Did Bhaktivinoda Thakura go through a phase of being averse to Bhakti and the Bhagavatam, and was this aversion due to his reading of Western philosophers?
Did Bhaktiv know Thakur go through a phase where he was averse to the Bhagavatam and the Bhakti path, and was this a result of his reading of western philosophy and western literature?
Answer, yes. He did go through a phase like that. And from a transcendental perspective, if you want to consider it as a arrangement of the Lord, then just as Mahaprabhu exhibited a phase of a scholar and became highly respectable in the scholarly circles of Navadvip. And then he embraced the path of bhakti, thereby bringing respectability to the path of bhakti even among scholars who would otherwise dismiss it as a sentimental path.
The Lord arranging something similar for Bhaktinod Thakur also. At that time, the Bhartraloka was the term used for people who in Bengal who were very well educated and educated in terms of knowing English and educated in the Western in in this case, the British way of education and were employed and were quite well read. And Bhakkirath Thakur was the pioneer later became the pioneer in taking Gaudiya Vishnuism to that demographic. And so, he did become respectable among the Bhadraloka at that time through His writings, through His intellectual vigor and accomplishments and these were not devotional writings. He basically moved among elite circle, intellectual circles in Calcutta at that time And then thereafter when he embraced the path of bhakti, he brought the respectability of the belonging to the Bhadraloka to the path of Bhakti, specifically Gaudiya Vaishnav Bhakti which had fallen into disrepute because of various reasons.
So now that brings us to second part, did he was he averse to bhakti and averse to bhagavatam because of western education. That’s only part of the reason. And it is true that Christianity as well as western rationality, while they themselves were at war in Europe, both of them attacked Hinduism in India for different reasons. Christianity, because it was a pagan religion, considered Hinduism to be a pagan religion that had to be eradicated and Western rationality considered it to be irrational and superstitious and therefore that was their general attack on religion per se, not specifically on Hinduism. They were attacking Christianity in the West also.
So when we say West reading western thinkers led him to become averse. It is basically an inter religious dispute as well as a dispute between the rationality and the seeming irrationality. That was the issue. So, I think the bigger problem was that the reality of the Gaudiya tradition was itself quite reproachable at that time. Lot of people had become sahajaic and were doing immoral things.
Be it eating meat and saying the holy name could remove all sins. Not just the sin of eating meat, but others far worse sins also. Or be it imitating Krishna Dila with the gopis and saying that it is that the Avesh of Krishna has entered into them. The Avesh of the go of Radharani and the gopis has entered into the women they were polluting. So there was immorality and often that put off a lot of people who were moral and thoughtful and upstanding.
And also we know that Chetan Cherta Amrata which gives a theological understanding of Mahaprabhu’s teachings was not available at all. Chetan lila was known, but it was more through the past time oriented books like Chetan bhagod and Chetanamangal. So the Gaudiya tradition itself had lost both its moral and philosophical moorings or anchoring. So, my understanding is it was far more the state of the Gaudiya tradition that led Bhakti Vinod Thakur to not having any appreciation for it. And of course, there are valid western criticisms and Bhakti Natakur wrote essay on the Bhagavatam.
There he mentions three challenges with respect to understanding the Bhagavatam. The first is the cosmology which is a problem even till now. It just makes no sense to the rational mind And he tried to address that question in the Krishnasammita which itself became a controversial book and which is controversial even now. Although many devotees are moving towards some variant of that approach given by him, where basically he tries to separate the material knowledge in the Bhagavatam from the spiritual knowledge. It is a very simplified position, explanation of what he is doing.
The second was that the philosophy of the Bhagavatam seems complex and sometimes contradictory. Sometimes it seems to be supporting personalism, sometimes impersonalism and sometimes it seems to be a bit of a hodgepodge of Sankhya and other things. So, then he says that a great book will not be reducible to any particular way of reading rather than we trying to reduce the book to our frame of reference and evaluating whether it fits, we need to expand our frame of reference to see what the book is saying. Again, I’m paraphrasing. And the third question was about the immorality of Krishna’s dealings with the gopis and the subsequent immorality in society created by that example.
And it was when he read Chechen Charita Amrut and when he understood perkyurus from Krishna’s Guru, Rajaswami’s explanations and his own prayer to the lord that he was satisfied that this was transcendental. And again that problem is there even today. So overall my understanding is that rather than holding the reading reading western philosophy as being the cause of his negative feelings towards the bhagavatam and the bhakti path. It was the problems in both of these as they were practiced and the problems in these which are natural to any thoughtful mind that is rationally evaluating them. Those were the cause of the issue and he himself became an exemplar in demonstrating how these issues could be resolved.
That’s why Prabhupada also called him the founder of the modern day Krishna consciousness movement. And he said father of the modern day Krishna consciousness movement. And we also need to consider today that we face the same challenges and we also need to find out ways to address those challenges appropriately. Especially in today’s world telling people don’t read these books or and that will cause you to lose your faith is not the healthiest approach because people are anyway through the social media and Internet exposed to opposing views and we need to equip them to defend those views.