Kashmir Shaivism, Abhinavagupta, and the civilisational unity of Bharat — J. Nandakumar argues India was never ‘North’ and ‘South’, only one consciousness.In this seminar address, J. Nandakumar offers a profound decolonial reframing of how India understands itself. The familiar division of “North India” and “South India,” he argues, is colonial cartography — India’s own sources speak of Uttarapatha and Dakshinapatha as interconnected cultural corridors, not opposed blocs. The very act of saying “North and South of Bharat” instead restores a spatial imagination in which unity is sustained through circulation.At the heart of the talk is Abhinavagupta’s Kashmir Shaivism — a tradition where rasa in theatre and rasa in mystical experience are expressions of one underlying reality: consciousness tasting itself. Nandakumar traces three theories of nationhood, dismissing both the Nava-rashtra Vada (“we are a nation in the making”) and Bahu-rashtra Vada as denials of Bharat’s ancient, continuous civilisational identity. The manuscripts and thinkers connecting Kashmir to Kerala stand as living proof of that unity.

About the Speaker:
J Nandakumar is the National Convenor of Prajna Pravah, an accomplished author, an eminent intellectual, a powerful orator, a gifted poet, and an able organization-builder. A tech-savvy pracharak, his incisive posts and thoughts are instantly lapped up by thousands of his followers on Twitter. He is an accomplished author and poet. He has worked as Editor of Kesari, a popular Malayalam weekly. In 2020, a collection of his writings was published as “Hindutva for the Changing Times”. As a member of the specially-constituted editorial team, headed by Shri Ranga Hari, he translated and edited the complete works of Shri Guruji (Malayalam).