The followers of Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu accept the Śrī Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava sampradāya as the Brahma-Madhva-Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava sampradāya on the strength of the guru-paramparā. This is mentioned by the prominent Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava ācāryas Śrīla Gopāla Bhaṭṭa Gosvāmī, Śrī Kavi Karṇapūra and Gauḍīya Vedānta Ācārya Śrīla Baladeva Vidyābhūṣaṇa. Thus Gauḍīyas consider themselves to be a branch of the Śrī Madhva sampradāya. Vaiṣṇava ācāryas such as Śrīla Jīva Gosvāmī, Śrī Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja Gosvāmī, Śrīla Viśvanātha Cakravartī Ṭhākura, Śrīla Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura and jagad-guru Śrī Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī have also accepted this opinion. However these days some people are trying to establish their own concocted opinion that the Śrī Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava sampradāya is an independent sampradāya of which Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu is the original founder.

Śrī Sundarānanda Vidyāvinoda and Śrī Ananta Vāsudeva, together with a few others, turned against their own guru and tried to prove that the sampradāya of Śrīman Mahāprabhu is not included in the Śrī Brahma-Madhva sampradāya. They claim instead that it is included in the impersonalist advaita-vādī sampradāya. Originally, Śrī Sundarānanda Vidyāvinoda Mahodaya accepted in his Ācārya Śrī Madhva that Mahāprabhu’s sampradāya is part of the Śrī Madhva sampradāya. However, afterwards he considered that his own previous evidence was not authentic. In his later book Acintya-bhedābheda, he tried unsuccessfully to prove that the Śrī Gauḍīya sampradāya is an independent sampradāya. All the arguments of the party opposing the fact that the Śrī Gauḍīya sampradāya is in the Śrī Madhva sampradāya are found in his book.

Paramārādhya ācārya kesarī Śrī Śrīmad Bhakti Prajñāna Keśava Gosvāmī Mahārāja, who is a lion for the elephant-like heretics, himself wrote an essay entitled Acintya-bhedābheda, wherein he presents scriptural evidence and indisputable reasoning to refute all the arguments in Sundarānanda Vidyāvinoda’s book. This essay has been published in several issues of the Bengali Śrī Gauḍīya-patrikā and the Hindi Śrī Bhāgavata-patrikā. We shall now briefly present some of those arguments and evidence..

[CC-by-ND GVP]