Dvaita Vedanta is a school of Hindu philosophy founded by the theologian Madhva (Madhvacharya, traditionally 1238-1317) in the Kannada-speaking region of southern India. Its name means "dualism," and it stands as the great counter-position to the non-dualist Advaita of Shankara. Where Advaita teaches that the individual self and ultimate reality (Brahman) are finally identical and that plurality is illusory, Madhva insisted that difference (bheda) is real and irreducible. His system is sometimes called Tattvavada, the doctrine of reality, precisely because it affirms the full reality of the world and of distinctions within it.
Madhva taught five eternal differences: between God and the individual soul, between God and matter, between one soul and another, between soul and matter, and between one material thing and another. God, identified with Vishnu (and Narayana), is the wholly independent reality on whom all dependent realities, souls and matter, rely; the soul is genuinely distinct from God and remains so even in liberation. Madhva also held the unusual view, among Vedanta schools, of a fixed gradation of souls, some eternally destined for liberation and, controversially, some for perpetual bondage.