Dharma Yudh: The BJP vs the Shankaracharyas and the Battle for Hinduism

 

Dharma Yudh: The BJP vs the Shankaracharyas and the Battle for Hinduism

Hindi Version: https://rakeshinsightfulgaze.blogspot.com/2026/01/blog-post_22.html

What India is witnessing today is a Dharma Yudh, but not the one the ruling establishment wants the country to believe in. This is not a war to protect faith or revive Sanatan values. This is a confrontation between the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Shankaracharyas, a battle over who gets to define Hinduism in public life.

For the first time in years, the mask has slipped.

At the center of this confrontation stand Narendra Modi, Amit Shah, and Yogi Adityanath, leaders who rose to power by weaponizing religious sentiment and are now discovering that religion does not automatically submit to political authority.

For over a decade, pliable godmen, television gurus, and opportunistic religious figures helped convert faith into votes. Hinduism was packaged, simplified, and broadcast as spectacle. But the Shankaracharyas are not political freelancers. They are custodians of a civilizational tradition that predates the modern Indian state. And when they refused to play along, the BJP chose confrontation.

The immediate flashpoint was the inauguration of the Ram Mandir.

Several Shankaracharyas declined to participate, citing a principle that should not have been controversial within Sanatan Dharma: a half-built temple cannot be consecrated as the abode of the divine. This was not a political objection. It was orthodox Hindu theology. In Hindu tradition, the divine is not summoned for election calendars, television visuals, or political deadlines.

That refusal ignited the Dharma Yudh.

The BJP did not respond with humility, dialogue, or theological engagement. It responded with aggression. Through compliant media and party surrogates, it began questioning the religious legitimacy of the Shankaracharyas themselves, the same figures it had earlier sought for validation. This was an extraordinary escalation: a political party attempting to delegitimize centuries-old religious institutions because they refused to endorse a political spectacle.

This was not devotion. It was domination. From Ritual Dispute to Moral Indictment

The confrontation escalated further when one Shankaracharya went beyond ritual disagreement and publicly accused the Prime Minister of dishonesty toward Hindu society.

The accusation was specific. Promises made repeatedly on issues such as cow slaughter and broader religious commitments, according to the charge, were used to mobilize Hindu sentiment and then quietly abandoned once power was secured. What was presented as devotion, the accusation suggested, was transactional politics.

At that moment, the conflict crossed a line.

This was no longer about ceremonies or symbolism. It became an accusation of betrayal of faith being used as a ladder to power and discarded afterward.

Since then, rumors and unverified allegations have circulated within political and religious circles that elements of the Uttar Pradesh administration attempted to intimidate or endanger one of the Shankaracharyas using state machinery. These claims have not been proven in court and must be treated with caution. But their persistence, combined with the absence of transparent clarification, has deepened fear and distrust.

In a functioning democracy, even such allegations would trigger immediate scrutiny and restraint. Instead, the dominant response has been silence, denial, or media deflection.

That silence matters.

When religious leaders accuse political power of deceit, and the state’s response is pressure real or perceived the boundary between governance and coercion begins to erode. Even the perception that religious authority can be punished for dissent chills the space between faith and power.

This is why this Dharma Yudh cannot be dismissed as a personality clash.

It reflects a deeper ideological problem. The BJP’s version of Hindutva demands obedience, not conscience. It seeks rituals without rules, religion without restraint, and gods without independent guardians. Faith is welcome only so long as it kneels.

The Shankaracharyas, for all their conservatism and contradictions, represent a line that the Indian state has rarely crossed before: religious authority that does not originate from political power.

This is not a battle between belief and disbelief. It is a battle between religion and political appropriation.

Let us be clear: the Shankaracharyas are not flawless. Their selective moral vision, resistance to reform, and narrow focus on certain issues deserve criticism. But flawed religious authority is still preferable to counterfeit moral authority manufactured by the state.

False Hindutva is more dangerous than orthodox conservatism.

When politicians claim spiritual supremacy without spiritual discipline, religion collapses into spectacle. When the media is deployed to attack religious institutions on command, faith becomes propaganda. Sanatan Dharma, one of the world’s most plural and philosophically layered traditions, is flattened into slogans and staged devotion.

This is how civilizations hollow out.

The BJP assumed religion could be controlled indefinitely. The Shankaracharyas’ resistance has exposed that assumption as arrogance. Elections may grant power, but they do not confer spiritual legitimacy. Political dominance does not rewrite scripture.

That is why this confrontation matters.

Not because the Shankaracharyas are flawless, they are not, but because the moment a state begins to treat religious dissent as treason, democracy stops being a system of balance and becomes a system of obedience. When power refuses to tolerate moral resistance, it no longer governs; it dominates.

In this Dharma Yudh, the question is no longer who controls the narrative, the media, or the spectacle.

The question is whether India will allow power to exist without restraint, unchecked by tradition, ethics, or conscience and whether Sanatan Dharma will survive political capture by those who claim to defend it while hollowing it out from within.

If religion is reduced to an extension of the state, and the state is allowed to silence faith that refuses submission, then this battle is already lost not just for Hinduism, but for the republic itself.

Sanatan Dharma has survived emperors, colonizers, and centuries of upheaval because it resisted central control. If it falls now, it will not be because of external enemies, but because it was surrendered from within by two men who confuse power with virtue and dominance with devotion.

That is the real danger of this Dharma Yudh.

And that is why false Hindutva must be confronted not later, not cautiously, but now before power finishes what it has already begun: turning faith into a tool, dissent into betrayal, and democracy into a performance.