The gentleman below Sri. M.R. Sivaraman I.A.S was very kind indeed to have taken the time out to send me a personal email this morning. He is so distinguished he needs no introduction really but nonetheless here below is his online profile:
His email dt. 20 Feb 2025 is reproduced below ⬇️ and so is my immediate response to him:
“I was going through your magnum opus the “TALE OF TWO CITIES” — a really fascinating book on the age old dispute of Tenkalai vs Vadakalai Ayyangars of South India filled with a lot of research and perseverance with passion that you have shown has have gone into it.
It can also be called a tale of two sects.
Your detailed work does show that there is also an underlying deep and simmering language chauvinism issue — Tamil vs Sanskrit between the two sects. And it is politically motivated.
But I know that a huge number of Vaishnava saints like the revered alwars were great tamil scholars and mystics. I do not know whether some of them also were Sanskrit writers. But there was no division amongst them. It seems to me that only the later day saints and preceptors created this division and not really on any grounds of religious or philosophical differences or the God they worship but simply to claim ascendency over temples’ affairs and the power associated with it … all of which has been exhaustively explained by you.
With the younger Sri Vaishnava generation spurning this purposeless division …. perhaps … I hope they can can end this sectarian division or …. is it going to be eternal like the “Shia Sunni” dispute?
I am afraid the gainers in all this are only going to be the brahmin-haters.!!!
Your book is truly a work of passion, perseverence and research. You could have got may be more than one PhD for this work.
In my humble view a person of your scholarship and ecelctic approach should try to bridge this unwarranted schism between Tenkalai and Vadakalai sects within the community. Brahmins by dividing themselves into sectarian groups and fighting each other have only thrown away their learning and wisdom into the garbage bin … and that is being fully exploited by EVR and his followers.
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My response to Sri Sivaraman :
Thank you so much Sir for your words of appreciation ….
It’s genuine feedback from very discerning readers like you that is reward I consider sufficient for the 11 months of toil and sweat that went into writing my book .
Sir, if you don’t mind , please can I take your permission to use your feedback below as an endorsement to promote my work in the public domain ?
And his kind and prompt reply was:
Yes, of course you can. It would be an honour.
Thank you Sri Sivaraman , your feedback is deeply appreciated.
Sudarshan Madabushi