate. It was civilizational aikyam (Integration): neutralizing the rival by integrating its best into a larger framework.

And Shankara didn’t stop at metaphysics. He built mathas, gave philosophical unity to scattered sampradayas, restored Hindu legitimacy to ascetic orders, and framed Buddha himself as an avatar of Vishnu—ensuring that Buddhism, even as it faded, never became anti-Hindu. That’s the genius of our tradition: not to destroy rivals, but to domesticate them through digestion.

Now let’s confront the modern fracture: caste and Ambedkarism. Just as Buddhism rose by exposing the Brahmanical rot, Ambedkarism rose by exposing the Hindu caste rot. Not from the outside—but from within. Not with violence—but with intellectual clarity and moral outrage. And just like before, orthodox Hinduism failed to respond. It did then what it does now—defend rituals, blame the critic, retreat into purity, and try to bury the truth beneath silence or sanctity.

The Ambedkarite movement is not just a political rebellion. It is an epistemic rupture—a demand for justice, dignity, and moral accountability from within Dharma. But many traditionalists continue to treat it like an external attack. They’ve reduced their civilizational response to repeating shlokas, performing yagnas, and tweeting “Sanatan is eternal” when challenged. This is ritualism without strategy, and orthodoxy without understanding.

Enter the RSS. No, they are not philosophers of the caliber of Shankara. But they seem to understand something the orthodox torchbearers don’t: A civilization cannot be held together by excluding the wounded. It must digest their pain, address its cause, and reclaim them—before someone else weaponizes them. What Shankara did with Buddhist metaphysics, the RSS is trying to do with Dalit alienation. It may not be perfect. But it’s real.

RSS doesn’t reject Ambedkar. They reinterpret him. Not as a destroyer of Dharma, but as a surgeon who cut into its rot to save what was still alive. They highlight: His reverence for the Gita. His frustration with Brahminical rigidity, not Dharma itself. His vision of fraternity, duty, dignity—all deeply Dharmic values. They’ve made Ambedkar murti sthapana part of shakhas. They organize samrasta bhojans. They train Dalits as priests. They re-frame his legacy within the Hindu civilizational arc—not outside it.

Compare this to the orthodoxy. Many “Sanatani defenders” today: Call Ambedkar a traitor. Defend caste hierarchies as sacred, immutable, divine. Oppose Dalits becoming priests. Argue that social justice is a Marxist import. But here’s the bitter truth: They revere Shankara but reject his strategy.

Shankara didn’t defend the Veda by yelling “it is eternal!” He reconstructed it from the ruins of public perception. He didn’t cry about loss of temple influence—he built intellectual institutions that restored Dharma’s inner light. He didn’t quote Manusmriti at the Buddhists. He made them irrelevant by being wiser, subtler, and more complete.

Today’s orthodox, by contrast, defend the outer shell and ignore the inner essence. They don’t see the difference between civilizational digestion and cultural dilution.

The RSS is making a wager: That caste unity is more important than caste purity. That Ambedkar belongs to the Hindu civilizational story, even if he stood against its priesthood. That Dharma survives not by exclusion, but by intelligent absorption. And that is exactly the wager Shankara made, centuries ago.

This is not to say the RSS gets everything right. Their language is often clumsy. Their outreach often tokenistic. They’ve failed to produce a Gita or Upanishad-level articulation of social Dharma. But at the strategic level—they’re right. Because you cannot defeat the Ambedkarite fracture by out-citing the shastras. You can only do it by digesting the pain, owning the reform, and integrating the rebel. That’s what our ancestors did.

We must remember this: Hinduism is not a religion that survives through rigidity. It survives through absorption, contextualization, and reframing. That’s how we outlived Greeks, Shakas, Huns, Islam, and even Marx. Shankara didn’t kill Buddhism. He made it unnecessary. RSS is trying to do the same with caste-based rebellion. Only orthodoxy stands in the way.

To every modern-day Sanatani who thinks protecting Dharma means preserving 18th-century priestcraft and varna rituals: Ask yourself— Would Shankaracharya have sat silently in the face of mass alienation? Would he have defended hierarchy while Dharma was bleeding? Or would he have done what he actually did—enter the battlefield, absorb the best of the rival, and heal the fracture through Vedantic depth and institutional force? You already know the answer.

We don’t need temple-counting. We need idea warriors who can do for caste fracture what Shankara did for Buddhist drift. RSS is trying. The orthodoxy is resisting. The future of Dharma lies in who wins this civilizational argument. Digest. Don’t destroy. Integrate. Don’t ossify. – Absorb. Don’t exclude. This is not just strategy. This is our tradition. This is not about agreeing with everything Ambedkar said or everything the Sangh does. It’s about choosing—between the soul of Shankara and the shell of Sanatan. Between civilizational strategy and cultural suicide. Between digestion and decay. Choose wisely. Because history will not be kind to those who forgot how their ancestors won.