RAS question
Madhvacharya (13th century) propounded:
Correct answer: (A) Dvaita (dualism) — God and soul are eternally separate.
Madhvacharya propounded Dvaita, the dualist Vedanta doctrine that God and individual souls are fundamentally and eternally distinct.
Explanation
Madhvacharya, also known as Madhva, is identified by Encyclopaedia Britannica as a Hindu philosopher and exponent of Dvaita, or dualism. The point of Dvaita is separation, not identity: it frames an eternal distinction between God, individual souls and matter, while Britannica states the doctrine as a basic difference in kind between God and individual souls. This is why option A is right. Madhva's position directly opposed Shankara's Advaita, which treated the individual self as fundamentally identical with the universal self and the Absolute. In RAS terms, this is the standard Vedanta mapping: Advaita is linked with Shankara, Vishishtadvaita with Ramanuja, and Dvaita with Madhva.
Why the other options are wrong
- (B) Vishishtadvaita is mapped in the standard Vedanta triad to Ramanuja, whereas the question asks for Madhvacharya's doctrine.
- (C) Buddhism is not the doctrine attributed here; Encyclopaedia Britannica identifies Madhva as a Hindu philosopher and exponent of Dvaita.
- (D) Advaita is the non-dualist philosophy of Shankara, and Madhva is described as setting out to refute it rather than propound it.
Concept
This tests the Bhakti-Vedanta tradition and the association of major acharyas with their philosophical schools. It recurs in RAS because medieval religious movements are often tested through founder-doctrine pairings.