(1449-1568) -
One of the great saints and reformers of India. He was an Assamese Vaishnavite saint-scholar, playwright, social-religious reformer and a colossal figure in the cultural and religious history of the eastern state of Assam, India.
He is credited with providing a thread of unity to Assam straddling two major kingdoms (Ahom and Koch kingdoms), building on past literary activities to provide the bedrock of Assamese culture, and creating a religion that gave shape to a set of new values and social synthesis.
The tradition he started, Ekasharana Dharma, a monotheistic vaishnavite tradition, was part of the Bhakti movement then raging in India, and he inspired bhakti in Assam just as Guru Nanak, Ramananda, Kabir, Basava and Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and Sri Nityanada Baul inspired it in other parts of the Nation.
Unfortunately, while he is a well-known name in every home of the eastern state of Assam, very rarely, if ever, someone out of Assam has heard of him. As saints and sages don't belong to a particular state, he belongs to the entire nation of India, and every Indian ought to know about him.
His name is again being revived to promote communal harmony, after the state of Assam has seen a dark period of communal violence between the Bodos and illegal Bangladeshi migrants that have settled down on the lands of the Bodos. Look at this inspiring piece of news -
http://www.millenniumpost.in/NewsContent.aspx?NID=7785
Check out the Saints life -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srimanta_Sankardeva
Check out his universal teachings -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ekasarana_Dharma
by Siddhahartha Krishna