Societal Perspectives on Sarasvati Thakura's Revolution

[Guest guest]

(The following mini-essay is based on a posting with several interesting

insights that was written by the scholar Jan Brzezinski and sent to this

forum. I intend to include it in an upcoming book on Srila Sarasvati Thakura

and am sending it separately to Prof. Brzezinski to request his approval to

do so.)

 

 

That overhaul was required in Hindu society, if at all it was to meet the

unprecedented challenges presented by modern thought, was prevenient to the

advent of the Gaudiya Matha already apparent in the creation of such

movements as the Brahmo-samaj, Arya Samaj, and Ramakrishna Mission.

Previously, before the entry of the British, Hindus had pursued an uneasy

modus vivendi with Islam, which they could however safely categorize as

merely another type of religion, and an inferior one at that. But with the

arrival of the Europeans, India's social and cultural condition changed

radically, in response to a Christianity and modern rationalism that cast

Hinduism as an unenlightened creed born of a backward culture. That the

British, grossly outnumbered and far from home shores, were able to unify

and control the entire subcontinent, was possible by their dynamism and

worldly superiority, characterized by a bold, domineering, entrepreneurial

spirit and a pragmatic, goal-oriented mindset. Their realistic science

presented a seemingly unanswerable challenge to Puranic worldviews. Their

extraordinary, undreamed of technology, combined with their efficiency in

administration and indeed in all facets of life, enabled them to dominate

the world in an previously unimaginable manner. British hegemony being thus

based not simply on arms but on a seemingly overall superior approach to

life, Hindus were forced to come to terms with an apparent cultural

inferiority so great that the implied British message-that Indians should

abandon their ancient religion, tradition, and norms and become

Westernized-seemed nigh inescapable.

 

Although the popular Hinduism of the masses continued on a day to day basis

largely unaffected, Western-educated Hindus could no longer blithely

to the rituals and customs that had regulated untold generations

of their forefathers. Recognizing in the mirror of rational Western thought

the decadence of many of their institutions, reform-minded Hindus sought to

vivify their religion rather than abandon it.

 

Out of the Bengali Renaissance emerged the Brahmo-samaj, a society

established in Calcutta in 1828 that aimed to syncretize elements of

Hinduism, Christianity, and modern secular thought.(1) Although composed

entirely of Hindus, it rejected several essentials of Hindu thought,

including acceptance of the authority of the Vedas and of the existence of

avatars, and did not insist on belief in rebirth and karmic reactions. It

denounced polytheism, idol worship, and the caste system. The Brahmo-samaj

quickly became influential among educated Hindus in Bengal, many eminent

people, including the famous Tagore family, being associated with it.

Although having considerable success with social reform programs, the

Brahmo-samaj never gathered a significant popular following.

 

The Arya Samaj was founded in 1875 and was prominent in western and northern

India. Its founder, Dayananda Sarasvati, propagated the sole validity of the

original four Vedas, rejecting other standard Hindu texts as unauthorized

accretions. However Dayananda arbitrarily, according to his own

interpretation, accepted certain Hindu doctrines considered post-Vedic. The

Arya Samaj sought to incorporate pristine elements of Vedic culture with

reform of what Dayananda saw as stultifying Hindu conventions, such as

idolatry, animal sacrifice, ancestor worship, a caste system based on birth

rather than on merit, untouchability, child marriage, pilgrimages,

sacerdotal priesthood, and temple offerings. The Arya Samaj also promoted

social work, modern education, and nationalism.

 

The Ramakrishna Mission, founded after the death of Ramakrishna by Swami

Vivekananda in Calcutta in 1897, much reassured Hindus of the validity of

their own culture. This first Hindu mission had not simply theory, but was

focused on a personage acclaimed as the greatest mystic and God-realized

person of the era, namely "Paramahamsa" Ramakrishna. Propelled by the

charisma, dynamism, and considerable reputation of Ramakrishna's most

prominent disciple Vivekananda, this mission had even more than previous

reformist movements sought to recast Hinduism as a practical religion

adapted to the modern age. Vivekananda combined Ramakrishna's eclectic

all-encompassing mysticism with his own speculative lucubrations on Vedanta

and pragmatic everyday concerns, declaring that true Vedanta meant practical

action and that it was therefore better to play football than read

Bhagavad-gita. Being active in social work-feeding the poor, running

hospitals and schools, and disaster relief-that had formerly been mostly the

preserve of individual philanthropists, the Ramakrishna Mission's organized

approach garnered for it widespread admiration and support.

 

These various genres of reformist Hindus, although adopting numerous Western

methods and principles and opposing decadence in current Hinduism, wanted to

establish that the essence of Hinduism was pure and holy. This in response

to the upright Christian and sexually restrained British, who jibed that the

gods Hindus prostrated to, although albeit mythical, were a grossly immoral

bunch. This accusation particularly focused on Krsna, and it being seemingly

well justified by the observed moral paucity of Gaudiya Vaisnavas, those

modern Hindus not subscribing to British detestation of the Krsna cult

instead lyrically tried to justify it with sentiment and imagery that did

nothing to convince its detractors. Further pinched by British slurs of

Hindu effeminacy, reformists attempted to portray their religion as heroic

and philosophically profound.

 

>From a sociological perspective, Sarasvati Thakura may have seemed like just

another reformer of Hinduism. Yet he had nothing to do with such

revivalists, who could not help free anyone from illusion but simply fed

them altered varieties of it. He enacted reform by going back to the

traditional authorities-the acaryas and the Vedic literatures-in contrast to

other reformers whose restructuring subtly undermined or even defied Vedic

injunctions. Nevertheless, like any reformer, enlightened or otherwise,

Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati responded to trends and challenges within the

society and culture to which he ministered. Thus although he presented the

unadulterated truth as distinguished from mundane Hinduism, and much

criticized those supposedly Hindu revival movements that actually

misrepresented Vedic dharma, nonetheless some of his innovations paralleled

those of well-known reformers contemporary or just antecedent to him.

 

Sarasvati Thakura wanted to reform not merely inaptly-named Hinduism, but

rather the whole world. Yet to present Vaisnavism to the world as the

highest truth, he had to first address the condition of contemporary

Vaisnava society. He perceived the old orthodoxy as such a hopelessly

corrupt and fossilized misrepresentation of Caitanya Mahaprabhu's actual

movement as to be impossible to reform from within, and thus he broke away

by introducing new social and ecclesiastic systems within Gaudiya

Vaisnavism, and a previously unformulated concept of disciplic succession.

 

Many Britishers and modern Hindu intellectuals had criticized brahmanas and

supposed renunciates as parasites maintained by society but contributing

little or nothing in return. Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati echoed such claims in

his reproof of caste brahmanas and those Vaisnava babajis who lived

practically as householders while maintaining the trappings of renunciation

and enjoying the privileges that accompanied that status. Accordingly

Sarasvati Thakura introduced a new cadre of renunciates and indeed a new

Vaisnava social order by re-establishing dasanami-sannyasa, which had been

current in the Gaudiya sampradaya at the time of Lord Caitanya (who had

Himself accepted such conventional sannyasa) but which had thereafter been

discontinued.(2) By introducing the principle of bhagavata-parampara

Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati stressed vitality over formality in preceptorial

lines and simultaneously undercut the monopoly of the caste Goswamis. By

founding the Gaudiya Matha he established within Bengali Vaisnavism a new

institutional system appropriate for widespread propagation in the modern

age: systematically structured and centrally controlled, in contrast to the

rather amorphous makeup of traditional Gaudiya groups.

 

Another major discrepancy Sarasvati Thakura perceived in current Vaisnavism

was an imbalanced emphasis on the apparently mundane dalliances of Radha and

Krsna, with insufficient or practically zilch education in the profound

theology underlying such esoterica. This deficiency engendered among

pseudo-devotees widespread indulgence in sexual licentiousness, which

although the very epitome of crass materialism and a manifestation of gross

envy of Krsna, they nevertheless touted as synonymous with pure devotion to

Him. Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati therefore found it necessary to totally

divorce himself from this most dangerous of deviations. He brought the

emphasis of Krsna consciousness to the intellectual platform and away from

the affective and easily misunderstood amatory plane. He propagated

Vaisnavism in a systematically philosophical manner designed both to

disestablish Western claims of religious superiority and to disabuse

sentimentalists and critics alike of the supposed licentiousness of the

pastimes of Radha and Krsna.

 

FOOTNOTES

 

1 Bengali Renaissance- a movement named after its European precursor, that

looked back to and sought to revive the best of Bengal's ancient culture.

 

2 Dasa-ten. Nama-name. According to sastra there are there are ten

different names awarded to sannyasis: (1) Tirtha, (2) Asrama, (3) Vana, (4)

Aranya, (5) Giri, (6) Parvata, (7) Sagara, (8) Sarasvati, (9) Bharati and

(10) Puri.