PART 3

ENGAGED VAISHNAVISMTHE CHAITANYA SCHOOL’S CONTRIBUTION

TO INDIA’S RELIGION OF LOVE

A THESIS PRESENTED

BY

JOSHUA M. GREENE

TO

HOFSTRA UNIVERSITY

NEW COLLEGE

IN PURSUIT OF A MASTERS DEGREE

IN INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDIES

Joshua M. Greene

74 Old Westbury Road

Old Westbury, NY 11568

Tel/Fax: (516) 334-0909 Email: Joshua@strmedia.com

2

CONTRACT 3 – DRAFT OF NOVEMBER 2007

POST-COLONIAL PERIOD

3

“Everything depends on falling in love, even with

a polluted world.”

Shrivatsa Goswami

(quoted in Haberman, 2006)

4

C ONTENTS________________________________________________________

________

INTRODUCTION……………………….…………………………………..….p. 5

PRELUDE……………………………………………………………………….p. 8

BHAKTISIDDANTA: VAISHNAVISM IN THE 20TH CENTURY…….…….p. 15

GANDHI: THE RELIGION OF TRUTH………………………….…………...p. 24

BHAKTIVEDANTA: IN EVERY TOWN AND VILLAGE….…………….…p. 31

THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME….……………………….……..………p. 46

EPILOGUE……………………………………………………………….…….p. 57

BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………p. 61

5

I NTRODUCTION____________________________________________________

_________

In the Contract One of this thesis we traced the roots of

Engaged Vaishnavism to early Vedic references to rita (cosmic and

social harmony), which drew strength from yajna (sacrifice) to

the Purusha (Cosmic Man). Sanskrit texts describe that each age

in the Vedic cycle of ages has its appropriate method of

sacrifice: prolonged meditation (astanga) in the Satya Yuga;

elaborate fire ceremonies (agni-hotra) in the Treta Yuga; and

costly temple worship (arcana) in the Dvapara Yuga.

The Bhagavata Purana defines sacrifice appropriate to the

current age of quarrel: “In the age of Kali, intelligent persons

perform congregational chanting to worship the incarnation of

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Godhead who constantly sings the names of Krishna. Although His

complexion is not blackish, He is Krishna Himself. He is

accompanied by His associates, servants, weapons [the Holy Names

of God], and confidential companions.”1 The Vaishnava community

frequently refers to this verse to support the claim that

Chaitanya was an authorized or “scheduled” incarnation. Whatever

Chaitanya’s status beyond effective reformer, it is his mission

which informs our study of Engaged Vaishnavism, namely that

followers need not renounce social action but see the world as

non-different from Krishna and contribute to the world in the

spirit of bhakti or devotion.

Contract Two examined the work of Chaitanya’s followers

during the colonial period in expanding the arena of bhakti by

resurrecting its true sense from 400 years of distortion and

misrepresentation. Also explored in this section was the

intersection of the Chaitanya School with India’s search for a

unified Hindu identity. It is worth noting that the many

activists who made their stand during this period, Vaishnavas and

others, were responding to Christian colonialist defamation of

1 BhP 11.5.32

7

Hindu culture. Among them, Bhaktivinode Thakur (1838-1914) is

particularly noteworthy for his extraordinary feat of

articulating personalist theology in the vernacular of Modernity.

Contract Three begins at the dawn of the twentieth century.

We briefly summarize the work of Bhaktivinode’s successor

Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati, examine the programs and theories of

Mahatma Gandhi, and trace the migration of Chaitanya Vaishnavism

to the West through the mission of Bhaktivedanta Swami

Prabhupada. We then look at the tradition’s current

configurations and take an imaginative leap into the future to

explore possible implications of Vaishnava doctrine for a world

in environmental and political crisis. The intent in creating an

imaginary future is to force the perspective on Vaishnavism as

agency of change. Western scholarship has looked backward to

understand Vaishnavism and generally ignored the dynamics of

bhakti as a tool of future social transformation. O’Connell,2 for

example, looked at Vaishnava history and saw only limited social

value in bhakti, commenting that “[Chaitanya Vaishnavas] are

2 Joseph T. O’Connell, “Does the Chaitanya Vaishnava Movement Reinforce or Resist Hindu Communal Politics?” (New York: Journal of Vaisnava Studies, vol. 5.1, 2004).

8

expected to behave responsibly in their respective historical

socio-political situations…. Rather than occasion unnecessary

difficulties and distractions, Vaishnavas should put up with less

than ideal conditions in the mundane, or laukika, sphere.”

From a historic perspective, this is an understandable

assumption. Prior to Chaitanya, ascetics—men and women who had

nothing to do with social reform—constituted a large portion of

the Vaishnava community, and little in the bhakti canon overtly

suggested that they should “occasion unnecessary difficulties and

distractions” in their devotional practice. The interpretation

offered by this thesis is that such restraint characterized the

bhakti movement’s formative years when followers were preoccupied

with nurturing their fledgling community’s legitimacy, survival,

and growth; but that embedded in the theology was a greater

purpose, namely to work for the good of humanity as an act of

devotion. Engaged Vaishnavism proposes that this unfolding of

Vaishnava faith is now taking place, positing a direct connection

between devotees’ personal growth and their contribution to the

larger world. Part Four (the “Masters Project”) will consist of

9

interviews revealing the intuitions of practitioners and scholars

regarding Vaishnavism’s emerging role on the world stage.

Here in Contract Three, as previously, our penetration into

the thoughts of practicing Vaishnavas receives assistance from

Katham, an imaginary protagonist who allows us to observe his

devotion as it evolves across many lifetimes.

10

P RELUDE_________________________________________________________

___________

Gujarat, 2007

Katham remembered the fields of his childhood, his father’s

knuckles on the till, the oxen listing left-right-left-right in

lockstep with his gentle urgings “Hut! Hut!”—the heady smell of

manure and dirt, the sandpaper touch of wooden handles, sweat

dripping down his father’s back as he counted off hectares

plowed, and holding his father’s calloused thumb as they walked

home to a dinner of fresh okra with cumin and yogurt cooked over

an open fire. Meals were followed by kirtan in those days. In his

childhood Katham’s voice had been strong, and he danced as he

sang, one foot in front of the other in time to the rhythm of

wooden dolaks and the clanging of brass kartals. The village kids

called him Nataraj, lord of the dance, and laughed with envy.

11

Perhaps because he was returning now as a man in his sixties

the memories seemed sweeter than they deserved. The fields were

just as wide, the hills just as high, but the old self-sufficient

way of farming was long gone. The economic prosperity that had

been theirs as an agrarian community prior to World War II

succumbed easily after war’s end to the lure of big business and

cash for land. Gone were the little towns once held together by

festivals, rituals, the rhythms of planting and harvesting, and

the communal offering of first portions to God. Manual labor had

lost its point.

In the 1950s, family farms had given way to corporate

buyouts, chemistry, and soil science. The art of growing dwindled

and became shallow, literally surface-deep. What has become, he

wondered, of the simple miracles he knew as a boy? Annad-bhavanti-

bhutani says the Gita: all life subsists on food grains, which

grow from rains, which fall as a blessing from demigods who are

pleased by offerings. We bow to them, they bow to us.

“Nature was never meant to be treated this way,” he said to

an older man seated in a wheelchair next to him. “It’s as if our

childhood had never been there.” A breeze came up, stirring the

12

abandoned cornfields and launching bits of chaff into the autumn

sky. Katham reached over and tucked the edge of the old man’s

cotton chaddar around his shoulders. He felt frailty under the

cloth and marveled at how a centenarian could exude such

strength. Of all the people he had known growing up, this man

alone had said no when the money people came courting. He

withstood the takeovers and he flourished, in large measure

because buyers sensed something formidable in him and let him be.

From his memories of those times, Katham could not recall

one other farmer who knew how to manage investments; theirs had

always been a community of caretakers safeguarding a sacred trust

with nature that dated from before recorded history. Then the

suits arrived from the executive offices of international

conglomerates, offering large sums if the farmers agreed to adopt

modern methods and promising more once the agribusinesses were up

and profitable. As a semi-retired environmental scientist from a

leading American university, Katham knew their projections for

biologically-engineered harvests could not have been more

woefully wrong.

13

“They never saw the context,” the old man said looking up

and squinting and reading his thoughts. “They were seduced by

schemes and dreams.” The two men scanned the fields they had

known in brighter days. Katham shook his head: the ecological

damage was palpable. To his left stood a clutch of haggard,

flowerless bushes where once large fig trees had grown. His

father used to unpack their lunch in the shade of those trees and

they would eat, not so much from need as from the sheer joy of

sitting quietly with the earth and sky and with each other.

Beyond the bushes where the trees had stood lay a concrete road.

Down the center of the road ran metal rails that until recently

guided eight-foot-tall mechanical harvesters rolling along on

massive rubber tires.

It was predictable that most of his neighbors would sell

their land and move to the cities. The “Green Revolution” of the

1960s and the “White Revolution” of the 1970s had turned these

peaceful farmers into a wealthy but naïve middle class. Swayed by

statistics and computer printouts, the locals bought fertilizers

which forced higher-yield strains of wheat and jawar and ragi

from the ground and rendered their traditional methods of

14

cultivation utterly useless. They poisoned their animals with

hormone-enhanced feed, raised output of milk and eggs to absurd

levels, and in a few short years grew dependent on technologies

about which they knew nothing. Once the “experts” had

sufficiently propagandized villagers into seeing themselves as

businessmen, it took only a few quick calculations to get them to

sell their land. Anyone could see it was uneconomical for a

family to grow its own food. Their fields would be more

profitable if joined for commercial production. The result was

something unique in India’s history: farmers who didn’t farm and

who bought everything they ate from supermarkets.

When farms started failing, panic took over. Villagers sold

off their remaining acres and moved away. In 1999, an entire

community of cotton farmers in Karnataka committed suicide from

the anomie of that displacement, from the terror of discovering

that while becoming rich they had lost their souls. Katham kicked

the dry dirt and thought about how money changes people and how

quickly dreams deteriorate. He thought about chemical

fertilizers, depleted soil, rising energy costs, tainted

aquifers, bizarre mutant parasites forced from nature by deadly

15

insecticides and exotic diseases. We may, he thought, have

reached the end of a social order that has thrived for more than

3,000 years.3

Twenty-first century India’s worldview could not have been

less respectful of what his bhagavata forebears called rita and

what their descendants in the Puranic period called dharma. With

the utilitarian redefinition of self as a temporal, desire-

gratifying machine had come a callous reassessment of nature as a

cornucopia of expendable resources. Katham knew the statistics;

reports arrived at his office every day with numbers that

staggered his imagination. The World Health Organization had

recently released a study indicating that climate changes from

industrial emissions were directly responsible for five million

3 In a paper before the National Institute of Advanced Studies in Bangalore, delivered just prior to his death in 1999, M.N. Srinivas posited the death of the caste system and the birth of a new social order in India that began “withthe establishment of British rule in India which brought a host of new technologies, ushered in new institutions, and radically transformed some old ones.” He notes that the medieval Bhakti Movement might have become India’s new social architecture in that it attracted men and women from lower orders and crossed the divide between Hindus and Muslims, but that “the tragedy of the Bhakti Movement was that it not only failed to make a dent on caste hierarchy but actually ended up by becoming a caste, or worse, a series of castes, palely imitating the master system of jati.” (“An Obituary on Caste asa System,” published in Economic and Political Weekly February 1, 2003) Our premise here is that over time bhakti reveals hidden dimensions of which Srinivas and other historians have failed to take account.

16

sicknesses and several hundred thousand deaths in 2005, primarily

through malaria, diarrhea, and malnutrition.4 The 2006 numbers

were fifteen percent higher. The effect of carbon emissions on

marine ecosystems was triggering even darker horrors: melting

glaciers, changing rainfall patterns, rising seas, powerful

hurricanes—what his colleagues at the Woods Hole Oceanographic

Institute laconically described as “prerequisites-to-extinction

events.”

Indians, people he knew well, topped the list of worst

offenders. The temptation of multi-billion-dollar projects made

them reckless. They planned corporate takeovers with the

ruthlessness of warlords, built energy plants with little thought

to environmental impact, polluted rivers, relocated entire

villages to make way for factories, and called themselves “India,

Inc.” If anything, these renegades had outdone the British in

self-enrichment and bureaucratic obfuscation. Katham remembered a

recent report with the arresting title “Bribe Payers Index,”

which ranked India worst among 125 countries polled for corrupt

4 Cited in Nichol D. Kristof, “Scandal Below The Surface,” the New York Times, October 5, 2006

17

business practices.5 Somewhere along the line, industrialists had

decided that growth-at-any-price would be India’s new definition

of dharma, and few seemed to object if the world’s long-term

survival got sacrificed along the way.

Environmental crises had brought Katham into unexpected

company: conservative Christian environmentalists, tree-hugging

PhDs with Sanskrit names, greener-than-green government

policymakers, mantra-chanting researchers from world-renowned

laboratories—and most surprising the frail elder statesman

sitting next to him, a lifelong friend and mentor whose formulas

for organic produce had made him one of India’s wealthiest men.

Katham remembered as a boy watching the old man—then in his

forties—recite morning prayers before letting his workers begin

their planting. After a few hours of satisfying work, they

assembled under a brightly colored cloth tent and the old man

would supervise the serving of vegetarian prasadam to his small

crew. He told them stories while they ate, “scripturals” he

called them, and each story connected their plowing and planting

to life’s greater purpose. Unlike nouveaux riches Hindus who lost

5 Reported in The Christian Science Monitor, “In Global Trade, Wheels Greased by Greasing Palms,” Saurabh Joshi and Mark Sappenfield, October 6, 2006.

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whatever religious impulses they may once have had, the old man

kept faith and inspired others to do the same.

Katham knew that it was thanks in large measure to this

saintly soul that he had managed to assemble such an influential

group of investors: the octogenarian was a living legend. The old

man’s announcement that he was investing his entire fortune in

Katham’s Bhakti Trust had made headlines. The sum was vast. At

their initial meeting Katham laid out for investors the broad

parameters of their plan. The Trust would revive family farming

in India with sustainable energy, low-cost technology, and

direct-to-market distribution systems, all driven by cash

incentives to any farmer who signed on for a one-year trial

period. Once the system was operative in agriculture, the Bhakti

Trust would roll out similar programs up and down the Gangetic

Plain, with the goal of reviving India’s ecology within ten

years.

The sheer audacity of the plan left them speechless. But

Katham had chosen his teammates well: these were men and women of

vision, young idealists who viewed themselves less as executives

and more as spokespeople for enlightened business practices. Even

19

the plan’s lucrative potential in world markets did not impress

them as much as its spirit of transformation through devotion.

Reigning in seven billion tons of annual carbon emissions and

reversing other trends toward global destruction meant more to

these folk than just doing good deeds: this was their

Kurukshetra, their field of dharma for God’s work. Like him, they

were spiritual pioneers who saw past the one percent veneer of

their Vaishnava history to the ninety-nine percent possibilities

for its future. It had taken only six months to put the plan in

motion.

Katham looked out over the team’s most recent acquisition:

the thousand acres that had once been the fields of his

childhood, purchased from his family in the 1960s by a European

conglomerate, abused, abandoned, and now sold back to him for a

ludicrously high price. No matter. Trust researchers estimated it

would take only four years to restore the soil to acceptable

levels. He felt blessed to have such partners and no regrets that

the moment had come to turn the business over to them. He was

past sixty and a different kind of challenge deserved his

attention now.

20

The wind picked up. Katham kneeled slowly beside the old

man.

“Do you want to stay?” he asked. There was unintended

meaning in the question, and the old man chuckled.

“We’ve done what we could,” he replied said and patted

Katham on the arm. “It’s time to go home.”

21

B HAKTISIDDHANTA: V AISHNAVISM IN THE 20 TH

C ENTURY__________________

The sequence of events that had brought Katham into this

unexpected company of corporate visionaries began with

Bhaktivinode’s son and successor in the Chaitanya lineage

Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati (1874-1937). “People either loved

Bhaktisiddhanta for his saintly qualities and strength of

character,” writes one of his biographers, “or hated him for his

uncompromising critique of Vedantic monism…and archaic caste

structures.” 6 In his brief life7 the tall, austere Bengali

scholar created the first institutional structure for Gaudiya

Vaishnavism and paved the way for the global expansion of Krishna

6 Sardella, p. 95

7 Bhaktisiddhanta passed away at age 63.

22

bhakti. Intimidated by his forceful and uncompromising style,

adversaries nicknamed him “the Lion Guru.”

Bhaktisiddhanta developed his reputation from necessity:

nothing less than ramrod leadership could resurrect the Gaudiyas

from 300 years of slanderous misrepresentation. Within a

generation of Chaitanya’s demise in 1533, tantric opportunists

had begun propagating deviant sexual practices in the name of

Radha-Krishna worship. The faith’s ecumenical acceptance of lower

castes—often sincere people but lacking education or work skills—

added to its tarnished reputation. Bhaktivinode Thakur trained

his son from an early age to reverse that image by enrolling him

in Bengal’s finest schools and introducing him to exemplars of

progressive thought.8 The tall, thin boy with penetrating eyes

and defiant chin learned quickly.

Bhaktisiddhanta admired his father’s vision for spreading

Chaitanya Vaishnavism and throughout his teen years served as his

8 The hagiographies offer a range of prophetic incidents foreshadowing Bhaktisddhanta’s future as leader of the Vaishnava community: at birth, his father placed him on the Jagannath chariot during the annual festival at Puri and a garland fell from the Deity onto the child; by age seven he had committed the entire Bhagavad Gita to memory; etc. See MacNaughton, Robert D.,A Ray of Vishnu: The Biography of a Satyavesa Avatara Sri Srimad Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Gosvami Maharaja Prabhupada (Washington, MS: New Jaipur, 1988)

23

assistant and organizer. Bhaktivinode’s Visva Vaisnava Raj Sabha,

the Royal World Vaisnava Association, which he began in 1885,

brought together intellectuals of the day including reformist

publisher Sisir Kumar Ghosh and Sanskrit scholar Bipin Bihari

Gosvami; and by the time Bhaktisiddhanta was twelve he was taking

part in their discussions. By age thirteen he was proofreading

his father’s monthly magazine Sajjana-tosani and cultivating

publishing skills that would play a critical role in the future

of Gaudiya Vaishnavism.

At age seventeen, after only a few years of training in

mathematics and astrology, Bhaktisiddhanta managed the impressive

feat of starting his own school of astronomy, the Sarasvata

Chatushpati which held sessions in his father’s Calcutta home.

The school prepared students for application to the city’s

prestigious Sanskrit College and operated for nearly ten years

until disagreements with the College over technicalities of

astronomical calculation forced Bhaktisiddhanta to shut it down.9

College administrators simply could not keep up with his

9 At age twenty-three he was offered a chair in astrology at the University ofCalcutta but declined, anticipating that academic duties would interfere with his Vaishnava calling. (MacNaughton, p. 11)

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prodigious mind. From that experience emerged a facility for

debate which became a hallmark of Bhaktisiddhanta’s pedagogy.

The young scholar’s reputation attracted the attention of

Tripura’s royal family and from 1895 to 1905 he served on

retainer to the king, editing the royal family’s history and

teaching Bengali and Sanskrit to the king’s sons. The post gave

him access to the palace library where he researched his first

book,10 an analysis of Bengali history which successfully

rebutted European accusations that Vaishnavism lacked history,

morality, and philosophical structure. By approaching the

tradition’s history from both indigenous and European

perspectives, Bhaktisiddhanta revealed the morality implicit in a

life of devotion and established the universal structure of

Chaitanya’s philosophy of divine love.11 This was the first in a

10 Bonge Samajikata, “The Structure of Society in Bengal,” published in 1900

11 Vaishnava bhakti was lacking, according to Farquhar, because it failed to bring real change to India’s social system. The reason for this in his estimation was the dominant influence of the concept of an “actionless Brahman,” which could not intervene or declare its will in history. “The ethical character ascribed to Brahman, being shut up in his transcendental nature, and never made manifest among men in action, was utterly impotent.” (The Crown of Hinduism, London: Oxford University Press, 1913, quoted in Coward p.179). Macnicol adds, “What stable theology and enduring social order can be built upon what is after all only a ‘feeling fond and fugitive’?” (Indian Theism from the Vedic to the Muhammedan Period, London: Oxford University Press, 1915, p. 219, quoted in Cowan p. 179). It was just such misconstruction of bhakti and neglect of brahman’s personal dimension that Bhaktisiddhanta, his father

25

continuous stream of books and articles which the scholarly

celibate would complete in his lifetime.

As heir to his father’s place as head of the Gaudiya

sampradaya, Bhaktisiddhanta enjoyed a more intimate relationship

with Bhaktivinode than his twelve siblings. Until Bhaktivinode’s

demise in 1914, father and son would plan and execute

publications, organize gatherings of scholars, give joint

lectures, and travel to places of pilgrimage. By turns dramatic

and prosaic, their constant efforts to bring devotion into the

twentieth century occasionally took unexpected form. Within a

hundred yards of Radhakund,12 Bhaktivinode purchased a small

brick residence for use when he and his son went to Vrindavan on

pilgrimage. In that house, in the holiest of Vaishnava holy

places, surrounded by medieval temples and sacred spots dating to

remote antiquity, Bhaktisiddhanta installed the town’s first

flush toilet: a ceramic bowl, wooden seat, and flush system with

rubber float and metal chain. No plaque marks the achievement.

Bhaktivinode, and later his disciple Bhaktivedanta Swami sought to remedy.

12 A bathing ghat in Vrindavan where Radha and Krishna are reputed to have metfor nighttime play.

26

History books do not mention it. Yet as an indicator of a modern

mindset for India’s most ancient devotional community, the

functioning commode provides a vivid image among

Bhaktisiddhanta’s more erudite achievements.

Both father and son must have shared a sense of historical

imperative. Chaitanya’s prediction that “in as many towns and

villages are there are on the surface of the earth, the holy name

will be heard”13 was well known from available hagiographies. It

is reasonable to assume that the imperative to fulfill that

prophesy factored in Bhaktisiddhanta’s decision to take formal

initiation and eventually enter the renounced order (sannyasa):

the enhanced prestige would serve to bolster his authority when

presenting a mature understanding of Chaitanya ideology.14 Toward

that end, in 1905 at age thirty-one, he began the austere

13 Chaitanya Bhagavata, Antya, 4:126. The prophesy connects to an older prediction in the Bhagavata Purana: “Whatever result was obtained in Satya-yuga by meditating on Visnu, in Treta-yuga by performing sacrifices, and in Dvapara-yuga by serving the Lord’s deity can be obtained in Kali-yuga simply by chanting the names of Hari.” BhP 12.3.52

14 Bhaktisiddhanta was the only initiated disciple of the late ascetic Gaura Kishore Das Babaji, and consequently there was no one physical present qualified to award him sannyasa status. On March 29, 1918, he made the controversial gesture of awarding himself sannyasa status before a photo of hislate spiritual master. From that time, he was known as Sri Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Gosvami Maharaja.

27

practice of chanting 300,000 names of Krishna daily—roughly

twelve hours of prayer each day. He slept on the ground, never

used a pillow, and observed severe dietary restrictions.15 Even

his initiating teacher Gaura Kishora Das Babaji, himself a

renowned ascetic, marveled at the young man’s staunch behavior.

By 1906, Bhaktisiddhanta had begun initiating disciples of

his own and, true to Chaitanya’s example, accepted qualified

candidates from both brahmin and non-brahmin families. Stung by

this threat to their control of religious authority, in August

1911 orthodox Hindu leaders organized a conference intended to

reassert the superiority of family succession. As head of the

Vaishanva community, Bhaktivinode would have given the response,

but the Thakur was bedridden with severe rheumatism. Beside

himself over his inability to rebut the caste brahmins’ spurious

claims, he roared out in frustration.

“Is there no one in the Vaishnava world capable of

presenting the logic of scripture and putting an end to their

lowly activities!”

15 For example, during the four months of the year called Chaturmasya he ate only one mouthful per day of sun-dried rice off the floor in the manner of a cow. (MacNaughton, p. 27)

28

At this outburst, Bhaktisiddhanta sat down and wrote a paper

titled “Brahmana o Vaisnava” (“Brahmin and Vaishnava”) in which

he condemned brahminical birthright and presented scriptural

evidence of brahminhood based on personal qualities and behavior.

The paper gave compelling arguments for the preeminence of daiva

varnashrama (divinely ordained social structure) which encourages

social authority according to ability and character and

disqualifies arbitrary caste claims (a practice Bhaktisiddhanta

described as asuric: ungodly.16) Bhaktisiddhanta read the paper

aloud to his father, and at its conclusion the elder devotee sat

up in bed.

“Sarasvati,” he said weeping, “truly, truly Sarasvati.17 You

are the acharya sun18 illuminating the face of the Vaishnava

world.”

Two weeks later, on September 11, 1911, Bhaktisiddhanta

presented his paper before several hundred religious leaders who

had come from across India to attend the conference. After two 16 Sardella, p. 105

17 Demigod of learning. Throughout his later life, Bhaktisiddhanta was known as Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati.

18 “Shining embodiment of sacred teachings.”

29

days of discourses and debate, his concluding remarks were

followed by stunned silence. The presentation had been masterful—

and an embarrassment to program organizers.19 Bhaktisiddanta’s

performance at the gathering attracted members of the Bengal

intelligentsia but enraged leaders of the smarta orthodoxy.

Sardella quotes from a 1935 PhD thesis by a disciple of

Bhaktisiddhanta to underscore the “severe difficulties” this

tension created in the years that followed.20

Antipathy toward his movement increased when a short time

later Bhaktisiddhanta added gender equality to his list of

outrages. Chaitanya had taught that all souls are prakriti—female

in relation to Krishna, the supreme purusha—and gender was

consequently no obstacle on the path of devotion. To demonstrate

the point, Bhaktisiddhanta initiated many women disciples, among

them scholars who contributed articles and poems to his

periodicals. Arguing that qualified women had as much right as

19 Bhaktisiddhanta’s success also contradicts Max Weber’s assertion that “caste is the fundamental institution of Hinduism. Before everything else, without caste, there is no Hindu.” (Weber, The Religion of India, New York: The Free Press, 1958, p. 29)

20 Sambidananda Das, “The History and Literature of the Gaudiya Vaisnavas and Their Relation to Other Medieval Vaisnava Schools,” PhD thesis in two volumes,second volume unpublished (London: University of London, 1935)

30

qualified men to brahminical initiation was not just a slap in

the face of the smarta power brokers; it was also a reversal of

entrenched Hindu social custom and a threat to Indian patriarchy.

Other than outright sedition, Bhaktisiddhanta could not have

found more contentious issues on which to base his movement.21

It was on January 29, 1925 at the start of a one-month

pilgrimage arranged by his organization, now called the Gaudiya

Math, that objectors turned murderous. As the pilgrims set out,

they were attacked by an angry mob of caste brahmins and their

followers. The enraged mob pelted the pilgrims with bricks and

other deadly debris. No one was killed, but organizers engaged

police escorts for subsequent public programs.22

21 In a letter in 1935 he explained that it was never his intention to start asocial reform movement. His motive was to solidify the Vaishnava community, which required him to take on caste segregation. “For him…varnasrama and its regulated rituals (samskaras) were beneficial for spiritual health, but they had been spoiled. He did not wish to interfere with the practices of the smartas, but [sought] to create a new social space outside the influence of the orthodox that could allow mobility and reward according to merit. In acknowledging the potential of varnasrama in Hinduism he aligned himself with the socio-religious views of Gandhi.” (Sardella, Journal of Vaishnava Studies)

22 Shortly after the stoning incident, caste goswamis offered the Calcutta chief of police 25,000 rupees to turn his back on their plans to have Bhaktisiddhanta assassinated. The officer refused and warned the intended victim, telling him, “Of course we accept bribes—but not against a sadhu. Takecare.” (MacNaughton, pp. 38-39)

31

With each new stance on such polarizing issues as religious

ecumenism and the right of non-brahmins to enter restricted

temples, the Gaudiya Math’s reputation for controversy grew. As a

result, it was mostly in progressive urban centers such as

Calcutta that the mission found a warm reception and collected

the largest donations for publishing and temple construction. It

was in the cities as well that Bhaktisiddhanta’s organization

found its leadership: twenty celibate men whom Bhaktisiddhanta

deployed across India and Europe charged with finding ways to

introduce Chaitanya’s teachings among mainstream audiences.

Sardella comments:

Bhaktisiddhanta saw the secular and the spiritual as

linked, as long as the goal of their union was

spiritual upliftment. His pragmatic approach to

religion inspired him to explore new ways of creating

an interest in the process of divine love (bhakti), and

this at a time when the independence movement and

32

conflicts between Hindus and Muslims dominated the

news.23

“New ways of creating an interest in the process of divine

love” informed Bhaktisiddhanta’s prolific outpouring of articles

and commentaries on traditional Vaishnava texts. By the time he

was fifty, he had published Bengali editions of such classics as

Chaitanya Charitamrita,24 Bhagavata Purana,25 and Chaitanya Bhagavata.26 He

had also established two printing presses, a daily newspaper27

and weekly magazine28 in Bengali, a monthly magazine in English

and Sanskrit,29 and a number of smaller magazines in local

languages.30 In addition to this aggressive calendar of writing

23 Sardella, p. 110

24 The preeminent biography of Chaitanya by Krishnadas Kaviraja Goswami

25 Among eighteen principles puranic histories, the Bhagavata is most revered byVaishnavas for its intimate descriptions of Krishna and great Krishna devoteesof the Vedic period.

26 The second most important biography of Chaitanya, by Vrindavan Das Thakur.

27 Nadiya Prakasha

28 Gauriya

29 The Harmonist (also called Sree Sajjanatoshani)

30 Including editions in Assamese, Oriyan, and Hindi

33

and publishing he frequently lectured31 and organized a series of

exhibitions modeled on world’s fairs and popular science expos.

One such exhibition took place in Mayapur32 in 1930. To

attract attendance Bhaktisiddhanta instructed his staff to build

two kinds of exhibits, one secular and the other spiritual. The

secular exhibits included displays on such topics as medicine,

education, agriculture, arts and crafts, cattle and livestock,

child welfare, athletics, and amusement. The spiritual exhibits

included sacred artifacts from across India, religious texts from

various traditions, photos and paintings of Indian saints, a

large stone map depicting pilgrimage routes—in all, more than

fifty presentations including life-size dioramas and painted

backdrops, all illuminated by the region’s first installation of

electric lights.

Attendance at such expositions numbered in the hundreds of

thousands, but the events had their detractors. On one occasion

Hindu reformers protested Bhaktisiddhanta’s refusal to divert 31 For example, in December 1924 he lectured at Benares Hindu University on “The Place of Vaisnavism in World Religion,” emphasizing the Chaitanya School’s role in continuing the bhakti marg (devotional path) of predecessor acharyas such as Madhva, Ramanuja, Nimbarka and Visnu Svami.

32 The birthplace of Chaitanya in West Bengal

34

exhibition funds to emergency relief programs.33 In newspaper and

magazine articles, the tall sannyasi explained his position. Money

for relief efforts, he wrote, was important but insufficient.

Lasting solutions to the world’s emergencies would emerge from

spiritual instruction that encouraged compassion and wisdom; and

that, he declared, was the objective of Chaitanya’s teachings and

the purpose behind his expositions.34

Bhaktisiddhanta could not convincingly argue the relevance

of Vaishnavism if he ignored the ubiquitous presence of Mahatma

Gandhi (1869-1947) who, although born in a Vaishnava family, saw

the world from a vastly different perspective.

33 “A Protest Meeting,” Amrita Bazar Patrika, September 6, 1931, p. 11.

34 At no time did Bhaktisiddhanta speak out against gestures of human compassion, regardless of how far they may have been from overt connection with religious teachings. On one pilgrimage he noticed brahmin disciples refusing to give alms to the poor. “Money should not be given to poor, distressed people,” he remarked sarcastically. “If it is given, it will be karma-kanda [materially binding].” Then he chastised his disciples, noting that“This type of consideration expresses miserliness, mercilessness, and a lack of compassion over others’ distress. From such an attitude the heart becomes hard…. Even earned wealth is obtained by the mercy of God…. Even though their misery has been obtained through the fault of their own karma…they are still God’s people.” (MacNaughton, p. 57)

35

G ANDHI: T HE R ELIGION OF

T RUTH________________________________________

Brought up in rural Gujarat in the company of weavers and

artisans, Mohandas Gandhi determined by age twenty that it was

not the British who posed the biggest threat to India but modern

civilization and its weapons of mass transportation, telephones,

telegraphs, lawyers, bureaucrats, and the thousand other modern

mechanisms which made a simple, unencumbered existence

impossible. Gandhi’s ideal was the sort of happiness enshrined in

the ancient epic Ramayana, in which the divine king Rama from his

capital city Ayodhya espoused an idyllic life that brought out

the best in his subjects.35

35 Tragically, Ayodhya came to symbolize not the best but the worst in people when in 1992 Hindu extremists destroyed the Babri Mosque on the reputed cite

36

Gandhi laced his pronouncements on India’s future with a

unique brand of metaphysics. An avid reader of the Bhagavad Gita,

a vegetarian, and an advocate of non-violent protest against

British rule, his perspectives were a seductive amalgam of

Vaishnava theology, nationalism, and a religious ecumenism that

stood at the opposite extreme from scripturally sanctioned

Brahmanism. For Gandhi, scriptures were the imperfect expression

of human beings, not be taken literally but only as attempts to

clarify the process by which all people may improve their

existence. And that process would not occur so long as India

remained tied to brahminical sectarianism and British

enslavement.

If liberation for Gandhi meant freedom from all forms of

oppression, what or who was God? Even the minimal slogan “God is

Truth” was too broad for him as it posited a theistic barrier

between believers and non-believers. So he turned the phrase

around: “Truth is God”—since “even atheists do not doubt the

of Rama’s birth, triggering more than a thousand retributive deaths and rendering 50,000 others homeless. It is tempting to imagine what Bhaktisiddhanta’s call to rise above distinctions such as Hindu and Muslim might have done to counter the propaganda which led to the Mosque’s destruction and the mayhem that followed.

37

necessity of truth.”36 Yet no one could live a life of truth,

Gandhi said, unless one other ingredient was present: love.

Whatever call to action there may be in any of the world’s

religions, nothing could be achieved without positive, dynamic

love; for Ultimate Reality in Gandhi’s estimation was synonymous

with love for people and for the progress of humanity. “I know I

cannot find Him apart from humanity…. They are my first care and

my last because I recognize no God except that God that is found

in the hearts of the dumb millions.”37

Arguably, this constituted Gandhi’s greatest contribution:

explaining a way to translate the classical Vedantic equivalence

of atman and brahman into social/political action. Where Hinduism

in the past had been content to regard Advaita Vedanta as

theoretical and passive, Gandhi saw practical meaning and active

purpose. At this point, however, he also drew a conclusion with

which the Vaishnava acharyas would not agree: namely, that God

cannot be truth and love and also described in personal terms. “I

do not regard God as a person,” he said. “Truth for me is God,

36 Quoted in Louis Fischer, The Life of Mahatma Gandhi (London: Jonathan Cape, 1951)p. 328, cited in Lacy, p. 139.

37 Fisher p. 330, cited in Lacy p. 140

38

and God’s laws and God are not different things or facts in the

sense that an earthly king and his law are different. He and His

law abide everywhere and govern everything.”38 It was a

calculation that occasionally tainted his judgment. Uproar, for

instance, followed his 1938 message to Czechs that they respond

to Germany’s invasion of Czechoslovakia with nonviolent

resistance. When asked by international leaders to reconsider

since Nazis and Fascists did not share humanity’s ethical values,

he replied, “Your argument presupposes that the dictators like

Mussolini and Hitler are beyond redemption.”39 It is tempting to

wonder whether the depth and scale of the Holocaust—realities

which Gandhi never understood—might have tempered his view of

devils sharing equal divinity with the Godhead.

In the Bhagavad Gita, which he read daily, Gandhi found

encouragement for his brew of religion and politics. His favorite

verses come at the end of chapter two where Krishna defines

stithaprajna, the person who has achieved mastery over inner and

outer senses, indifference to all that pleases and displeases,

38 Gandhi, Harijan¸ March 23, 1940, cited in Lacy p. 140

39 Quoted in Fischer p. 374, cited in Lacy p. 147

39

and thus complete peace.40 In Gandhi’s eyes, the masses were

capable of such attainment. They were “the living force of Indian

life” who knew how to deal with oppression and who, once they

recovered their “spiritual energy,” would do so again.41

By passing over the depth of Vaishnava theology in favor of

a facile equating of God with impersonal goodness, Gandhi crafted

a universal policy on which everyone could agree yet which few

could follow since adherence depended on a Gandhian sensibility

that only Gandhi possessed. Still, by the early 1930s the Mahatma

40 “A person who has given up all desire for sense gratification, who lives free from desires, who has given up all sense of proprietorship and is devoid of false ego—he alone can attain real peace. That is the way of the spiritual and godly life, after attaining which a man is not bewildered. If one is thus situated even at the hour of death, one can enter into the kingdom of God.” (BG 2.71-21)

41 The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (Delhi, 82 volumes, 1958-80) vol. 13, p. 222, cited in James p. 466. Gandhi called his strategy for harnessing this energy Satyagraha, literally holding on to truth even during times of great suffering. By 1921 the program was in full gear. Participants removed their children from government schools, refused titles and degrees, boycotted the courts, ignored taxes, shunned imported goods, and abstained from elections. Rather than harnessing India’s “living force,” however, non-cooperation unleashed an impoverished people’s frustration and anger, and during the 1920sriots, looting and violence took place daily across the country. In one notable incident in November 1921, a visit by the Prince of Wales triggered four days of mayhem during which shops were destroyed, Europeans attacked, and hundreds wounded or killed when government troops opened fire. The incident was one among hundreds that year, and by 1922 Gandhi’s civil disobedience movement had careered out of control. Few, it seemed, could stickwith Gandhi’s vision for long.

40

had become the most renowned Hindu in modern history and the de

facto voice of Hindu culture and spirituality.

Bhaktisiddhanta did not go out of his way to confront

Gandhi; they operated in different spheres and had little to do

with one another. One interaction which took place in December

1932 involved a series of questions posed by Gandhi, challenging

those who claimed that Hindu scriptures sanctioned discrimination

against “untouchables.” What are shastras (scriptures), Gandhi

asked. What restrictions do they place on untouchables? How is

shastric authority proved? The questions were published in the

Hindustan Times, and shortly thereafter Bhaktisiddhanta responded

with a commentary in his English language newspaper The Harmonist.

No scripture, he wrote, supports the debasing of another human

being; and, he added in a partially disguised jab at the Mahatma,

the issue itself was irrelevant for those who understood that

Hinduism was a secular cause attempting to validate itself under

the pretext of religious law.

In lieu of nationalism, Bhaktisiddhanta wrote, India’s

citizens should cultivate an ethic of “unconditional reverence

for all entities by the realization and exclusive practice of the

41

whole-time service of the Absolute,”42 a mandate which

necessitated acknowledgement of our global human interdependency.

Gandhi, who deemed any sort of global vision impertinent, never

responded but elsewhere declared his distrust of those who would

posit formulas for uplifting all of humanity.

Man is so made by nature as to require him to restrict

his movements as far as his hands and feet with take

him…. God set a limit to a man’s locomotive ambition in

the construction of his body. Man immediately proceeded

to discover means of overriding the limit…. I am so

constructed that I can only serve my immediate

neighbours, but in my conceit, I pretend to have

discovered that I must with my body serve every

individual in the Universe. In thus attempting the

impossible, man comes in contact with different

religions and is utterly confounded.”43

42 The Harmonist, January 1933

43 Quoted in Hind Swaraj and Other Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, Anthony J. Parel, ed.), and cited in Smith p. 30

42

Bhaktisiddhanta may have agreed with Gandhi about the need

to act locally, but the acharya never equated short-term material

wellbeing with the fulfillment of the human journey. Sardella

notes:

Bhaktisiddhanta never linked his perspective on ethics

to the systematic improvement of material conditions,

which was an important aspect of Hindu nationalist

consciousness…[and which held] material welfare of

fellow beings as of equal importance as their spiritual

ministration. Neither did he subscribe to another

strand of national consciousness: a symbiosis of

national cultural revival with liberal legacies of

Western education. He chalked another path that was…the

purification of the nation through asceticism and a

recovery of a lost spiritual heritage, albeit within

the frame of a modern Vaisnava identity.44

44 Sardella, Journal of Vaisnava Studies, spring 2007

43

Creating a “modern Vaisnava identity” defined

Bhaktisiddhanta’s mission. In all his programs he looked to

establish points of entry for devotees of Krishna into a world

unknown to their forefathers. Vaishnavas would never again be

what they had been for millennia—circumscribed communities with

little relevance to the larger world—but what they would be no

one could say. Would Chaitanya’s followers develop a grasp of

social theory sufficient to permit their participation in shaping

humanity’s destiny? Would they learn how to apply personalist

theology in realms of health, education, agriculture, early

childhood development, or psychology as the booths at

Bhaktisiddhanta’s expositions had suggested? Would Vaishnavism

contribute to world peace or to defusing terrorism?45

Bhaktisiddhanta might not have anticipated how differently the

world would look in less than 100 years, but he exhibited a

stunning prescience of how things might be. Above all, he held

firmly to Vaishnava ontology which declares that beneath all

other layers of being—political, intellectual, neurological, 45 Or, for that matter, would developments in neurobiology, DNA engineering, and stem cell research marginalize understanding of consciousness and a transcendent self? Scientists such as Richard Thompson (PhD, Cornell) and Michael Cremo have been exploring the borders between science and Vaishnava theology in probability theory and archaeology respectively.

44

cultural, religious—lives an unchanging, permanent self untouched

by matter and eternally linked to the Source of all things.

Sardella summarizes his extraordinary career by saying that:

…he tempered cultural concerns regarding Chaitanya

Vaishnava morality, thereby helping to repair his

tradition’s credibility; by producing numerous texts

and periodicals, many of which addressed relevant

contemporary issues, he made Chaitanya Vaishnavism

accessible to the modern mind, thereby helping to

heighten his tradition’s intelligibility; by arguing

for merit over and above either hereditary succession

or ritual initiation…he helped to elevate his

tradition’s structure of authority; and, by taking

advantage of the technical, scientific and

organizational innovations of the 20th century so as to

maintain Chaitanya Vaishnavism’s competitiveness, he

helped preserve his tradion in a dynamic process of

affirmation and renewal.46

46 Sardella, pp. 116-17

45

General consensus within the current generation of

practicing Chaitanyaites47 holds that one of Bhaktisiddhanta’s

most important contributions to the unfolding of Vaishnavism was

the inspiration he gave to a disciple, Abhay Charan, who later

took up his teacher’s mission and brought Chaitanya Vaishnavism

to the attention of the world.

47 This will be described in interviews that form the Project portion of this thesis.

46

B HAKTIVEDANTA: I N E VERY T OWN AND

V ILLAGE__________________________

One young man who heeded Gandhi’s call to refuse university

degrees was a student of philosophy, English, and economics at

the British-run Scottish Churches College. Abhay Charan De was

born in Calcutta on September 1, 1896, one day after the

traditional date of Krishna’s birth which no doubt inspired his

parents’ choice of a name.48 They raised him according to

orthodox Vaishnavism, his father taking particular care to

provide instruction in how to play the mrdanga drum, worship the

Krishna deity, and honor religious celebrations such as the

annual Jagannath Chariot Festival (known as Rathayatra). Yet by 48 Abhay Charan means “fearless at the feet of God”.

47

the time he entered college, memories of beggars posing as sadhus

at his family’s door left Abhay indifferent to religion. While in

college he married, and afterward he developed a modest

pharmaceutical concern and raised five children.

It was in 1922, while balancing family and business with his

work on behalf of Gandhi’s movement, that Abhay reluctantly

agreed to a friend’s invitation to attend a lecture by

Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati. In private discussion after the talk,

Bhaktisiddhanta dismissed his young visitor’s arguments

concerning India’s political future and proposed a startling

alternative.

“You are an educated young man,” the scholarly renunciant

said. “Why don’t you preach Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu’s message

throughout the whole world?”49

Abhay was taken aback. The notion of stopping everything

now, at age twenty-six, to set out for a country that from all

accounts in newspapers and magazines was patently hostile to God

stuck him as outlandish. Still, he was impressed by the learned

49 Satsvarupa 1980: 1:39

48

teacher and in the months following continued to attend his

lectures. In 1933, he became an initiated student.

After Bhaktisiddhanta's demise in 1937 factions formed

within his movement,50each claiming ownership of temple

properties. Many followers left in disgust, disillusioned at how

greed and prestige had overshadowed Bhaktisiddhanta’s cause.

Abhay saw no alternative but to break with the mission and strike

out on his own. He began by writing and editing a magazine which

he called Back To Godhead. Articles in the monthly publication

addressed issues of the day: war, the futility of political

solutions, the defects in popular interpretations of Indian

philosophy. He wrote about Chaitanya and his prediction that a

worldwide movement would one day unite humanity in love of God.

The end of war in 1945 did not bring an end to India’s

unrest. If anything, the entire nation now stood united in its

determination to rid itself of foreign domination. Seeing the

inevitable, Britain deployed assessors who drew arbitrary lines

of division between Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan. Massive

population exchanges occurred between the two newly-formed states

50 Known as the Gaudiya Math

49

in the months immediately following Partition. Once the lines

were drawn, more than 14 million people crossed the borders to

what they hoped would be safety within their own religious

majority. More than 7 million Muslims made the trek north from

India to Pakistan, while another 7 million Hindus and Sikhs moved

south to India. The massive streams of refugees snaked north and

south, and the displacement—physical and psychic—raised deadly

emotions. Attacks broke out up and down the human highway while

the newly formed governments—completely unequipped to deal with

migrations of such staggering magnitude—stood by watching as

massive violence and slaughter occurred on both sides of the

border. More than a million people were killed in a matter of

weeks. Right-wing Hindu extremists seethed with anger over the

decimating of their country, a tragedy for which they blamed

Gandhi and his soft policies on sharing governmental hegemony.

While over the years Abhay had included Gandhi on his list

of recipients for his newspaper, there had never been a reply.

Sensing the mood of the country, on July 12, 1947, Abhay sent the

Mahatma another letter, warning of how the tides had turned

against him.

50

“I tell you as a sincere friend that you must

immediately retire from active politics if you do not

desire to die an inglorious death…. Take a note of

warning from your insignificant friend that unless you

retire timely from politics and engage yourself in the

preaching work of Bhagavad Gita, which is the real

function of the Mahatmas, you shall have to meet with

such inglorious death as Mussolini, Hitler, Tojo…. God

has favored you by dissipating the illusion you were

hovering in [of a unified India], and by the same

illusion you were nursing those ideas as Truth. You

must know that you are in the relative world…ahima is

always followed by himsa as the light is followed by

darkness. Nothing is absolute truth in this dual

world…. But it is better late than never. If you really

want to approach the Absolute Truth and want to do some

real good to the people in general all over the world,

which shall include your ideas of unity, peace and non-

violence, then you must give up the rotten politics

51

immediately and rise up for the preaching work of the

philosophy and religion of Bhagavad Gita without

offering unnecessary and dogmatic interpretations on

them.

Abhay offered his friendship and invited the Mahatma to

engage in a series of discussions about the Gita, but again there

was no reply. Six months later, Gandhi was assassinated.

By 1950, Abhay had demonstrated such determination to bring

his spiritual master's mission to the Western world that the

Vaishnava community awarded him the title Bhaktivedanta (one who

has understood devotion [bhakti] as the goal of knowledge

[Vedanta]). Now fifty-six years old, Bhaktivedanta had become

indifferent to everything other than his spiritual master’s

order. Wasting time with petty family problems pained him. His

guru had entrusted him with a vision of how Vaishnava theology

could be applied to problems of India and the world and nothing

else mattered. That year, he retired from married life and

traveled to the holy city of Vrindavana, where he lived in a

small room of the 500-year-old Radha-Damodar temple. There he

52

engaged for several years in deep study and writing. Weekdays, he

would travel by bus three hours to Delhi to visit his printer and

read proofs of his latest issue of Back To Godhead. He had no money

other than occasional contributions from well-wishers. The shop

owner, knowing that whatever donations his client received went

to pay for printing, would have breakfast ready when he

visited.51

In 1959 Bhaktivedanta accepted the renounced order of life

(sannyasa) and began work on his life’s masterpiece: a multivolume

translation and commentary of the 18,000-verse Bhagavata Purana. He

would rise at three o’clock each morning and translate. On the

opening page to what would eventually become a thirty-volume

work, he wrote: “We know that the foreign invaders could break

down some of the monumental architectural work in India, but they

were unable to break up the perfect ideals of human civilization

so far kept hidden within the Sanskrit language of Vedic wisdom.”

At age sixty-nine, sensing that his window of opportunity

was closing, he packed his small bag. In August 1965, only days

from his seventieth birthday, Bhaktivedanta Swami boarded the

51 Satsvarupa Goswami, vol. 1, p. 185

53

Jaladuta, a cargo steamer headed from Calcutta to New York. He

held one suitcase, an umbrella, and sack of dry cereal. He did

not know what food he would find meet in America; perhaps only

meat. If so, he was prepared to live on boiled potatoes and

gruel. The only person to see him off was Sisir Bhattacharya, a

musician whom Bhaktivedanta had met on one of his many outings to

elicit support.

“He was alone,” Bhattacarya remembered, “a lone fighter. I

was the only person standing on the shore to say him goodbye. I

could not know that it was such an important thing.”52

Eight weeks later, having suffered two heart attacks at sea,

Bhaktivedanta Swami arrived in America. He was armed with copies

of his three-volume translations of the first canto of the

Bhagavata. He had no money other than the government limit of

forty rupees. The first year in America provided little

encouragement. There was no support, but he persevered.

Occasional invitations to speak spurred a small following, and

within a year he had incorporated the International Society for

Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON). He had, in the words of one

52 Satsvarupa Goswami, vol. 1, p. 289

54

biographer, “ability, energy, and total commitment to the

devotional cause. But his success over the next twelve years can

be attributed more to the legacy which he brought from Bengal: to

relate Vaishnava devotion to the modern world.”53

Before leaving India Bhaktivedanta Swami had written three

books. In the following twelve years he wrote the sixty. Before

he left India, he had initiated one disciple. In the next twelve

years he would initiate more than 4,000. Before he left India,

hardly anyone believed he could fulfill his vision of a worldwide

society of Krishna devotees. In the next decade he would form a

movement with more than 100 centers worldwide. Before sailing for

America, he had never been outside the borders of his country.

Over the next twelve years he would complete seven world tours.

By the summer of 1966 Bhaktivedanta Swami and his small

group of young students had secured a small storefront on Second

Avenue in New York’s East Village where the first wave of hippies

had made their home. It had not been his intention to target the

young and disenfranchised; his focus had always been on leaders,

politicians and influential members of society. Yet it was young 53 Bromley and Shinn, p. 50

55

people wandering the streets of New York who were in search of

something beyond the ordinary and who arrived at the door of his

small storefront temple. “The hippies,” Prabhupada admitted at

one point, “are our best customers. Almost all of our important

disciples are recruited from that group.”54 Even though caste-

conscious brahmins in India would disapprove of his associating

with such untouchables, Bhaktivedanta Swami received his

disheveled guests in the spirit of Chaitanya’s theology: everyone

was spirit-soul and regardless of birth or habits could be

brought to the highest spiritual platform by chanting the holy

names of Krishna.

The early attendees at his lectures displayed the naivety of

their generation. Biographer Satsvarupa Goswami recounts one

occasion55 when a long-haired girl raised her hand and announced

breathlessly, “When I chant I feel this great energy in my

forehead. Then I hear a buzzing and see a reddish light!”

“Just keep chanting,” Bhaktivedanta advised. “It will clear

up.”

54 Tamal Krishna Goswami, p. 25

55 Satsvarupa Goswami, vol. 2, p. 214

56

An article titled “Swami’s Flock Chants in Park to Find

Ecstasy” described the elder teacher’s public kirtan gatherings

and his proscription to followers concerning coffee, tea, meat,

eggs, and cigarettes, “to say nothing of marijuana, LSD, alcohol,

and illicit sex. The energetic old man is a leading exponent of

the Hindu philosophy of personalism, which holds that the one God

is a person but that his form is spiritual.”56 Students soon

began calling their exotic looking teacher Prabhupada, “the

master at whose feet others gather,” a term they had heard him

use to refer to his teacher Bhaktisiddhanta.

Prabhupada’s arrival in New York could not have been better

timed. The exotic was in demand and mystic India had a following

among young people seeking a way out of American consumer

culture. With flowing saffron robes, shaved head, pointed rubber

shoes, bright clay markings on his forehead, and hand waist-high

in a small cloth bag that held his wooden prayer beads,

Prabhupada was made to order for a generation in search of its

soul. Young people flocked to his small storefront temple despite

the restrictions he imposed on them for initiation: no

56 The New York Times October 20, 1966

57

intoxication, no meat eating, no gambling, and no sex outside of

marriage. The late Indologist A.L. Basham notes that he was not

one of those self-appointed swamis who glutted the market with “a

streamlined kind of Hindu mysticism designed to appeal to modern,

jet-age disciples: levitation of a few months or even weeks,

moksa in a few easy lessons—a Hinduism without class, without

worship, without rigid taboos, and so forth.”57

From a historic perspective, the odds of Prabhupada

successfully implanting Chaitanya Vaishnavism in the United

States were negligible. For more than a century antipathy toward

Hinduism had been growing in America. By the end of the Civil

War, the Transcendentalists were all dead, westward expansion was

in full-gear, and foreigners were less and less welcome. In 1922-

23, the Supreme Court ruled that Asians were not “white” persons

and consequently not eligible for citizenship. In 1924 the Asian

Exclusion Act effectively cut off immigration from India and

other Asian countries. Katherine Mayo’s 1927 notorious bestseller

Mother India did an outstanding job of further prejudicing the

57 Basham (1983), p. 166

58

public against Hinduism, and in movies the image of anyone Asian

was that of the sinister Dr. Fu Manchu.58

The image of Hinduism in American academia did not fare much

better. Educators continued to draw their understanding primarily

from nineteenth century British sources which had little good to

say about devotional theology. Swami Vivekananda had

reestablished some respectability for Hinduism with his speeches

at the 1893 World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago, but he

had decried deity worship and personalism as “little loves” that

one must at some point transcend on the way to higher non-dual

realization.59 Those who followed him such as Radhakrishnan and

Aurobindo reinforced that bias, relegating worship of a personal

58 In 1929 when poet Rabindranath Tagore arrived in Los Angeles for a lecture tour, immigration officials treated him with such disdain that he canceled thetour—but not before getting in a parting shot. “Jesus could not get into America,” he remarked, “because…he would be an Asiatic.” (Quoted in Ronald Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans, New York: Penguin Books, 1989, p. 298)

59 In a backhanded swipe at Chaitanya Vaishnavism, Vivekananda said to the Chicago gathering, “Is it a sin if a man can realize his divine nature with the help of an image -- would it be right to call that a sin? No, nor even when he has passed that stage should he call it an error. Man passes from truth to truth, from lower to higher truth… Images, crosses and crescents are simply so many symbols to hang spiritual ideas on. Those that do not need it have no right to say it iswrong... Idolatry in India does not mean anything horrible. It is the attempt of undeveloped minds to grasp high spiritual truths…”

59

God to levels well below Vedanta.60 Paramahansa Yogananda61

attempted to win over Americans by appropriating Jesus and

biblical ethics as vehicles of the one “same infinite God,”62

condemning personalism with feint praise. In any case, the

general public continued to confuse Hinduism with Buddhism and

labeled all non-Christian faiths an amorphous “Oriental

religion.” It was into this brew of anti-Hindu prejudices that

Prabhupada was attempting to implant Chaitanya’s mission of

devotion to Krishna.

By 1970 his movement had grown to include several hundred

young Western disciples and the time had come for them to make

their appearance back in India. Invited to take part in a large

gathering in Bombay called the Sadhu Samaj or holy person’s

meeting, Prabhupada mounted the stage and told his disciples to

begin chanting. It was the first time an assembly of Westerners

had performed public kirtan in India, and the audience responded

60 Eric Sharpe offers insightful comments about the anti-Hindu history of America and Europe in “Hindu-Christian Dialogue in Europe” (chapter 6 of Coward’s book Hindu-Christian Dialogue).

61 Yogananda’s book Autobiography of a Yogi became a bestseller after its publication in 1946.

62 Yale p. 212

60

with cheers and a great round of applause. The Times Weekly reported

the reaction by one member of the audience who spoke in a choked

voice.

”Do you realize what is happening?” he said. “Very soon

Hinduism is going to sweep the West. The Hare Krishna movement

will compensate for all our losses at the hands of padres

throughout the centuries.”

Other reactions to the “dancing white sadhus” were less

flattering. A letter to the Times of India, argued that “The Hare

Krishna movement is just a sporadic fad of sentimentalists.” When

the letter was quoted to him, Prabhupada replied, “How can our

movement be sporadic when the science was taught in the Gita five

thousand years ago and instructed millions of years before

that?63 How can it be called sporadic when our activity is

sanatana-dharma, the eternal occupation of the living entity?”64

Prabhupada encountered other forms of criticism, including

accusations by brahmins that he was breaking tradition by

63 “I instructed this imperishable science of yoga to the Sun God Vivasvan, and Vivasvan instructed it to Manu, the father of mankind, and Manu in turn instructed it to Iksvaku. This supreme science was thus received through the chain of disciplic succession…” BG 4.1-264 Satsvarupa Goswami, vol. 3, p. 131

61

initiating Westerners and that proselytizing was anathema.

Preaching and conversion were weapons of Christians, they argued,

not of Hindus. In rebuttal Prabhupada quoted Bhaktivinode Thakur:

“Lord Chaitanya did not advent himself to liberate only a few men

in India…. Oh, for that day when the fortunate English, French,

Russian, German, and American people will take up banners,

mrdangas, and kartalas and raise kirtan through their streets and

towns—when will that day come?”65 In March 1974 the Thakur’s

prophecy came to pass as Prabhupada led hundreds of disciples

from around the globe in a massive chanting party through the

streets of Mayapur, a dramatic confirmation of Vaishnava

ecumenism.

Nonetheless, by that year anti-cult agencies had begun

kidnapping and “deprogramming” young people in America from a

number of sects,66 retreats, ashrams, and communes; and because 65 Sajjana-tosani, 1910

66 Use of the words “sect” in reference to branches of native Indian belief such as Vaishnavism dates from early modern European writing. Like related terms such as caste, sect was first used by the Portuguese (for example by Jesuit priest Jacobo Fenicio in his seventeenth century Livro da Seita dos Indios Orientais). The word sect acquired its fuller connotation with H.W. Wilson and reached its current usage with Weber, i.e. a subdivision of a reified religion. The pejorative use surfaced in the Sixties with deprogrammers, although scholars still accept “sect” as the legitimate translation of marg, panth, and sampradaya. (See A.M. Shah, “Sects and Hindu Social Structure” in Contributions to Indian Sociology vol. 40 no. 2, 2006, pp. 209-248.)

62

of their public singing and dancing, Prabhupada’s students

offered a particularly tempting target for these attacks. Armed

with deprivation theories67 and funds from worried parents,

deprogrammers brought charges against Krishna devotees that

included deceptive recruiting, fraudulent fundraising,

brainwashing and mind-manipulation through constant chanting of

mantras.

The legitimacy of his movement was of highest importance to

Prabhupada. He was the inheritor of a task set down more than 500

years before, namely to legitimize Chaitanya’s teaching as a

force for change in the larger world. The weight of history bore

down on him: “ISKCON is my body,” he declared at one point,

equating its survival to his own. An endorsement from an American

scholar for any of Prabhupada’s books became a calling card in

his meetings with intellectuals and government officials. The

late Tamal Krishna Goswami, a disciple and scholar, comments:

67 Deprivation theory assumes that no one joins such a religious movement unless he is somehow desperate. The researcher becomes an incredulous observer: “How could they believe such ideas and act like that? There must be something lacking in their lives.” See for example C. Winnicott: Deprivation and Delinquency (Routledge, 1985)

63

The polemic is age-old, debated by gurus of

Prabhupada’s lineage and their…adversaries for

centuries. With this further similarity: Vaisnava bhakti

movements, being largely popular and pietistic, have

usually needed to prove their bona fides to the

established orthodoxy. And Prabhupada was no exception;

he hoped that the polemical tract would convince its

designated recipients…that Krishna Consciousness was

“the genuine Vedic way,” and not “another edition of

the Hippie movement.”68

The matter came to a head in 1976 when deprogrammers won an

initial $32.5 million judgment against ISKCON in a headline-

grabbing court verdict. Tamal Krishna Goswami, at the time

ISKCON’s Governing Body Commissioner for the northeastern United

States, states, “I recognized that the very survival of our

movement was at stake. The theological legitimacy of both our

beliefs and praxis was being legally challenged.”69 The anti-cult

68 Tamal Krishna Goswami, p. 24

69 Tamal Krishna Goswami, p. 30

64

movement had not targeted Krishna devotees alone: any new

religious movement in America was fair game, and arguments for

the prosecution had nothing to do with theology or authenticity.

Devotees had taken the unforgivable step of appearing on college

campuses and at youth events—the traditional arenas for

mainstream Christianity—and it was this direct challenge to

establishment values that had precipitated the cult scare.

Prabhupada took part personally in mounting a defense of his

society, summarizing what he saw as the essence of the conflict

in a letter: “They are afraid that a different culture is

conquering over their culture.”70 Never an apologist for improper

behavior among his disciples if and when it occurred, he

nonetheless took strong exception to anyone casting doubt on the

authenticity of their beliefs. At his recommendation, students

enrolled scholars and prominent members of America’s burgeoning

Indian community to endorse ISKCON and write testimonials. He

encouraged disciples to publish articles and brochures with

titles such as “The Krishna Consciousness Movement is Authorized”

and “A Request to the Media: Please Don’t Lump Us In” (i.e. with

70 Tamal Krishna Goswami, p. 30

65

cults).

The climax came in March 1977, when after hearing arguments

from devotees and examining the theological background to Krishna

worship, a New York grand jury reversed the findings against

ISKCON. The Times of India gave the reversal a front-page headline:

HARE KRISHNA MOVEMENT IS BONA FIDE RELIGION

Washington, March 18, 1977

The Hare Krishna movement was called a ‘bona fide

religion’ yesterday by the New York High Court Justice

who threw out two charges against the officials of the

movement of ‘illegal imprisonment’ and ‘attempted

extortion’… “The entire and basic issue before the

court,” said the Justice in dismissing the charges, “is

whether the two alleged victims in this case and the

defendants will be allowed to practice the religion of

their choice and this must be answered with a

resounding affirmative.” Said Mr. Justice John Leahy,

“The Hare Krishna movement is a bona fide religion with

roots in India that go back thousands of years. It

behooved [the defendants] to follow the tenets of that

66

faith and their inalienable right to do so will not be

trampled upon…” The Justice said, “The freedom of

religion is not to be abridged because it is

unconventional in beliefs and practices or because it

is approved or disapproved by the mainstream of society

or more conventional religions…”

Prabhupada response was short and definitive: “My mission is

now successful,” he said. "This is now recognized after twelve

years. I was loitering in the street alone, carrying books.

Nobody cared.”71 Krishna worship in America had been a

misunderstood and maligned community. The need for Prabhhupada

(as it had been for his predecessors) was to establish

Chaitanya’s theology as a valid school so that its positions

would be taken seriously. Refuted in the court victory were not

only spurious accusations by deprogrammers but also Orientalist

claims that tradition had terminated with the Vedas and neo-Hindu

assertions that bhakti was nothing more than the remnants of an

earlier and undeveloped period in India’s history. What had taken

71 Satsvarupa Goswami, vol. 4, p. 267

67

Chaitanya’s followers 400 years to achieve in India—legal and

public recognition of Krishna worship as an authentic religious

practice—Prabhupada had achieved in America in less than

twelve.72

In his thesis, Tamal Krishna Goswami underscores that

studies on Vaishnavism in America conducted by Western scholars

tend to focus on lifestyle rather than theology, with the

consequence that the Chaitanya School’s larger contributions lie

buried under a preoccupation with dress and ritual. Few purveyors

of the India-in-America phenomenon understand the extraordinary

metamorphosis taking place just below the façade of shaved heads

and orange robes. Historically, and with few exceptions, Hinduism

had always been identified with brown skin. To the eyes of

scholars in the 1960s and 1970s, young Americans and European

devotees were naïve lost souls who had merely adorned themselves

in the trappings of Vaishnavas.

Thomas Hopkins, who has tracked devotional Hinduism in

72 The study at hand does not examine cult practices or the role of new religious movements. For our purposes, we assume a distinction between reasoning Western converts who make a conscious choice to embrace Vaishnava life from devotees whose participation may be motivated more by psychic need than theological reasoning.

68

America for more than forty years, warns that academics look

below that façade at their own risk; for embedded in Chaitanya

theology lies “a challenge to the whole intellectual tradition

that views the West as the fountainhead of wisdom and value, and

India (as well as other non-Western cultures) as culturally and

intellectually inferior.”73 Rather than change the content of

India’s devotional tradition to make it palatable to Westerners,

as other gurus had done, Prabhupada propagated “a revitalized and

spiritually rich Gaudiya Vaisnava tradition that had been imbued,

by both Bhaktivinode and Bhaktisiddhanta, with a spirit of

universality and of relevance to the modern world.”74

Recognition of his society by the U.S. courts as a bona fide

religion gave Prabhupada the credentials he needed to present

Chaitanya theology in its many practical forms of application. By

the time of his passing in 1977, Engaged Vaishnavism had at last

found soil in which to grow and flourish.

73 Tamal Krishna Goswami, p. 33

74 Hopkins (1983), p. 127

69

T HE S HAPE OF T HINGS TO

C OME___________________________________________

New York, September 16, 2135

Crowd control was not working. Best efforts by police to

keep admirers from blocking traffic succeeded only in fanning

their fervor to catch a last glimpse of their hero. Barricades

were positioned in front of the apartment building, and only

after promising hourly updates on Katham’s condition did

officials finally manage to contain the growing swell of people.

Some had come from overseas. Many had been there for days, camped

out since first hearing that the Nobel laureate, now past ninety,

was near death.

70

The panoramic windows of Katham’s floor in the exclusive

residential complex offered a spectacular view of Central Park,

stretched out like a green carpet thirty floors below. Within the

sprawling apartment, paintings and crafts were displayed

everywhere: gold encrusted miniatures in ornate gilt-edged

frames, statues from pre-Mauryan periods, second-century garden

tools supported by matte-black metal stands—ordinary wooden

objects rendered elegant through the simple device of isolation

and display. Thousands of books, many of them ancient and fragile

illuminated tomes, lined wall-to-wall glass-encased shelves that

surrounded the hundred-foot-wide study. Ornate carpets covered

the marble floors. Doctors and nurses came and went, nonplussed

by having to remove their shoes every time they entered or exited

the residence. Katham treated his home like a temple, and guests

were expected to honor his protocols.

At his invitation, a group of archaeologists had assembled

for a final audience. Lying in a hydraulic bed, its incline

controlled with slight pressure applied to a hand-held remote, he

raised the mattress until he could see them at eye level. The

group stood quietly, not knowing how to behave. It was out of

71

context for them, most of whom had an image of the renowned

environmentalist from his younger years when his achievements

were reported daily on television and discussed in classrooms and

laboratories, the stuff of legend.

He read their minds. They hadn’t a clue why they had been

summoned. If he were sixty or even seventy he would have enjoyed

sparring with them on issues of history, challenging their

simplistic understanding of linear time, leading them with

deceptively simple questions to discover for themselves the

fallacies and cultural biases of their own work. His mind was

absorbed elsewhere now, and as much as he wanted them there he

wanted them gone. He had passed out of the world of time as they

knew it and had other matters to attend to.

In earnest, then, he announced his request. Their confusion

was palpable and he allowed them to ask questions. An hour later

they were gone. From the corner of the room, unseen by the recent

visitors, a woman spoke up.

“Are you finished?”

Katham motioned with his one functioning hand for her to

come closer. She rose slowly from her chair and he watched as she

72

approached. Such a small thing, to rise from a chair and take a

few steps, yet to his way of thinking nothing could match the joy

these tiny movements inspired in him. To approach, as in

“Upanishad,” to come nearer to the divine which is how he had

revered her for nearly thirty years. It had not always been this

way. He remembered the silliness of their college days, giggly

vows to name their children after deities with more than two

arms, treks into rainforests and through jungles, pilgrimages to

holy places high in the mountains, days on the ocean, passionate

nights, and the easy rhythm of two lives lived as one. He

remembered the sensation, down to his fingertips, of their

moments of shared discovery: formulas for retrieving nature from

the edge of destruction, working out the puzzle of reversing

decay, doling out vast sums to worthy researchers and deep

thinkers who helped them lay out the blueprint for a planet in

gradual rehabilitation.

Memory took him back ten years. It was the occasion of his

Nobel Prize, an affair marred by the presence of hundreds of

police protecting the august assembly from possible terrorist

attacks. He recalled his speech, which had been the most

73

difficult of his long and celebrated career…

“Gentle people, I am indebted to the Nobel committee and to

my colleagues at the Bhakti Trust for the opportunity to address

you today. As someone who has been compelled by his faith to see

the divine in the manifest world, it has been my life’s goal to

help create an environment which would allow every man, woman,

and child on the planet adequate quality of life, sufficient that

if they chose they could dedicate time to the cultivation of

their souls. It does not take much imagination to see that a

hungry stomach will distract from meditation, sickness from

pollution and climate change will interfere with heady

discussions about consciousness, and that the terrorism which

accompanies such disparities will destroy any opportunity for the

peaceful communion that is prerequisite to higher thought.

“As you are aware, back in 2017 matters came to a head. At

that time, our worst nightmares were realized. To describe the

well-documented situation in its starkest terms, the oceans had

warmed by five degrees centigrade, thawing tundra and melting

glaciers. Huge quantities of methane were released into the

atmosphere. Infectious diseases traveled easily through this

74

depleted environment. The timing of the seasons changed. The

stability of earth’s ecosystem collapsed. These changes had been

predicted as early as 2005 by the IPCC,75 but we watched in

horror as they came to pass. In effect, the earth become warmer

than it had been in more than a half million years. Estimates of

the number of deaths in the decade between 2017 and 2027 directly

attributable to these changes range from 100 to 200 million human

beings. The number of animal and plant species that went extinct

during this decade has still not been calculated. Speculation

says we lost half of the planet’s biodiversity. You know what has

happened since then. The numbers have grown.

“I was born in 2045, the sole heir to my childless great-

uncle after whom I am named. I never met him. He died the year

before I was born, having built the Bhakti Trust to a position of

world prominence. Money begets money, and by the time I was

twenty-five I had accumulated more wealth than most people can

imagine. My religious training compelled me to put that wealth to

use in service to humanity. My associates and I prepared a three-

75 Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control, an agency formed by the European Union in the 1990s to advise industry on best available techniques toimprove their environmental performance.

75

part program. In 2073, we implemented that program. What did we

do? In brief, we seduced industries to withdraw from fossil fuels

by establishing subsidies for clean energy sources. Our

collective war chest at the time exceeded 600 billions dollars,

enough to launch and convince industrialists they would make

money—to say nothing of saving the planet—by converting to non-

fossil fuels. Simultaneously, we set in motion a massive job

program which transferred the labor-intensive side of clean

energy technologies to developing countries. This resulted in a

groundswell of employment and a shift in the world’s wealth to

areas of dire poverty. Third, we set for ourselves an aggressive

fossil fuel efficiency standard, which has been rising at a rate

of five percent per year. As you are all aware, the results of

this three-part program were nothing less than stunning. Carbon

emissions in the following twenty years declined by seventy

percent—sufficient to allow Mother Nature to begin the slow job

of healing herself.

“But here is where the good news ends. Regretfully—and

again, you are all aware of the facts—we were not able to stop

the savage guerilla wars that erupted as a consequence of the

76

global destabilization. Home-based fuel cells, stand-alone solar

energy systems, and regional wind farms could not stem the

spiraling incidence of terrorist attacks. Despite our religious

beliefs, my colleagues and I are not apologists. There is no

forgiveness for the crimes perpetrated by these group—although

from a certain perspective it is understandable that people whose

homelands were erased from the earth by rising seas, whose crops

were destroyed by weather extremes, and whose borders were

overrun by environmental refugees would take matters into their

own hands. Estimates of deaths from these attacks since 2073 are

as devastating as those from climatic change. Together over the

past fifty years, deaths from climate change and terrorist

attacks surpass one billion human beings.

“We have been unsuccessful in communicating with the heads

of these guerilla groups. They operate on a level of animal

survival and cannot be reasoned with. They have sabotaged our

best efforts, and we have no way of knowing if our earnest

efforts can survive their constant forays. It is perhaps the

bleakest corner of an already miserably bleak landscape. We

77

simply are unable to defuse anger and brutality with offers to

reduce carbon emissions.

“So what do we do? What does our belief in a benign and

beneficent creation compel us to do? This is the question which

has exercised me for the past half century. I am a Chaitanya

Vaishnava, and I thank God for that blessing. I won’t bore you

with theology just now, but in brief my tradition compels me to

act in the world. Yet a half century back when climate changes

reached the point of no return I consulted various commentaries

on my faith and was shocked to discover how little had been

written about how Chaitanya bhaktas were expected to engage with

the world. One case in point: after the tragedy of September 11,

2001, the world heard from many religious leaders. The one

community which remained silent was the Hindus. Initially, there

was not one public statement by a Hindu religious leader

denouncing the terrorist attack. The Hindu religious world—not

politicians, mind you, but religionists—had been so detached for

so long that they simply did not know what to say. The best they

could do was hold the attack at arm’s length, because if they

78

acknowledged it the moral implications would have been

unbearable.

“Let me not detour too far. Suffice it to say that the

Chaitanya School had, with a few exceptions prior to 9/11,

trivialized issues of massive importance. What good was our faith

if its purpose made no difference here, now? So my partners and I

decided we would change that paradigm.

“When the United Nations was destroyed in the atomic blast

of 2073, as ineffective as the UN may have been we lost the only

global monitoring agency we had. From the outset, our hope had

been to rewire the world with clean energy as the first step on a

path to peace; but without that monitoring function of the UN we

became victims of a different toxicity, namely nationalism,

tribalism, reptilian fears that do not respond to reason. And

that has interfered with our ability to meet nature’s deadline

before it is too late, before the earth implodes.

“So despite the good news, we are forced to admit that we

have failed. I do not believe in utilitarian formulas. There is

no comfort for me in knowing that if one thousand people die we

may save ten million. But I have had to go deeper inside my own

79

faith in order to know how to act, how to behave now that the

world itself hangs in the balance. There is no body of legal or

scriptural expertise, no authoritative answers for this one. We

are crossing a threshold into uncharted territory. And since

there is no precedent to guide us, we are left with only our own

hearts to consult as we look reality in the eye and ask the

question that has been asked since the dawn of time and which was

immortalized in the ancient Sanskrit text Bhagavad Gita:

“Having assembled on the field of battle, on the field of

dharma—what did they do?”76

* * *

When at last he emerged from his thoughts, she was there

holding his hand and waiting patiently.

“You’ve been there a long time?” He asked innocently. The

question had unintended meaning, and as he looked into her eyes

something struck him as familiar. Something in her face at that

moment was more than the person he knew here and now. Then it was

76 BG 1.1

80

clear, and in that moment of clarity he let go and went calm.

Knowing drew his thoughts away from terrorist attacks and visions

of an imploding planet and the failure of the human experiment.

“So you figured it out, did you?” she said with a smile,

seeing the recognition in his surprised expression.

“You—you said nothing. But you knew?”

“Not at first. Maybe thirty years ago, I started to sense

things, from dreams mostly—glimpses of ancient times, villages

and people farming.”

“What about us? Did you see us in the dreams?” he asked. She

hesitated and he wanted to tell her to say nothing, to reassure

her that he knew they stood on sacred ground and that he had no

right to question. He wanted her to know she owed him no

explanations. Causeless grace is just that: causeless. She pulled

up a chair and sat next to him. She touched his legs and they

were cold. It was a matter of minutes. Reaching down by the side

of his bed, she pushed a button and a kirtan played softly over

speakers hidden behind cornices in the ceiling.

81

“Like two birds in a tree,”77 she said, and then she closed

her eyes and began reciting prayers.

In his final moments, Katham let go the final anchor that

had tethered him to rebirth in the material world. Thousands of

years reached their apogee in these final moments. Gone was the

childish confusion of lives in remote times. Gone was the

impetuousness of lives lived during the world’s emergence into

commerce. Gone, too, was the sectarian anger he had felt in the

Axial Age; and the zealousness of his devotion in the Middle

Ages. Finally gone as well was the burning urgency of proving his

devotion, of having to show quantifiable evidence of his love.

The last cord had been severed, the last hurdle overcome, for he

saw now the limitations of his own goodness and it was fine. He

would not save the world and that, too, was grace. The end of the

human project did not fall on his shoulders.78 The world would

77 “The Divinity and the living being are compared to two birds sitting in a tree. While the forgetful soul is absorbed eating the fruit of the material tree, the Divinity looks on as his best friend and witness.” Mundaka Upanishad,3.1.1

78 “You have a right to perform your prescribed duty, but you are not entitledto the fruits of action. Never consider yourself to be the cause of the results of your actions, and never be attached to not doing your duty.” BG 2.47

82

survive or not. He had played his part, done his bit, as an

offering of love. That was sufficient.

His preoccupation with hopes and dreams for the future had

covered over what was in front of him, the poetry of this moment,

the rightness of things as they are just now, and he saw the

final anchor for what it was: fear of dying irrelevantly, of

having lived but not mattered. He saw now how much he abhorred

becoming like the vast bulk of people, captives of their own

karma who would pass from the earth without making a mark. You

could bury them in stone mausoleums and carve their names in tall

letters, and not one thing, not their acts of goodness or evil or

what they looked liked or how well they had served their God—

nothing would be remembered beyond the slow decay and

disintegration of their stone tomes.

He never wanted to be like them and had dedicated every iota

of strength to avoiding their fate. It was not the world he had

tried to desperately to repair but the rip in the fabric of his

own heart. His mistake had been equating the one with the other,

as though love were an endurance test, something to be conquered

83

and displayed like a shining trophy on a psychic mantle. The

silliness of that assumption baffled him.

What baffled him even more in those final moments was his

foolishness in not seeing his companion for who she was, for not

recognizing the father, the scholar, the friend, the constant

companion at every moment of his journey. “It is, after all, not

so surprising,” he told himself, “if Divinity in my heart steps

out to guide me.”79 But how had he failed to see her sooner for

who she was?

He turned to his companion. Her eyes were closed, her lips

gently reciting ancient prayers, healing words, nada brahma, God

in sound. He last thought before turning his full attention to

the Deity within his heart, surfaced from the farthest reaches of

memory, the object after which he had sent the archaeologists. In

its simplicity lay the essence of truth and beauty, and if ever

humanity were to pull itself from the fire of self-annihilation

it would be by knowing this child’s plaything for what it was, a

gift from a six-year-old before the world went mad, a small boy’s79 “O my Lord, transcendental poets and experts in spiritual science could notfully express their indebtedness to You, even if they were endowed with the prolonged lifetime of Brahma. For You appear in two feature—externally as the guru and internally as the Supersoul—to deliver the embodied living being by directing him how to come to You.” BhP 11.29.6

84

offering, a crude wooden pull-toy that held the secrets of all

creation: to offer something back, anything however humble, with

love.

Katham closed his eyes. On that altar of his heart Krishna

appeared, resplendent, glowing, playing his flute, smiling.

Katham wept. And then with one final, gentle exhalation, he was

gone.

Naimisharanya Forest, October 22, 2135

From Lucknow the research team rode forty five miles north

to the Naimisharanya site. The taxi took about three hours and

hit every pothole along the way.

The site’s history was well known to them. Legend holds that

around 3000 BCE, at the junction of two cosmic ages, Dwapara-Yuga

and Kali-Yuga, a council of sages determined they would perform a

sacrifice to ensure the wellbeing of future generations. They

prayed to demigod Brahma for guidance and Brahma answered by

throwing his cosmic disc to earth to indicate where the

sacrificial pit should be dug. The disc struck the earth at

Naimisharanya and created a sweet-water spring without bottom. In

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the early 1900s, British engineers attempted to discredit the

spring as myth, but after lowering probes more than 3,000 feet

they ran out of cable and gave up. In the past century the

spring, like most sources of water in India, had become too

polluted to drink and the research team carried bottled supplies.

Site 108-SR appeared as Katham had described it from his

deathbed. The tell was about 200 feet long with a slight rise

toward the eastern side. From its appearance little could be

deduced concerning its genesis, except that the central

indentation might indeed have been a seat or throne. Remains of

heavy stone blocks were a clear indication of construction. They

instructed workers to dig where Katham had indicated. Level Four

was less well excavated, nothing of great interest having emerged

from previous digs. Fear of terrorists kept them working

throughout the night.

It was morning when laborers hit on a pocket of implements

used in Vedic religious ceremonies. They found the object Katham

had described among potshards and other objects such as might

have been offered to a rishi in payment for officiating at an

important event. The wooden cart had no distinguishing marks on

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it, nothing to suggest that it deserved a dying man’s attention.

Rapid calculations of the depth of the find placed the toy’s age

around the Vedic period, as Katham had indicated. In that moment,

one thought ran through the mind of every man and woman in the

team. How had he known the object would be there? After much

discussion, they agreed to keep the whole affair to themselves.

Who cared about the prescience of an old man, however great he

may have once been? Better to forget about the ramblings of an

antique living out the fantasies of his faith.

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E PILOGUE________________________________________________________

__________

In his thesis, Tamal Krishna Goswami quotes Robert D.

Baird’s studies on ISKCON to suggest that late twentieth and

twenty-first century initiates have begun taking their founder’s

mission further toward realizing its value to non-initiated

publics.80 Through scholarship and openness to other religious

perspectives this advance guard of Western practitioners is

influencing the wider Vaishnava community to participate in

environmental initiatives, interfaith dialogues, and an array of

causes. Is this move away from orthopraxy and into realms of

social involvement a fulfillment of the tradition? Is it an 80 Baird (1988), p. 165

88

acceptable expansion of Chaitanya’s teachings or a deviation away

from its purpose of encouraging the inner cultivation of love for

Krishna? Is Engaged Vaishnavism a valid interpretation of

Chaitanya Vaishnavism or a risk to its integrity?

The position taken in this thesis has been that close

reading of the tradition reveals Vaishnavism not as a calcified

repository of static knowledge but as a dynamic cauldron brewing

up a variety of devotional elixirs. The acharyas had an obligation

to respect the essence of their faith, yet how they did that

shows their willingness to embrace risk, to adjust the outer

shell of the tradition according to the demands of the time—“a

challenge more dependant on personal realization than ancestral

legitimacy.” 81

Prior to Bhaktivinode, Bhaktisiddhanta, and Prabhupada, such

transformations were minimal. Chaitanya Vaishnavas participated

in a religiously pluralistic society. They exercised their

understanding of lokasamgraha (the general welfare) in whatever

situation they found themselves. And it was taken for granted

that if friction arose between them and other religions or

81 Tamal Krishna Goswami, p. 73

89

political authorities, qualified representatives would present

their side of the story, making appropriate reference to the

community’s interest in avoiding conflict and focusing on its

devotion to Krishna. They declined institutionalizing their

faith, refused to draw a border between those who were inside and

outside the devotional sphere, and avoided identification with

any one political or social persuasion. No one leader was

appointed after Chaitanya’s passing, which effectively

sidestepped competition for authority and maintained the

simplicity of devotional life.

That relatively neutral stance ended when Bhaktivinode

issued a challenge to the Hindu intelligentsia’s prejudice

against devotional theology. And if his purpose was an

accommodating pluralism meant to recover a tradition that had

been lost to opportunists, his son Bhaktisiddhanta’s was its

consolidation and expansion. And if Bhaktisiddhanta’s

contribution was institutional structure and a contemporary

voice, his successor Bhaktivedanta Prabhupada’s was taking that

institution worldwide and encouraging its penetration into

virtually all areas of human endeavor. The engine driving that

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engagement has been and remains Chaitanya’s philosophy of

bhedabheda-tattva 82 From this view of God as non-different from his

creation comes the frequent comment by practitioners that they

are not about politics but about personal transformation.

Improvement of social conditions, they explain, is a byproduct of

effective training in bhakti, devotional service.

That said, none of the acharyas ever urged Vaishnavas to

sacrifice their worship in order to participate in social action,

not because they ignored social realities but because they agreed

that social change without prior self-transformation was

dangerous, and counterproductive.83 The challenge for the current

generation of practitioners, then, is to look at their faith and

at the world around them, determine how the two fit together, and

take part to the extent that their abilities and realizations

allow.

This exercise—bringing devotion into world affairs—is far

from exclusive to Vaishnavas. Diana Butler Bass, a researcher 82 Literally “simultaneous oneness and difference” of the soul and God, also of God and creation.83 “It is far better to discharge one’s prescribe duties, even though they maybe faulty, than another’s duty perfectly. Destruction in the course of performing one’s own duty is better than engaging in another’s, for to follow another’s path is dangerous.” BG 3.35

91

tracking the evolution of religion in America, reports that

America’s mainline churches are moving beyond “establishment” to

“intentionality.”84 Embedded in this move is a daring premise

that each generation has the right and indeed the religious duty

to reform its church and not settle for the previous generation’s

definitions and priorities. Authenticity from this perspective

does not equate to antiquity but rather to innovative patterns of

being. Today’s effective pastors, she writes, are pastors as

sophisticated as the world around them: men and women with a

clear understanding of the people they serve and the ability to

address their concerns with the language of faith. It is in this

ability to see the external as a reflection of the internal that

devotees of all faiths may find nourishment for divine love.

The pastoral imagination, a way of seeing into and

interpreting the world, reaches from the inner places

of the human heart, through the congregation, out to

the world, and back again. The pastoral imagination

allows us to envision God’s presence in the world, to

84 Bass, p. x

92

see the Spirit at work, to embody beauty, peace, hope,

and faith in the midst of chaos, contingency,

questioning and despair.85

This remapping of the world as a global temple softens the

lines between faiths, enlarges sacred spaces, and exposes

stereotype images of “religious people” as arcane and inadequate.

It also reveals the Western presumption to a monopoly on history

as fallacious. Global connectivity has democratized the historic

dialogue and rendered unilateral claims anachronistic. In an

enlarged and interconnected environment the cataloging of faiths

and the marginalizing of mystic experience through discrete

ethnic labeling loses its purchase. Theology which does not

incorporate this dramatic shift in the architecture of faith

amounts to little more than professional expertise. Such

expertise may provide data, but it is incapable of accessing

deeper levels of meaning where dharma or the active impulses of

grace and mercy operate.

85 Bass p. 5

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Might the transformations at work in Chaitanya Vaishnavism

be but one example of this global remapping? Do all contemporary

faiths not confront similar challenges to redefine themselves?

Who qualifies to establish new paradigms of devotion? Configuring

religion as instrument of transformation requires skillful

intuitions, since moving devotion into the world without

compromising integrity or purpose is tricky. To see how such

migrations might be achieved, the final section of this thesis

consists of interviews with practitioners who have taken steps

toward engaging their faith, with varying degrees of success.

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