The Death of the Brahmin-Liberal

Rt. Hon’ble V.S. Srinivasa Sastri (1869-1946): outstanding Sanskritist orator par excellence in English who earned the sobriquet “silver-tongued Sastri”; a distinguished diplomat: Indian freedom fighter from Tamil Nadu. His influence on Gandhi’s politics was very strong in several nuanced ways especially during the 1920-30s. Sastri hailed from an orthodox Tamil Brahmin background and yet remained a steadfast Liberal in the truest and best Classical sense. Through fascinating montage this brief biography uncovers how seamlessly and graciously Sastri wore his strikingly Brahminical traditional beliefs alongside the most cosmopolitan values and ideals of Liberalism without ever seeming to wear either of them on his sleeves. This book explores the question: “If Srinivasa Sastri were reborn and alive today how might he have been able to square his catholic Brahmin-Liberal weltanschauung with the Indian zeitgeist today?” When Sastri died Gandhi wrote:“Death has removed not only from us but from the world one of India''s best sons.”M.K.Sudarshan is a graduate of the Madras University from Loyola College Chennai and a qualified Chartered Accountant. After a 35+ year-old-long and successful international career in corporate finance he now lives with his wife in Chennai India pursuing wider interests in Indian philosophy world history and comparative religious literature studies and writing. His related interests are classical South Indian music the history of Hindu temples in India and travelling worldwide. Sudarshan is the author of four published books on Religion & Spirituality three of which form a trilogy. All of his works have earned critical and popular acclaim world-wide:Unusual Essays of an Unknown Sri Vaishnava: The Nondescript God: Abstraction or Paragon?; A Tale of Two Cities: The Decline and Fall of the Ubaya-Vedantins: An outline of the history of Sri Vaishnavas of Tamil Nadu that never was written; “The Epistles of a Prolific Pontiff and “The Middlemen of Vedapura” an English translation of a famous Tamil novel of Indira Parthasarathy Sahitya Akademi Awardee.