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2026 - Volume 10 - Number 2

Creating an Alternative Reality with Practical Advaita and the Mirror Idol

Pratheesh Padath * ORCID: 0000-0003-3976-5978
University of Kerala, Faculty of Social Science, St. Michael’s College, Alappuzha, INDIA

Open Journal for Studies in Philosophy, 2026, 10(2), 45-54 * https://doi.org/10.32591/coas.ojsp.1002.01045p
Received: 10 January 2026 ▪ Revised: 11 April 2026 ▪ Accepted: 30 August 2026

LICENCE: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

ARTICLE (Full Text - PDF)

ABSTRACT:
Sree Narayana Guru, the eminent sage of Kerala, profoundly shaped modern philosophical, religious, social, and intellectual discourse in South India. His ethical aphorisms and public interventions reveal a deliberate socio-political engagement with the temple-centered public sphere, through which he sought to mobilize socio-religious reform as an instrument of emancipation (Beissner et al., 2018). Guru’s vision is increasingly recognized as comparable to that of modern thinkers such as Ambedkar, Gandhi, Aurobindo, and Vivekananda (Thadathil, 2005). Recent scholarship has further demonstrated that Guru’s interventions constituted not merely spiritual reform but a reorientation of knowledge, education, and social consciousness directed toward dismantling caste hierarchy (Pratheesh & Saritha, 2025a; Pratheesh & Saritha, 2025b; Pratheesh & Saritha, 2025c). This study re-examines Kerala’s socio-religious transformation within the broader context of caste structure and anti-caste movements in southern India, highlighting Guru’s decisive influence on anti-caste resistance, the temple entry movement, and the formation of new caste alliances in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Kurien, 1994). Building on recent interpretations of Guru’s philosophy as an epistemic and juridical intervention in religious practice (Pratheesh & Saritha, 2025b), the article focuses on the installation of the Mirror Idol at Kalavamkodam as a symbolic reconfiguration of temple authority. Interpreted through the Advaitic principle Aham Brahmasmi, the Mirror Idol articulated a radical ethics of self-recognition that challenged ritual exclusion and caste-based mediation. Reinforced by Guru’s educational vision of dignity and empowerment (Pratheesh & Saritha, 2025a), this symbolic practice advanced his ideal of “one caste, one religion, and one God for humankind,” offering both a philosophical and social framework for confronting untouchability and entrenched structures of caste oppression.

KEY WORDS: socio-religious transformation, alternating reality, Sree Narayana Guru, Advaitic principle, Mirror Idol.

CORRESPONDING AUTHOR:
Pratheesh Padath, University of Kerala, Faculty of Social Science, St. Michael’s College, Alappuzha, INDIA

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