Why did our acharyas not travel to South India when foreigners became oppressive?

After Lord’s departure, we heard preaching was sidelined because of foreigners rule. Then why did not Achryas tried to spread in favourable places like South India, where there was no foreign influence. We never hear that our acharyas went allover India and debated with different religions to propagate Gaudiya Vaishnavism (Like Ramanujacharya,madhwacharya etc., did).

Transcript

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Question- After Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu’s departure, we hear that preaching was sidelined because of foreigners’ rule. Then why did the Acharyas not try to spread in favourable places like South India, where there was no foreign influence? We never hear that our Acharyas went all over India and debated with different religions to propagate Gaudiya Vaishnavism as Ramacharya and Madhvacharya did.
Answer- In the history of every tradition, there are phases of expansion and consolidation. So, Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu’s period, at least six years when he was travelling, was like an expansion period. And the eighteen years when he stayed in Jagannath Puri was like the consolidation period.
So, generally speaking, whenever the Acharyas appear, they initiate a phase of dramatic expansion. But subsequent to the Acharyas, generally, nobody can sustain the pace of expansion that those particular Acharyas or those divine personalities had. So, we have the example of Ramacharya and Madhvacharya also travelling all over the country and preaching vigorously.
But if you look at the generations after them, even their successors were great, but it is no denigration of them, it is no minimization of them to say that they had huge boots to fit into and the footsteps that they had to follow were huge. And generally speaking, after the Acharya departs, what follows is the consolidation phase. The expansion is not generally continued as vigorously as it was during the Acharya’s presence.
So, after Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu departed, Gaudiya Vaishnavism went more into a consolidatory phase. And the consolidatory phase was something which continued even during the Islamic attacks. So, we see that even after Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu departed, Chakravarthi Path went to Vrindavan and he wrote a lot of books over there.
If we look at the sheer amount of literature that Gaudiya Vaishnav Acharyas have produced, it is phenomenal. We know only the very prominent Acharyas, Chakravarthi Path and Baldevidya Bhushan and before them the Goswamis, but there are so many other Acharyas. We have Srinath Chakravarthi who wrote the first commentary on the full Srimad Bhagavatam in the Gaudiya Sampradaya.
Krishnath Chakravarthapur is the second Acharya who wrote a commentary. Then we have Gopal Guru Goswami and his disciples who have written a lot of books on especially the details of Manjiri Sadhana and especially our Gaudiya Sampradaya had depths and heights of devotional revelation that was unparalleled not just in Indian history but in the world history in terms of description of the details about the Lord and his relationship with his devotees and the mellows of those relationships. So the Acharyas fortified this legacy by writing a lot of books and that was their primary focus.
Now why did the Acharyas not travel to say favorable places like South India? Now it actually if we see even a lot of large parts of South India were also influenced by Islamic rule and they also were under a pressure but of course the Islamic rule was not as as devastating in South India as it was in North India but still the point is that our Acharyas are primarily in a consolatory phase and after Shri Jagad Mahaprabhu and a generation after him in Bengal that is Srinivasa Acharya, Narottam and Shaman Pandit after that generation primarily the Gaudiya Sampradaya was in a consolidatory phase whenever there were Acharyas who could do the consolidation and otherwise it was also to some extent becoming obscured, confused and lost. So the Lord has his own plans about how he will spread the Sampradaya but in every single generation there have to be people who take up the responsibility and if there are not people who take up the responsibility of propagation we’re not saying that the Gaudiya Sampradaya did not exist there were not prominent Acharyas who could have take up the responsibility of propagation or that is not necessarily a it’s a minimization because different Acharyas have different different gifts given by the Lord. Now you can say Gaurav Biswas Babaji practically never preached he never went on traveling preaching tours.
Does that mean that he is not significant? No he is significant but the Lord inspired him to be a Bhajananandi. So to some extent their example was of great inspiration to a large number of people but sometimes we say that practice is more important than we said that you know our example is the greatest preaching. Yes example is important but what are we setting an example of unless there is teaching of that the example doesn’t make much sense to a large number of people example may inspire devotees or devotionally minded people who appreciate renunciation and detachment and high standards of devotion and spiritual things like that but those who don’t know spirituality those who know the specifics of the practices that we are doing but the example in itself is not enough for vigorous propagation there has to be both preaching with words and preaching through actions and when there is consolidation there is primarily preaching through actions when there is expansion there is primarily preaching through words now of course the consolidation sooner or later lays the foundation for preaching through words and the expansion can become founded in a solid group only when there is backing with preaching through actions so in the sense that the both are very dynamically and intricately connected but still there can be emphasis on one at one time so there are periods in our Gaudiya history when the consolidation was more the emphasis and that’s why the Gaudiya Vaishnavas in those generations focused primarily on continuing on the legacy and solidifying it through literature and through their own practice but they did not expand and at a deeper level we understand the Lord has a plan according to which he will propagate in various generations so Vishwachitla Prabhupada was empowered by the Lord to preach all over the world does that mean that Bhaktisiddhanta Thakur and Bhaktivinoda Thakur were any lesser because they didn’t preach all over the world no the Lord empowered them in a particular way and that’s how they preached and whatever they did is remarkable in their own way and we have to appreciate and glorify them for what they have done at the same time from a historical point of view we will see that there are different levels of impact that can be documented in the historical record in different generations so we see this as the plan of the Lord thank you