Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati: The Thread He Gave Away

Here is the fight of his life, and it is the reason he is in this series.

What he did

He gave brahmana initiation, with the sacred thread and the Gayatri, to disciples who were not born brahmanas.

Including men from communities the Bengali social order placed very low, and including men from outside the varna system entirely.

The argument he made

Daiva varnashrama.

The position is that varna follows qualification and conduct rather than birth, that a person who takes up the discipline of a brahmana is a brahmana, and that a person born to it who does not is not.

And he did not have to invent this. He argued it from the Bhagavata, from the Mahabharata, from Chaitanya's own conduct in accepting disciples across every line, and from the whole Vaishnava tradition's standing claim that devotion supersedes birth.

Which is the same argument this series has been recording since Chokhamela, and the difference is that Bhaktisiddhanta was in a position to act on it and did.

Who objected

Two groups, and they had different reasons.

The smarta brahmanas, for whom the thread is a birth marker and giving it away destroys the category.

And the caste goswamis: hereditary Vaishnava families claiming descent from Chaitanya's associates, who held guruship by inheritance and derived income and standing from it.

And the second group is the one he really attacked, because his position was that guruship is not hereditary at all, that a man is not a spiritual teacher because his father was, and that a family business in initiation is a family business.

Which threatened an entire established economy, and they responded accordingly.

What it cost

Litigation. Sustained public attack. Obstruction of his parikramas. And at least one incident recorded as an attempt on his life during a procession.

He did not stop, and by the end of his life the Gaudiya Math had around sixty four centres across India and missions in London and Berlin.

How to weigh it honestly

Three things, and the third one is uncomfortable.

One. He was right and it was brave. He took a position that cost him money, safety and every hereditary ally, and he took it in a society organised against it, and men who could not have entered a temple sanctum were wearing the thread and performing worship because of him.

Two. It was not total. Daiva varnashrama keeps varna as a category and reassigns membership by qualification. It does not abolish the hierarchy, and a reader who wants a straightforward abolitionist will not find one here. What he abolished was birth as the qualification, which in 1920s Bengal was already an enormous thing to do.

Three. The tone.

He was ferociously polemical. He named opponents in print, characterised them harshly, and treated theological disagreement as something close to enmity. The literature of the period on both sides is unpleasant reading.

And that had a cost that arrived after he died, which the last section covers.

His method was media, and he said so in a phrase his line still uses.

Brihat mridanga

The great drum.

A mridanga, the drum played in kirtan, carries a few streets. A printing press carries a continent. He called the press the great drum and organised accordingly.

What he ran

• Sajjana Toshani, the journal his father had founded, which he took over and expanded
• The Gaudiya, a weekly
• Nadia Prakash, a daily newspaper, in Bengali, produced by a religious institution, which was not a normal thing for anybody to be doing
• English language publication aimed at an educated readership
• His own presses, so that the institution controlled production rather than depending on commercial printers

And beyond print

Theistic exhibitions.

He built dioramas. Large constructed displays presenting Vaishnava theology visually, mounted at exhibitions and public gatherings, aimed at people who would never read a book and would look at a model.

Which in the 1920s and 1930s was genuinely modern practice, and it puts him in the same category as Sankaradeva four centuries earlier, whose entry in the previous batch describes a man building a theatre because a doctrine of hearing needs something to hear.

The instruction that changed the most

In 1922 a young man named Abhay Charan De met him in Calcutta.

The meeting is recorded, and the instruction was to preach in English, in the West.

Abhay Charan De became A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, sailed for New York in 1965 at the age of sixty nine with almost nothing, and founded ISKCON, which is the reason the Hare Krishna mantra is audible in cities on every continent.

Which means a single instruction given in 1922 produced a global movement forty three years later, delivered by a man who spent the intervening four decades in business, family life and obscurity.

And that is the usable observation. Prabhupada was not young when he started. He began the work he is known for at an age when most people are finishing.

What he did not do

He did not soften.

The Gaudiya Math under him was disciplined, austere, textually exacting and confrontational, and he made no attempt to be liked by the religious establishment of Bengal, and the establishment obliged him.

He died on 1 January 1937, and within a very short time the Gaudiya Math broke apart.

What happened

He had not named a single successor. His stated intention was a governing body, a collective, rather than one acharya.

It did not hold.

Senior disciples claimed the position. Factions formed. The dispute went to court, property was litigated over, the institution divided, and the sixty four centres dispersed among rival organisations that did not recognise each other.

Various Gaudiya Math bodies exist today, several trace to that split, and the divisions from the 1930s and 1940s are still visible in who will appear on a platform with whom.

Why it is worth reading rather than skipping

Because this is the third time this series has recorded the same sequence in three batches.

Madhavdeva left no line because he was celibate, and Ekasarana produced four samhatis. Sankaradeva's descendants and his best student both had claims and neither settled it. Bhaktisiddhanta tried to avoid the problem by refusing to name anybody, and produced litigation instead.

Which suggests the problem is structural rather than a failure of particular people.

Three observations that follow

One. Naming a successor causes a fight and not naming one causes a bigger fight. There is no arrangement that reliably works, and founders who think they have solved it generally have not.

Two. The sharper the founder's method, the worse the succession.

Bhaktisiddhanta trained a generation to argue, to hold a line without compromise, to regard doctrinal softness as betrayal, and to name opponents in print.

Those are effective qualities in a founder fighting an establishment. They are catastrophic qualities in a committee of equals with no arbiter, and his disciples applied to each other exactly the method he had taught them to apply to the caste goswamis.

Three. What survives is rarely the institution.

The Gaudiya Math fractured, and the thing Bhaktisiddhanta actually wanted did not.

A man he spoke to once in 1922 went to New York in 1965 and the mantra is now audible on every continent. The books are in print in dozens of languages. The argument that birth does not determine eligibility is now the ordinary position across most of the Vaishnava world.

None of that required the organisation to stay whole.

And the honest ledger, since this batch keeps one

The line he founded produced documented, extensive child abuse in its residential schools in the nineteen seventies and eighties, which the Bhaktivinoda entry in the previous batch sets out at length: litigated, settled, publicly acknowledged, and answered with a child protection office.

That belongs in his entry too, because a founder's method shapes what an institution does with power, and an account that celebrates the fight against hereditary priesthood without recording what the resulting institution did to children is not a complete account.

POCSO 2012 applies to every residential religious institution without exception. Reporting is mandatory. Childline 1098. Police 112.

Where to go

• Mayapur, Nadia district, where he did the vow and where the institutions are
• Navadvip, and the riverbank associated with Gaurakishora Dasa Babaji
• Puri, where he was born
• Kolkata, for the Gaudiya Math centres

A daily practice from this entry

• The Hare Krishna mahamantra, on beads, in whatever quantity your day actually contains
• And the Bhaktisiddhanta question, which is the one he spent his life on: what in your practice is inherited rather than chosen, and would it survive being asked for

Who: Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati, born Bimala Prasad Datta on 6 February 1874 at Puri while his father Bhaktivinoda Thakura was serving there as Deputy Magistrate, died 1 January 1937. He was formidably learned in astronomy and calendrical mathematics, worked on the Surya Siddhanta, and the title Siddhanta Sarasvati was given him by scholars for that work before it became part of his religious name. He was thoroughly trained in jyotisha and subordinated it, arguing at length that devotion does not depend on a planetary configuration and that eligibility for the name is not determined by the sky at a person's birth.

His teacher: Gaurakishora Dasa Babaji, a renunciant of extreme austerity who lived on the riverbank at Navadvip, was illiterate, owned nothing and accepted almost nobody. Bimala Prasad took initiation from him in 1900 after persistent refusal, so the most learned man of his generation in the tradition took diksha from somebody who could not read.

The vow: a billion names. The arithmetic is checkable and worth doing: the mahamantra contains sixteen names, so a billion is about sixty two and a half million mantras, and over roughly nine years that is around nineteen thousand a day, about a hundred and seventy five rounds of a hundred and eight beads, which at a fast pace is fourteen or fifteen hours daily for nine years. Extreme, and not impossible, and requiring nobody to believe anything unlikely.

Sannyasa: he took it in 1918 before an image of his guru, who had died, conferring it on himself, since the ordinary requirement is to receive it from a living sannyasi. Opponents called it invalid and his own line holds it legitimate under the circumstances, and a reader should know it is disputed because the dispute is used.

The thread: he gave brahmana initiation, with the sacred thread and the Gayatri, to disciples not born brahmanas, including men from communities placed very low and men outside the varna system entirely. His argument was daiva varnashrama, that varna follows qualification and conduct rather than birth, argued from the Bhagavata, the Mahabharata, Chaitanya's own conduct, and the standing Vaishnava claim that devotion supersedes birth. Two groups objected: the smarta brahmanas, for whom the thread is a birth marker, and the caste goswamis, hereditary Vaishnava families holding guruship by inheritance, whom he attacked hardest by arguing that guruship is not hereditary at all and that a family business in initiation is a family business. It cost him litigation, sustained public attack, obstruction of his parikramas and at least one recorded attempt on his life, and he did not stop: by his death the Gaudiya Math had around sixty four centres and missions in London and Berlin.

How to weigh it: he was right and it was brave, taking a position that cost him money, safety and every hereditary ally in a society organised against it. It was not total, since daiva varnashrama keeps varna as a category and reassigns membership by qualification rather than abolishing the hierarchy, though abolishing birth as the qualification was already enormous in 1920s Bengal. And the tone was ferocious: he named opponents in print and treated doctrinal disagreement as close to enmity, and the literature of the period on both sides is unpleasant reading.

The method: media. He called the printing press the brihat mridanga, the great drum, on the reasoning that a mridanga carries a few streets and a press carries a continent. He ran Sajjana Toshani, the weekly Gaudiya, the Bengali daily Nadia Prakash, English publication, and his own presses, and he built theistic exhibitions with dioramas for people who would never read a book but would look at a model. In 1922 he met a young man named Abhay Charan De in Calcutta and instructed him to preach in English in the West; that man became A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, sailed for New York in 1965 at sixty nine with almost nothing, and founded ISKCON.

After: he named no successor, intending a governing body, and it did not hold. Senior disciples claimed the position, factions formed, the dispute went to court, property was litigated and the sixty four centres dispersed among rival organisations that did not recognise each other, with the divisions still visible in who will share a platform. This is the third time this series has recorded the sequence, after Madhavdeva and after Sankaradeva's succession, which suggests it is structural. Naming a successor causes a fight and not naming one causes a bigger fight. The sharper the founder's method, the worse the succession, since he had trained a generation to argue and to treat compromise as betrayal, and they applied that method to each other. And what survives is rarely the institution: the Math fractured while the mantra, the books and the argument about birth did not. The honest ledger also includes what the line later did in its residential schools in the nineteen seventies and eighties, set out in the Bhaktivinoda entry, and POCSO 2012 applies to every residential religious institution without exception, with mandatory reporting, Childline 1098 and police 112.