When Keshub Chunder Sen was staying with me at Oxford, I had a good opportunity of watching him. I always found him perfectly tranquil, even when most in earnest, and all his opinions were clear and settled. He never claimed any merit for the sacrifices he had made, he rather smiled at what was past, and seldom complained of his opponents, except when they accused him of having been a traitor to his own cause by allowing his daughter to be betrothed and married to the Mahârâjah of Kuch Behar, before she had reached, by a few months, the marriageable age which he and his friends had themselves fixed for all members of the Brâhma-Samâj. This is too long and too complicated a story to be told here; but, whether the father had shown any paternal weakness or not, there was surely no cause for his former friends to separate from him on so paltry a ground, to insult him and to break his heart, and in the end to produce a fatal schism in the Brâhma-Samâj. When Keshub Chunder Sen introduced new reforms, surrendering the Vedas, abandoning the Brâhmanic thread, sanctioning widow marriages, and forbidding child-marriages, his society, hitherto called the Brâhma-Samâj, assumed the new name of the Brâhma-Samâj of India (1861), while the more conservative Brâhmas[[6]] under Debendranâth Tagore, were distinguished by the name of Âdi Brâhma-Samâj, or the first Brâhma-Samâj. Those who later on separated again from Keshub Chunder Sen, because they disapproved of the marriage of his daughter, and objected to his claiming, or seeming to claim for himself the gift of inspiration and a higher authority than was right for any human being, assumed the new name of Sadhârana Brâhma-Samâj or the Catholic Society of Brâhmas. These different sections carry on the same work, each in its own way. Some see in these divisions signs of healthy vitality, others regret them, as impeding the more rapid advance of a powerful army. The points of difference are so few and so insignificant that it only requires a strong arm to weld them together once more. Protâp Chunder Mozoomdar seemed pointed out for this, and it is to be hoped that he may still succeed in the great work of conciliation.
Many of those who bore the burden of the day, and without whose ready help Keshub Chunder Sen would hardly have been able to achieve what he did achieve in his short life, are by this time dead and forgotten. Even Debendranâth Tagore’s constant help and patronage are seldom recognised as they deserve to be in the history of the Brâhma-Samâj. The memory of Hurrish Chunder Mookerjee has lately been revived by the republication of his Three Lectures on Religious Subjects (Calcutta, 1887); and it was his recent death (August, 1898) that reminded the friends of India of the sacrifices made by Râmtonoo Lahari and others in support of the reforms initiated by Rammohun Roy.
Râmtonoo Lahari.
Râmtonoo[[7]] was born in 1813, and must therefore have been older than Debendranâth Tagore, who is generally considered as the Nestor of the Brâhma-Samâj.
He was a pupil of David Hare, who had undertaken the philanthropic work of educating native youths, and after spending a few years at his school, he was admitted into the Hindu College at Calcutta, which was established in 1817 as the first fruit of the annual vote of £10,000 for educational purposes insisted on by the English Parliament. The teacher who chiefly influenced the young men was D. Rozario, who, though branded by the clergy as an infidel and as a devil of the Thomas Paine school, was worshipped by his pupils as an incarnation of goodness and kindness. It was Christian morality, as preached by D. Rozario, that appealed most strongly to the heart of Râmtonoo and his fellow-pupils, many of them very distinguished in later life, the fathers and grandfathers of the present generation of Indian reformers. Râmtonoo became a model among his friends in all matters pertaining to morality and conscience, penitence and sincerity being the watchwords of his early career, vice and hypocrisy the constant objects of his denunciation, both among his equals and among those of higher rank and authority. Even the founder of the Brâhma-Samâj did not escape his reproof, on account of what he considered want of moral courage to act up to his convictions. As to himself, he denounced caste as a great social and moral evil, and silent submission to superstitious customs as reprehensible weakness. In order to shame those who denounced beef-eating as sinful, he and his friends would actually parade the streets with beef in their hands, inviting the people to take it and eat it. The Brâhmanical thread which was retained by the members of the Brâhma-Samâj as late as 1861, was openly discarded by him as early as 1851. And we must remember that in those days such open apostasy was almost a question of life or death, and that Rammohun Roy was in danger of assassination in the very streets of Calcutta. It is true that European officials respected and supported Râmtonoo, but among his own countrymen he was despised and shunned. However, he continued his career undisturbed by friend or foe, and guided by his own conscience only. Poor as he was, he desired no more than to earn a small pittance as a teacher in public and private schools. Later in life he was attracted to the new Brâhma-Samâj, and became a close friend of Keshub Chunder Sen. When he saw others who spent much time in prayer he considered them as the most favoured of mortals, for pure and conscientious as he was, he felt himself so sinful that he could but seldom utter a word or two in the spirit of what he considered true prayer before the eyes of the Lord. While cultivating his little garden he was found lost in devotion at the sight of a full-blown rose, and while singing a hymn in adoration of God, his whole countenance seemed to beam with a heavenly light. One of his friends tells us that one morning early he rushed into his room like a madman and dragged him out of bed, saying that when the whole nature was ablaze with the light and fire of God’s glory, it was a shame to lie in bed. He took the sleeper to the next field, and pointing his fingers to the rising sun and the beautiful trees and foliage, he recited with the greatest rapture—what? Not a hymn of the Veda, but some verses from Wordsworth. When his end approached, his old friend Debendranâth Tagore went to take leave of him, and when he left him, he cried: “Now the gates of heaven are open to you, and the gods are waiting with their outstretched arms to receive you to the glorious region.” Did the old Vedântist really say “the gods”? I doubt it, unless he used the language of Mâyâ, as we also do sometimes, knowing that his friend would interpret it in the right sense. I see, however, that Mozoomdar also speaks of his spirit reposing in his God—showing how the old habits of thought and old words cling to us and never lose their meaning altogether.
Many more names might be mentioned, but to us they would hardly be more than names. Debendranâth Tagore is the only one left who could give us a history of that important religious movement in India, and of the principal actors in it. But he is too old now to undertake such a task. The others, to use the language of their friends, have, like the stars that rise in the Eastern sky, after completing their appointed journey, sunk below the visible horizon of death, to pass from the hemisphere of time to that of eternity! But though their names may be forgotten, their good works will remain, for “Good deed,” as they say in India, “never dies.”
Dayânanda Sarasvatî.
One more Samâj should be mentioned here to prevent confusion, namely, the Ârya-Samâj. This movement, which was inaugurated by another man, of the name of Dayânanda Sarasvatî, was proclaimed as a revival of the ancient Vedic religion. Dayânanda held fast to his belief in the Veda as a divine revelation, though he understood by Veda the hymns only, and admitted that the Brâhmanas showed clear traces of human workmanship. The followers of Dayânanda are quite aware that the Vedas were composed long before the art of writing was discovered in India, and they strongly object to the Veda being styled book-revelation, which they evidently consider as an inferior kind of revelation. They say, what they have no doubt learnt from European scholars, that the Vedas were not received in the form of books, but were revealed to the four principal Rishis. But their antagonists of the Brâhma-Samâj rejoin that, because the Vedas were committed to paper only a few thousand years back, it does not follow that they do not partake of the nature of book-revelation. They ask point blank whether Dayânanda and his followers believe that the very words and combinations of words forming the hymns of the Vedas as we now find them in MSS. were uttered by God Himself? As long as they hold to this belief, the followers of Keshub Chunder Sen accuse them of being believers in book-revelation, quite as much as if they held that the bound volumes of the Veda had tumbled down from heaven. Their discussions on that point are often very ingenious, and may prove instructive even to our own apologists. Dayânanda himself and his followers disclaim any indebtedness to Western ideas, and they have gained many adherents, chiefly on the ground that, though pervaded by a reforming spirit, their Samâj has always remained thoroughly national. Dayânanda denounced idolatry and polytheism, he even repudiated caste, and allowed widow marriages. This required great courage, but, being a liberal-conservative, he was naturally attacked both by liberals, for not going far enough, and by conservatives, for going too far. His followers believe that he was actually poisoned by his enemies. I am told that, at present, this revival of the ancient national religion has gained and is gaining far more support in India than the reforms initiated by Rammohun Roy and Keshub Chunder Sen. National feelings are strong in religious matters also. But though his doctrines may be more popular, there is more real vitality, more real reasonableness in the ideas of the other Brâhma-Samâjes. If they would only combine under a strong leader, they would, I believe, soon carry with them the wavering followers of Dayânanda; for in India whoever has once taken the first step, and surrendered his belief in the revealed character of even a part of the Veda, will easily be driven to take another step and adopt human reason as the only guide to human truth.
We know little of the personal character of Dayânanda, and what we know sounds very apocryphal. Though I was told soon after his death that he had been poisoned by the Brâhmans, who were afraid of his sweeping social reforms, I am now told by an Indian friend of mine that it is supposed that his death was caused by the dancing-girls who, at the instigation of Dayânanda, had been placed under strict surveillance by the Mahârâjah of Jayapura. Their stipends had been stopped, and they are supposed to have enticed a young Brâhman cook to poison their enemy. The cook is said to have afterwards committed suicide. This though only a rumour among rumours, would certainly put a different aspect on Dayânanda’s sudden death. He must have been a powerful man, and he knew how to be a leader of men. His ignorance of English deprived him of much that would have been helpful to him, and would have kept him from some of his wild ideas about the Veda. He maintained that all wisdom was to be found in it, down to the discovery of the power of steam and its application to steam engines for railways; and this thousands of years B.C.! He was still more unfortunate in falling, for a time, an easy prey to Madame Blavatsky’s spiritual fascinations.
For some time he understood her as little as she understood him, and that is saying a good deal. But when at last they came to understand each other, there followed a breach that could never be healed. The life of Dayânanda, published under the authority of the so-called Theosophists, which I accepted formerly as genuine, has been discredited, and we shall probably never have a real biography of the man, for biography in India seems to share the fate of history; either it tells us nothing, or what it tells us is fact and fiction so mixed together that it is impossible to separate the one from the other.