Why Sham Lal Chose Not To Critique Adi Shankara by Kailash Vajpeyi

Once Sham Lal was asked if he would write for The Speaking Tree column. He declined, saying: "I can critique Tagore but not Adi Shankara". Did this mean that Sham Lal was an atheist? Or was it because he could go as far as Tagore and no farther? Wrong on both counts. For Sham Lal concluded his reply with: "Who am I to critique Shankara?"
Very few know that Sham Lal was well versed in Sanskritic tradition and philosophy, but he never wrote on those subjects. His critique was directed at western traditions and philosophies — but he could not critique Shankara because he felt that since Shankara's advaita was the last word, it would be foolhardy to critique it. For Shankara's Bhaja Govindam epitomises his complete surrender to achieve salvation: "Bhaja Govindam, Bhaja Govindam, Bhaja Govindam Moodamathe..."
I knew Sham Lal ever since his association with The Times of India. Srikant Verma and I would go to him and discuss a number of issues related to art, literature and philosophy — logical positivism, dialectical materialism, Rousseau's 'Back to Nature', and existentialism. These topics fascinated Sham Lal and we would bombard him with questions. He was equally conversant with the various literary movements like symbolists and symbolism inspired by Mallarme, Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Valery, the Imagist movement of Hilda Dolittle, Black Mountain poets of Switzerland and the Telquel movement that deals with the deconstructionist theory of Derrida. These have inspired critics worldwide.
As far as Shankara's philo-sophy of non-dualism was concerned, Sham Lal always remained silent. Shankara has written commentaries on the Brahma Sutra of Badarayan, the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita — the three collectively known as Prasthan Trayi in the Indic philosophic tradition. Shankara's doctrine of monism tells us that the ultimate principle is integral or unsplit, that is, abheda — this principle alone has real existence and all phenomena are illusive.
Shankara did not accept the concept of bheda or dualism. Sham Lal repeatedly said that Shankara represents the higher mark of Hindu thought; he is commentator par excellence and his commentaries on Prasthan Trayi — which are termed as Vedanta — are supreme expositions of a superb mind. Shankara founded an extremely subtle metaphysical theory.
I remember an evening when Sham Lal took me to a close-knit discussion (an 'upanishad') organised by his publisher Shanti Prasad Jain, where poet Ramdhari Singh Dinkar and a Jain philosopher were present. Dinkar raised a question: Wasn't Shankara basically inspired by Buddhism and Islam? So strong is the evidence of Buddhism in his over-prostration that it seems he had decided to establish a mosaic of traditional Indic thought, he said. Sham Lal intervened and said that it is basically pointless to give any kind of comment on Shankara's philosophy that the philosopher propounded as 'non-otherness'.
It is an interesting coincidence that after some 40 years of study, His Holiness the Dalai Lama has come out with a book titled The Universe is a Single Atom. Wasn't this what Shankara said more than a century ago? Little wonder that Sham Lal never ever said anything in reference to Advaita Vedanta. Which is why when he was asked if he would write for this column, he abjured the very thought.