Why did acharyas like Bhaktisiddhanta ST and Bhaktivinoda T not support the Indian national movement?

Transcript

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gamble thank you question why did our Acharyas like Bhaktasiddhan Saraswati Thakur and Bhaktanath Thakur not oppose the British rule in India although this rule was damaging to Indian culture and by extension to Krishna conscious culture also Mansar if we look at the time when Bhaktanath Thakur and Bhaktasiddhan Thakur were living then we can understand the positions that they took in general we have to understand that there is a there is a scriptural principle and then there is a social policy so the social policy can vary depending on time place circumstance because the scriptural principle can be applied differently at different times so before the Britishers came to India there was the Islamic rule in India and Islamic rule was to a large extent extremely violent and destructive towards Vedic culture so because of that actually it’s a it’s a great testimony to the resilience of Vedic culture that despite 800 years of very severe vandalism that happened during Islamic rule Vedic culture still survived when the Britishers came to India initially the East India Company by using various military strategies gained control over India politically and their goal was primarily commercial they were interested only in the business aspects of the their interaction with India and for them political rule was a means to business and because of that initially they did did not even allow Christian missionaries to allow entry into India so much of the interpretation misinterpretation of the Vedic culture subsequently happened which was damaging to Vedic culture happened because of the Christian missionaries and their distorted renderings of the Vedic literature but that was much later so initially the East India Company allowed people to practice whatever religion they wanted to practice so their attitude was largely religious neutrality and Bhaktivinod Thakur noted several places in his writings that because of the British rule as contrasted with the Islamic rule now we can practice kirtans freely if you look back at Chaitanya Charita Amrit when the devotees would do kirtan loudly one of the constant fears would be that the Muslims would come and they would disrupt the kirtans so we also see that there were no big temples in Navadvip Mayapur when Chaitanya Mahaprabhu was there or the Vaishnavas were there and all the Vaishnavas had their own home deities which were not visible to the Islamic invaders so having temples was practically impossible during Islamic rule so Chaitanya Mahaprabhu recognized this reality and of course because of his personal omnipotent present he tried to remove his transcendent fears many times but nonetheless after his departure and in his absence that fear was always there so Bhaktivinod Thakur recognized the political reality that as far as the practice of devotional culture was concerned the British rule was much more favorable than the Islamic rule and also beyond that there was also the fact that undoubtedly the British were far better material organizers than were Indians you know for whatever historically it’s a difficult issue to analyze but the British were very efficient organizers and that’s why they were despite being in a extremely small minority they were able to rule such a vast country for such a long time and their managerial capacity was impressive and a Vaishnava’s attitude is as Chanakya Pandit says in Prabhupada court that see good wherever is there if gold is there filth take the gold also so Bhaktivinod Thakur felt that as far as the management of the country is concerned the Britishers were doing a fairly good job no they were bringing India in a contact with and dialogue with a larger world there was enough from the Varanashram point of view there might have been some day some dangers in the self-sufficient village community point of view but they had powerful institutions in fact Bhaktivinod Thakur got the name Governing Body Commission from the name Governing Body Commission that was there for the Indian Railways so at that time the Indian Railways was a extraordinary efforted organization within such a vast hinterland that was India and they had their zones and they had their leaders so Bhaktivinod Thakur observed this organizational efficiency and so he would give an example that often infuriated some of his more nationalistic peers like Bipin Chandrapal and Pankin Chandra Chatterjee they were all into nationalism whereas Bhaktivinod Thakur he was always faithful to the British government and he never opposed them in any way now he gave the example that if there are two brothers in a family and the older brother is interested more in spiritual pursuits and the younger brother is more interested in looking after the estate the father has bequeathed then both are brothers but let the older brother pursue his interest and pursue spirituality and let the younger brother look after the estate so Bhaktivinod Thakur used this analogy to appeal to the Indians and he said that instead of dissipating your energy so we and Britishers are like brothers and the Indian civilization by that time also it was recognized that it was much more ancient than the European civilization so in that sense we are the older brothers and he said India already has a vast and revered tradition of saints and sages and so Indians should devote themselves to cultivating spirituality directly and let the younger brother that is the Britishers manage the country so his idea was that Indians had India had a glorious spiritual culture to share with the world and if Indian energy was diverted towards agitations like nationalism then this Upadharma, this lower religious principle would make people distracted from practicing the highest religious principle so that’s why Bhaktivinod Thakur did not encourage this and similarly Bhaktivinod Thakur also he felt that actually changing the government would not make much difference now it was true no doubt that to some extent if we see that the Britishers did exploit India but at the same time it is also true that the before that the Muslims were also exploiting India and they were not even giving religious freedom and after that after the Britishers have gone now the Indian politicians are exploiting India so and certainly we cannot say that India is a well managed country even now it is one of the world’s most poorly managed countries so somehow if you look at from the managerial perspective and from the financial perspective whether the national certainly the national movement brought freedom from India from British rule but whether that is actually translated into ground-level benefits for India is questionable and whether that is translated to ground-level benefits at a spiritual level that is not really questionable it has not led to any benefits in fact if India at the time of partition had decided to adopt Vedic culture officially then there might have been some benefits but India adopted secularism as a culture and unfortunately secularism as a policy has often been translated into a anti-majority religion discrimination where the minority religions are facilitated in many ways and the majority religion is obstructed in the many ways in the name of secularism so that’s why Bhakti Sanskrit Akharaani Metsila Prabhupada told him that Krishna Consciousness is an emergency and just focus on sharing Krishna Consciousness don’t spend your time in just seeking political freedom now there are of course certain issues that it’s not that the Indian national movement was entirely wrong but our Gaudiya Vishnavacharya is primarily focused on the transcendental perspective so that’s why from the transcendental perspective who rules the country doesn’t really make much difference as long as the ruler doesn’t explicitly obstruct the facilities for practicing Krishna devotional culture and at that time both during Bhakti Sanskrit Akharaani Metsila Prabhupada’s time and Bhakti Sanskrit Akharaani Metsila Prabhupada’s time the British government never obstructed the practice and sharing of devotional culture and from the transcendental point from the economic or the social point of view from the organizational point of view certainly the British management was better than the preceding Islamic management and to some extent it was also better than the succeeding Indian management so now when we come to the issue of certainly during the British rule there was misinterpretation of the Vedic literature that happened but that was done primarily by the Christian missionaries and we shouldn’t consider that all the British government explicitly supported the Christian missionaries in Britain also there was a at that time in the 18th 19th centuries there was the European what they call it the Age of Enlightenment but there was the rejection of Christianity that was happening so because of the effect of science and much of the philosophical and theological and historical conceptions of Christianity were being proven to be wrong and untenable so the British government did not explicitly support the misinterpretation of Vedic literature to some extent many of the British administrators were Christians and they did do that because they felt that if the Hindus are converted then it will be easier to administer them and then they will be delivered by the grace of Jesus so our Vaishnav Acharyas have also recognized this point that there was some misinterpretation that did happen but the important point is that misinterpretation happened but that can be countered and that needs to be countered and they have spoken against that.
Shri Prabhupada often many of the things that he had to hear in his college when he was in Scottish Church College many of the misconceptions that were there which were taught by his Christian professors about Hinduism and about Vedic philosophy, Shri Prabhupada responded to them many times in his books and he countered those misconceptions so that has to be done at an intellectual level so we shouldn’t confuse the Brahminical aspect from the Kshatriya aspect so from the Brahminical aspect the British culture did do some damage but from the Kshatriya aspect the British culture British administration was definitely not harmful and to some extent it might also have been beneficial as compared to the it was beneficial as compared to the preceding Islamic government and that is why our Acharyas because they wanted to focus primarily on sharing the transcendental message and they did not want the energy of potential devotees to be distracted over multiple things that’s why they did not support the national movement but they focused on the transnational or the transcendental movement that Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu initiated and of course succeeding generations of devotees will have to adapt according to time, place, circumstance and recognize what will be the best social policy that can help to share Krishna Consciousness with the world. Thank you. Question, why did the