(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
subscribe 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.