Answer to Why is Madhvacharya not as famous as others like Shankaracharya or Ramanujacharya?

By Shri Kesava Rao Tadipatri

Art by Smt.Vani Rao, Baton Rouge,LA

https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Madhvacharya-not-as-famous-as-others-like-Shankaracharya-or-Ramanujacharya/answer/Kesava-Tadipatri Original QA link..

If number is the criterion for philosophical strength, then Christian philosophy is much stronger than Hindu philosophy. But that is ridiculous. Even more ridiculous thing is to claim that the effort of the founder of thousands of years ago is a factor for today's strength. Even more ridiculous is the claim that Madhvacharya is not famous because he opposed Shankaracharya. Then by the same token Shankaracharya should not have been famous because he opposed Buddha's philosophy.
It is strange that people come up with this kind of ridiculous reasoning. It does not matter that Jesus Christ had only few hundred or at the most few thousand followers and same with Islam. Today Christianity has highest following, followed by Islam. The only reason for the fame and number is the propagation methods followed by the followers over centuries. Jesus Christ did not travel across the whole world and today Christianity is followed across the world. If Shankaracharya traveled across India once, Madhvacharya traveled across the length and breadth of India twice. He composed 37 works to his credit, all in Sanskrit, and not in any vernacular language.
Shankaracharya adds his personal opinion "jagat mithyA", and "jIvo brahmaiva nAparaH", to the valid statement "Brahma satyaM". The first two are not true and not supported by Vedas. Also in modern world, it is impossible to sell these ideas. One way out was to introduce two kinds of truth vyAvahArika satya and pAramArthika satya. What is relevant until one goes to mukti - vyAvahArika satya. So, it is practically Dvaita. Still not enough. So what ended up happening?
Advaita started gobbling up every free-floating branches of Hinduism as Advaita and the root philosophy of Shankaracharya can be seen only in the small circles of scholars, who believed "Brahma satyaM, jaganmithyA jIvo brahmaiva nAparaH". Just as every "south-Indian" is labelled as "MadrAssi" and yet is not from Madras, similarly every Hindu started to be labeled as Advaitin, though he never followed Advaita.

For example, Vivekananda, who called himself Avaitin, never talked about the core principles of Advaita anywhere in any of his speeches. He talked a lot about human values and only general principles of spirituality, which had nothing to do with Advaita. Imagine he mentioning to the American audience in his first speech and telling them that the whole world is an illusion and every soul there is the Supreme God!
Further due to the inherent logical problems this Advaita started to have many flavors like -

"eka Jiva vAda" - (There is only one soul in this world. This is the core philosophy of Shankaracharya and even this single Jiva is none other than Paramatma. Today the Christians are criticizing this as demonic philosophy as it is most ridiculous to equate Jiva with God).
"bahu jIva vAda" - (There are many Jivas in this world and they are all Paramatma only. Bhaskara, seeing inherent problem with Shankaracharya philosophy went with AupAdhika bhedAbheda.)

Then came viShiShTAdvaita (Qualified Monism), but yet it never clubbed with Advaita and kept its own identity, even placing its objections against Advaita.
Still problems never ended. Then came many more segments of Advaita like "DvaitAdvaita, ShuddhAdvaita, Achintya bhedAbheda", who also maintained their own identity and never got clubbed with Advaita. The issues persisted and in addition, many flavors of neo-Advaita vedAnta came in, which mushroomed. Today most Advaitins don't even know what exactly is Advaita, but were happy to call themselves as Advaitins, as "anything can go with it".
Only ignorant ones started spreading that Madhvacharya made off hand comments without providing any support. Madhvacharya gave full evidence for his statements using the scriptures and so it was a perfectly logical proposition. Madhvas never made any efforts to propagate the philosophy and so Madhvacharya was not that famous as that was never the goal for MadhvAcharya or Madhvas.

The following classification is invalid -

a) Badhatma - The Atman that is bound in the cycle of rebirth and death

b) Nithyatma - The Atmas that were never bound and are ever free

c) Mukthatma - The Atmas that have attained liberation
If Atma is never bound, then that means that it is liberated. When this classification is itself invalid, the very claim that Madhvacharya borrowed 3rd category from Ramanuja is even more ridiculous. Further it is absurd to claim that any great founder of Vedic school had borrowed from another, as the ocean of Vedic, and ItihAsik and PurANik scriptures are right in front.

Madhvacharya's goal was not to refute Advaita. His goal was to refute wrong knowledge and he did not hesitate to refute the wrong points from 21 schools that were existent at that time, which included VishiShTAdvaita. Advaita is just one of them. Srisa Chandra Vasu, a prolific writer, though started as Advaitin, the moment he saw Madhvacharya's works, he got attracted and wrote Upanishad commentaries using Madhvacharya's works. Dr. B.N.K Sharma also showed the greatness of Madhvacharya to the western world.
Quote:

If a demonic person decides to resolve, why would god say that ... "No no... you are a demon and are supposed to be bound forever". The universe will not run if this were the case.

Unquote.
This is wrong projection. Prahlada was born among demons and Lord Narayana incarnated as Narasimha to save Prahlada and to kill Hiranyakashipu. Some ignorant people, who never read Madhvacharya's works spread this kind of false messages.
If a demonic person hates God so much that he never wants to go to God, then God lets him do that only. The true example will be that Margosa changing over to sugarcane is not possible. If it does happen, then it is not Margosa any more, but it is sugarcane.
Once again the only reason for the fame and number is the propagation methods followed by the followers over centuries. It has nothing to do with either the techniques used by the founder or the strength of philosophy.

Shri KriShNArpaNamastu !!