Unifying Hinduism: Philosophy and Identity in Indian Intellectual History

Drawing on the writings of philosophers from late medieval and early modern traditions--including Vijnanabhiksu, Madhava, and Madhusudana Sarasvati--Andrew J. Nicholson shows how influential thinkers portrayed Vedanta philosophy as the ultimate unifier of diverse belief systems. This project paved the way for the work of later Hindu reformers, such as Vivekananda, Radhakrishnan, and Gandhi, whose teachings promoted the notion that all world religions belong to a single spiritual unity. In his study, Nicholson also critiques the way in which Eurocentric concepts--like monism and dualism, idealism and realism, theism and atheism, and orthodoxy and heterodoxy--have come to dominate modern discourses on Indian philosophy.