(a) Analyze the contributions of Acharya Triumvirate to Indian Vedanta. (20 marks) (b) Compare and contrast the position of Hindu…

(a) Acharya Triumvirate. The three great acharyas — Shankara (c. 788–820), Ramanuja (c. 1017–1137) and Madhva (c. 1238–1317) — reshaped Vedanta by making the Brahman–jiva relation the axis of philosophy, ethics and social access, each leaving commentaries on the Brahmasutras and lasting monastic institutions (Shankara’s four mathas at Sringeri, Puri, Dwaraka and Badrinath; Ramanuja’s Srirangam; Madhva’s Udupi). Shankara’s Advaita posited non-dual Brahman, treated the world as maya, and made moksha attainable through jnana; this elevated scriptural authority and rational discrimination but tended to locate liberation in knowledge rather than social action. Ramanuja’s Vishishtadvaita qualified monism: Brahman is real, souls and matter are its modes, and devotion (bhakti) with karma and divine grace opens salvation to shudras, thereby broadening Vedanta’s social horizon. Madhva’s Dvaita insisted on rigorous theism and eternal distinction between jiva and Brahman; his pancha-bheda—fivefold distinctions among God and souls, God and matter, souls and matter, soul and soul, and matter and matter—made difference ontologically central. Their divergences are not merely metaphysical: Shankara’s epistemology privileges shruti and negation, Ramanuja balances pramana, devotion and grace, while Madhva stresses Vedic authority, devotion and the reality of difference; soteriologically they move from jnana to bhakti to theistic surrender. The charge that Advaita was crypto-Buddhism (pracchanna-bauddha) itself spurred the theistic schools.

(b) Women. In the 13th–14th centuries under the Delhi Sultanate, Hindu and Muslim women occupied overlapping but unequal social fields. Hindu women faced practices such as sati, child marriage and purdah influence in some elite settings, which constrained mobility and widow remarriage; Amir Khusrau describes jauhar at Ranthambhor (1301), and Ibn Battuta witnessed sati; the Smriti compilations of the period (Chandeshvara’s Grihastharatnakara, Hemadri’s Chaturvarga Chintamani) tightened these norms further, yet regional variations and class distinctions were sharp, with lower-caste and rural women often having more practical agency in labour and household management. Muslim women, under Sharia, had clearer property rights through mehr and inheritance, and elite households sometimes allowed educational access and patronage; yet seclusion and patriarchal interpretation limited public life, and the Sultanate’s muhtasib supervised public morality; Razia’s brief reign shows both the possibilities and the limits. Urban centres showed syncretism: shared domestic norms, Sufi-Vedantic interactions, and class-based emulation meant that “Hindu” and “Muslim” womanhood were not monolithic.

(c) Peasant uprisings. Aurangzeb’s agrarian crisis produced peasant uprisings because the reimposition of jizya (1679), revenue farming (ijara), enhanced assessment and temple destruction disrupted village ritual and fiscal stability, while the Deccan wars created a jagir crisis in the mansabdari system. Most revolts were zamindar-led but peasant-based, so they were less tax riots than contests over local power. Jat revolts (1669–70, 1672, 1688–89) and Satnami resistance (1672) were rooted in peasant-taxation grievances; Sikh resistance after the execution of Guru Tegh Bahadur (1675) fused religious persecution with agrarian distress, turning into Banda Bahadur's peasant rising after 1708; the Yusufzai and Afridi tribal revolts (1667–75) show similar pressure on the frontier. Bundela resistance under Chhatrasal (from the 1670s) was chiefly Rajput/regional rather than a peasant revolt, but it reflected the same fiscal and ritual pressures. Irfan Habib sees these revolts as the outcome of an agrarian crisis created by excessive revenue extraction, while Satish Chandra stresses the jagirdari crisis. Consequences included accelerated Maratha and Sikh militarization, administrative decentralization, ideological shift toward regional identities, and long-term weakening of the Mughal agrarian base.