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Vada in Theory and Practice: Studies in Debates, Dialogues and Discussions in Indian Intellectual Discourses c5.s13: Vāda Internalized

Vāda in Theory and Practice: Studies in Debates, Dialogues and Discussions in Indian Intellectual Discourses c5.s13

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English

Vāda Internalized

c5.s13.1

A person debates with himself, the debates and ideological conflicts going on in the society are reflected in his psyche. He/she creates an opponent and a respondent within and his/her mind becomes a locale of debate. Hanumān’s contemplations during his search for Sītā in Laṅkā bring out the queries and the dichotomies that the society of his times was undergoing through, so that he appears to be debating with himself. Rāma in *Uttararāmacaritam* of Bhavabhūti debates with himself and his inner conflicts present premonition of Hamlet’s speculations in Shakespeare. Presenting an analysis of the debate between Janaka and Sulabhā (see Chap. 2), Arindam Chakrabarti points out that “even public dialogues happen simultaneously inside each interlocutor’s body”. This may be the body of a particular “cultural ethos” as well as a “conversation of cultures”⁶⁸ so that the account of the debates that have occurred in the practical world could be viewed as a dramatized narrative of an internal event.

c5.s13.2

Mādhava in his *Śaṅkaradigvijaya* describes a debate between Bādarāyaṇa and Śaṅkarācārya. The former wants to test the scholarship of the *bhāṣyakāra* and comes to discuss the interpretations of various aphorisms of his own text with Śaṅkara in disguise. The legend seems to have its genesis in *Śāṅkarabhāṣya* itself, as in some of the places, Śaṅkarācārya argues with the author of *Brahmasūtra*.

c5.s13.3

*Nyāyakusumāñjali* of Udayana is a text on debate about the existence of God. At the outset of his brilliant exposition, Udayana proceeds with the basic premise that the existence of a God in some form or the other is accepted in all philosophical schools and faiths. Then what is the need for a debate? Udayana says that *vāda* on God after considerations of the doubts and counter-arguments will lead to *manana* (contemplation) and this *manana* will become an *upāsanā* (worship of God) for me.⁶⁹

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