Movements Favouring Vigorous Reform (1828-1913)

CHAPTER II

MOVEMENTS FAVOURING VIGOROUS REFORM

1828–1913

WE have already seen that the earliest religious movements of our period were very radical in character, seeking both religious and social reform with great earnestness, and that organizations which sprang from them at a later date were usually filled with the same spirit. All these movements oppose both idolatry and caste ; and none of the leaders have been ascetics.

1. THE BRĀHMA SAMĀJ

2. Of all the religious movements of the nineteenth century the Brāhma Samāj has, without doubt, proved the most influential. Brāhma is an adjectivef formed from Brahman, the God of the Upanishads and the Vedānta philosophy, and samāja is a noun meaning society. Throughout its history it has been sternly theistic and opposed to idolatry, and has always had a policy of reform. Looked at from one side, it is one of a long series of attempts to found a spiritual religion on a genuine Hindu foundation, which have marked the religion of India from a very early date ; while, from the other side, it is a new creation, finding the sources of its vitality in Christian faith and practice.

Ram Mohan Ray (Rāmamohana Rai) (1772–1833), the founder of the Samāj, is the pioneer of all living advance, religious, social and educational, in the Hindu community during the nineteenth century. He was born in a Kulin Brāhman family, which had long been connected with the Muḥammadan government of Bengal. The family were followers of Chaitanya,¹ the Bengali Vishṇuite leader, but his mother came of a Śākta² family. Both his parents were deeply religious. He was married when quite a boy; but his girl-wife soon died, and his father married him to two other little girls; so that until 1824³ he was a polygamist.

When he was about twelve years old, he was sent to study at Patna, at that time a famous seat of Muḥammadan learning, which was then the passport into Government service. The effect of the education he received there is thus described by the historian of the Brāhma Samāj:

He is said to have been specially enchanted with the writings of the Sufi school of Mahomedan philosophers, whose views tallied to a large extent with those of the Vedantic school of the Hindus and who accordingly were regarded as little better than heretics by the narrow and orthodox school of Mahomedans. Throughout his subsequent life, Ram Mohun Roy never entirely shook off these early Mahomedan influences. In private life, through a long course of years, his habits and tastes were those of a Mahomedan, and in private conversation he always delighted to quote freely from his favourite Sufi authors.⁴

It is probable that he also made the acquaintance of the rationalistic school of Muslim thought, the Mu’tazilites,⁵ as B. C. Pal suggests.

On his return, about the age of fifteen, he discovered that the differences between himself and his father on the subject of idolatry were very serious, and he decided to leave home. For some years he lived a wandering life. There is a story that he visited Tibet to study Buddhism and held discussions with the Lamas, but the truth of it is uncertain. But finally his father recalled him. He then settled in Benares, and studied Sanskrit and certain of the Hindu books. In 1796 he began the study of English.

In 1803 his father died, and Ram Mohan removed to Murshidabad, where he published, in 1804, a pamphlet in Persian, Tuhfatul Muwahhiddin, A Gift to Deists. Here the rationalistic and somewhat hard character of the deistic thought which he had imbibed from his study of the Muḥammadan doctors makes itself manifest.

Shortly after, he entered the service of the East India Company under Mr. John Digby. This gentleman, noting Ram Mohan’s studious disposition, became his friend, and helped him to acquire a better knowledge of English and English literature. He still continued his religious inquiries and his discussions with those round about him. He served the Government as a revenue officer for nine or ten years, and amassed a fortune. During his stay at his last station, Rungpur, he spent a good deal of time in religious discussion with the Hindus and Jains of the town.

From this time onward his mother opposed and persecuted him, and for some considerable time his wives refused to live with him on account of his heterodoxy.¹

Originally, Ram Mohan had only hatred for the English; but his practical experience of the Government, his intercourse with Digby and further study of English literature led to a change of feeling and conviction.²

On retiring from the service in 1814, he settled in Calcutta, with the definite purpose of devoting his whole time and strength to the propagation of his religious convictions. He established in 1815 a society called the Atmiya Sabha or Friendly Association. Meetings were held weekly, at which texts from the Hindu scriptures were recited and hymns were sung: but the society ceased to meet in 1819. He studied very seriously, giving his chief attention to the Upanishads and the Vedānta-sūtras of Bādarāyaṇa. Between 1816 and 1819 he published, in both Bengali and English, an abstract of the Vedānta-sūtras, translations of four of the verse Upanishads, and two pamphlets in defence of Hindu theism. His position was that the Upanishads taught pure theism, uncontaminated by idolatry; and he summoned his fellow-countrymen to return to the pure religion of their forefathers. His vigorous action brought him not only controversy but serious persecution. The publication of these works created extraordinary excitement in Bengal and even beyond.

Shortly after settling in Calcutta, he made the acquaintance of the Serampore Missionaries. He also set himself to study Christianity seriously, learning both Hebrew and Greek in order to get at the sources. The result of his reading was thus expressed by himself:

The consequence of my long and uninterrupted researches into religious truth has been that I have found the doctrines of Christ more conducive to moral principles, and better adapted for the use of rational beings, than any other which have come to my knowledge.

In order to give practical effect to this conviction he published, in 1820, a very remarkable volume, The Principles of Jesus, the Guide to Peace and Happiness, being a series of extracts from the Gospels, covering the bulk of Christ’s teaching given by Matthew and Luke, with a few pages from Mark and still fewer from John. In the preface to this volume he says:

This simple code of religion and morality is so admirably calculated to elevate men’s ideas to high and liberal notions of one God, . . . and is also so well fitted to regulate the conduct of the human race in the discharge of their various duties to God, to themselves and to society, that I cannot but hope the best effects from its promulgation in the present form.

His position is that Christ was a theist like himself, that His disciples misunderstood Him, and that the whole edifice of Christology is a huge mistake. Despite this attitude, we can now see what a striking and prophetic advance in the growth of the Hindu spirit the book indicates, and can rejoice that Ram Mohan was able to come so far; but, necessarily, his friends at Serampore felt that the Gospels were mangled and used in an utterly unfair and unhistorical way, in order to bar the progress of Christianity in India. Hence Ram Mohan was now involved in serious controversy on the Christian side.

But he was almost as keenly interested in education and in the reform of the Hindu family as in the establishment of his religious views. In the matter of English education his help proved of great value. He was one of those who formed the scheme of the Hindu College, which was opened in Calcutta in 1819; and, when Duff arrived in the city in 1830, Ram Mohan not only secured a suitable house for his English school, but also brought him a number of pupils. He realized that caste was indefensible and required to be opposed; but, for various reasons, he carefully guarded his own caste, retained his sacred thread, and wrote in defence of the observance of caste; so that he did no service to the crusade.

With regard to the family he felt strongly. The influence of the Serampore men moved him decisively here. It was chiefly the wrongs of women that stirred him. He denounced widow-burning and polygamy, and pleaded for a return to earlier practice in the matter of the rights of women according to the Hindu law of inheritance.

His efforts proved fruitful in several directions. The agitation against the burning of widows, in which he had taken a great part,¹ found its conclusion in Lord Bentinck’s famous order of the 4th of December, 1829, forbidding the cruel practice.

But it was in religion that his work was most effective. Through his friendship with the Serampore Missionaries he was led to help them in their great task of translating the New Testament into Bengali. In the course of the work serious discussions arose, and collaboration ceased; but one of the Missionaries, the Rev. W. Adam, sided with Ram Mohan, and became a Unitarian in May, 1821. This led to the formation in September, 1821, of a Unitarian Mission in Calcutta under a Committee of Europeans and Indians. A house was rented, and Unitarian services were conducted in English. A printing-press and education were also used as auxiliaries; and a Vedant College, meant to turn out Hindu Unitarians, was opened. But Ram Mohan and Adam did not pull well together, and little success was attained. The mission was given up.

2. First Period of the Samāj, 1828–1842: Deistic Theology and Christian Ethics. Since the weekly service in English had failed, some friends suggested a more distinctly Indian service in the vernacular. Feringhi Kamal Bose’s house in Upper Chitpore Road was rented, and the first meeting was held on the 20th of August, 1828. The name chosen at first was Brahma Sabhā, Brahman Association, but it was soon altered to Brāhma Samāj. His chief supporters were three wealthy men, of whom the most notable was Prince Dwarka Nath Tagore (Dvārikānātha Ṭhakkura), and a group of learned Brāhmans. The society met every Saturday evening from seven to nine. The service was in four parts, the chanting of selections from the Upanishads in Sanskrit (this was done in a small room curtained off by itself into which only Brāhmans were admitted), the translation of these passages into Bengali, a sermon in Bengali, and the singing of theistic hymns in Sanskrit and Bengali composed by Ram Mohan and his friends. There was no organization, no membership, no creed. It was merely a weekly meeting open to any who cared to attend. Ram Mohan believed he was restoring Hindu worship to its pristine purity.

Soon afterwards a building was erected in Chitpore Road for the Samāj; and it was opened on the 23rd of January, 1830. The Trust Deed is rather a remarkable document. The following are a few sentences from it :

To be used . . . as a place of public meeting of all sorts and descriptions of people without distinction as shall behave and conduct themselves in an orderly sober religious and devout manner for the worship and adoration of the Eternal Unsearchable and Immutable Being who is the Author and Preserver of the Universe but not under or by any other name designation or title peculiarly used for and applied to any particular Being or Beings by any man or set of men whatsoever and that no graven image statue or sculpture carving painting picture portrait or the likeness of anything shall be admitted within the said building . . . and that no sacrifice . . . shall ever be permitted therein and that no animal or living creature shall within or on the said premises be deprived of life . . . and that in conducting the said worship and adoration no object animate or inanimate that has been or is . . . recognized as an object of worship by any man or set of men shall be reviled or slightingly or contemptuously spoken of . . . and that no sermon preaching discourse prayer or hymn be delivered made or used in such worship but such as have a tendency to the promotion of the contemplation of the Author and Preserver of the Universe to the promotion of charity morality piety benevolence virtue and the strengthening the bonds of union between men of all religious persuasions and creeds.

3. In November, 1830, Ram Mohan sailed for England. He had long wished to take the journey. He was fully conscious of the momentous changes destined to arise in India from the introduction of British government, Western civilization and Christianity; and naturally wished to study life and religion in England. He also hoped to be of some service to his coun-try politically, since the Charter of the East India Company fell to be renewed in 1833. The representative of the Mughal dynasty, now a pensioner of the Company, entrusted him with a personal petition, and conferred on him the title of Rāja. He took two servants with him, in order that he might keep caste on the sea and in England.

He was received with the utmost cordiality and respect in England, and exercised a greater influence than he can have ever hoped to do, but he died in Bristol in 1833. In Bristol Museum there hangs a portrait by Biggs, which is reproduced as the frontispiece to this volume.

4. He was a man of large intellect, of wide sympathies and of both courage and force. He was the first Indian who realized the great good which the country would reap from its connection with Britain and from the leaven of Christianity. But¹ he realized to the full that no real blessing could come to India by the mere adoption of Western things unchanged. India, he said, would inevitably remain Indian. No gift from the outside could be of any real value except in so far as it was naturalized. His long bold struggle, on the one hand, for religious and social purity, for educational progress and journalistic freedom, and his brilliant literary work and unchanging fidelity to Indian ideals, on the other, had made him not only the most prominent of all Indians, but the one man able to stand between Indians and Englishmen as interpreter and friend.

But he was neither a philosopher nor a theologian. He thought out no system. Faced with the superstitions and the immoralities of popular Hinduism, on the one hand, and seeing distinctly, on the other, the truth contained in Islam and Christianity as well as in his own Hindu Upanishads, he found a plain man’s solution of the complicated problem. He seized on the theistic elements common to the three faiths, and declared them to be at once the original truths of Hinduism (corrupted by the populace in the course of the centuries) and the universal religion on which all men could unite. We must not be astonished at the crudeness of his work. The Vedas from which alone a true knowledge of the rise of Hinduism can be obtained were inaccessible to him, only the Upanishads being available; and the science of religion had not yet gathered its stores of comparative knowledge to illuminate the whole problem of the religions and their relation to each other.

He believed he was restoring the Hindu faith to its original purity, while, as a matter of fact, what he offered was a deistic theology and worship. Deism was very popular among European rationalists in the eighteenth century, and it harmonized well both with what he found in the Upanishads and with what he had learned from Muḥammadan rationalists. The Upanishads teach that Brahman is actionless; that he has no purpose or aim which could lead him to action; that all his activity is sport; that he is beyond the range of thought and speech; and therefore cannot be reached by man’s meditations and prayers. That Ram Mohan’s conception of God was seriously deistic we may realize clearly from the lack of prayer in the worship of the Samāj in his day, and also from the definitions of worship given in his writings. Here is a passage from his Religious Instructions founded on Sacred Authorities:

Question — What is meant by worship? Answer — Worship implies the act of one with a view to please another; but when applied to the Supreme Being, it signifies a contemplation of his attributes. Question — In what manner is this worship to be performed? Answer — By bearing in mind that the Author and Governor of this visible universe is the Supreme Being, and comparing

this idea with the sacred writings and with reason. In this worship it is indispensably necessary to use exertions to subdue the senses, and to read such passages as direct attention to the Supreme Spirit. . . . The benefits which we continually receive from fire, from air, and from the sun, likewise from the various productions of the earth, such as the different kinds of grain, drugs, fruit and vegetables, all are dependent on him: and by considering and reasoning on the terms expressive of such ideas, the meaning itself is firmly fixed in the mind.¹

Contrast with these statements the following lines from a little manual used at present by the Sādhāran Brāhma Samāj:

Worship is the communion of the soul with God; on the part of man, it is the opening of his soul, the outpouring of his aspirations, the acknowledgement of his failures and transgressions and the consecration of his life and work to God as his Lord, Refuge and Guide; and on the part of God, the communication of His light, strength, inspiration and blessing unto the longing soul.²

This is a living theism : the above is a dry deism.

But there is another element in Ram Mohan’s teaching which, in the subsequent history, has proved of infinite importance, namely this, that he did not believe in transmigration. Here he broke absolutely with Hinduism. Transmigration and karma are the very essence of the religion. The one aim of the philosophy of the Upanishads is the attainment of release from transmigration. It is thus only the simple truth to say that Ram Mohan was no longer a Hindu, that the orthodox were quite right in their suspicions, although they failed to lay stress on the crucial point. That this is a just judgment is made plain by the fact that the historical evolution of his principles has ended in separating the Brāhmas from Hindu society. The Brāhma to-day is as distinctly outside Hinduism as the Christian is.

Image: PRINCE DWARKA NATH TAGORE. From life-size portrait by Baron de Schweter.

We must also note that the form of the service arranged by Ram Mohan is Christian. Congregational worship is unknown in the ancient Hinduism which he believed he was restoring. Further, the ethics which Ram Mohan recommended were drawn from the teaching of Christ.

The death of the Founder was almost fatal to the infant society; but the munificence of his friend Prince Dwarka Nath Tagore enabled it to exist until a better day dawned.

5. Second Period, 1842-1865: Debendra Nath Tagore: Theism and Religious Reform. In 1838 Debendra Nath Tagore, the youthful son of the prince who had been Ram Mohan’s great friend, passed through a very decided spiritual change, which made him a consecrated man for the rest of his life. The following year he formed, along with a few friends, the Tattvabodhinī Sabhā, or Truth-teaching Association, which met weekly for religious discussion, and once a month for worship.

Then in 1842, nine years after Ram Mohan’s death, he and his young friends joined the Brāhma Samāj; and, for some years, the two societies worked side by side for common objects. Debendra was soon recognized as leader, and, being a Brāhman, became the Āchārya or minister of the Samāj. A monthly, called the Tattvabodhinī Patrikā, or Truth-teaching Journal, began to appear; and a Vedic school, the Tattvabodhinī Pāṭhśālā, was established, partly to train Brāhma missionaries, partly with a view to check Christianity, now making considerable progress in Calcutta under Duff’s¹ leadership. Debendra followed Ram Mohan in his belief that original Hinduism was a pure spiritual theism, and in his enthusiasm for the Upanishads, but did not share his deep reverence for Christ. He believed India had no need of Christianity; and he was never known to quote the Bible.

6. He saw that the Samāj needed organization. Hitherto it had been merely a weekly meeting. It had exercised little influence on the private life of those who attended; and they were bound by no lasting tie to the Society. He therefore drew up, in 1843, what is known as the Brāhma Covenant, a list of solemn vows to be taken by every one on becoming a member of the Society. The chief promises made are to abstain from idolatry, and to worship God by loving Him and by doing such deeds as He loves. The members of the Tattvabodhini Sabha were the first to take the vows. This fresh organization greatly strengthened the Samāj.

At the same time a brief form of prayer and adoration, drawn up by Debendra and called Brahmopāsanā,¹ worship of Brahman, was introduced. This addition of prayer and devotional exercises to the service of the Samāj was a notable enrichment. It was a living fruit of Debendra’s own religious experience. He was as far as possible from being a deist. He lived a life of constant prayer and worship of God; and the direct communion of the human soul with the supreme Spirit was the most salient point in his teaching.

These changes and the vigorous preaching of Debendra and several young missionaries in Calcutta and many places round led to considerable growth. The Samāj began once more to take a prominent place in the life of Bengal.

But there were difficulties. The Vedas were recognized as the sole standard of the faith of the Samāj; and most of the members believed them to be verbally inspired. Duff was therefore justified in criticizing the Samāj for holding the plenary inspiration of such documents. A few of the more advanced members saw that it was no longer possible to hold the belief. In order that the matter might be settled on a sure basis, four students were sent to Benares, that each might study and copy one of the four Vedas, and bring back the fruits of his labour. They reached Calcutta in 1850; and the final result was that the inerrancy of the Vedas was altogether given up. Thus the rationalism implicit in Ram Mohan’s teaching from the beginning became fully explicit; and the Samāj, left without any authoritative standard of doctrine, was thrown back on nature and intuition. Yet the Upanishads did not cease to be the chief scripture of the society ; for, just at this crisis, Debendra compiled a series of extracts from Hindu literature, the bulk of them being from the Upanishads, for use in public worship and private devotion. This volume is called Brāhma Dharma, i.e. Brāhma Religion.

7. In 1857 a young man joined the Samāj who was destined to prove its third leader. This was Keshab Chandra Sen (Keśavachandra Sena), a Calcutta student, who came of a well-known Vishṇuite family of Vaidya caste, and had had a good modern education. For two years he did nothing, but in 1859 he became an active and successful worker. Debendra formed a great liking for his gifted young friend, while Keshab looked up to him with reverence and tenderness as to a father.

In 1860 Keshab founded the Saṅgat Sabhā,¹ or Believers’ Association, which met regularly for devotional purposes and for the discussion of religious and social questions. In this weekly meeting the problem of the sacraments, samṣkāras, celebrated in Hindu homes on the occasion of births, marriages and other family events, was discussed ; and their idolatrous character stood out so clearly that the members came to the conclusion that Brāhmas could not conscientiously take part in them. In consequence, Debendra decided that no idolatrous sacrament should ever be celebrated in his own home, and prepared, for the use of the Samāj, a set of modified ceremonies from which everything heathen and idolatrous had been eliminated. These are known as Brāhma rites; the manual is called the Anushṭhāna Paddhati; and Brāhmas who use them are known as Anushṭhānic Brāhmas. The worship of Durgā, which until now had been held every year in the Tagore residence, was given up, and the chamber in which the idol stood was converted into a chapel for family worship. The Sabhā also discussed caste, with the result that the members gave it up once and for all, and Debendra discarded his own sacred thread. At Keshab’s suggestion, the Samāj began to follow the example of Christian philanthropy, and gathered money and food for the famine-stricken. He was daily coming more and more under the influence of Christ, and felt in the depths of his spirit that social service and social reform were the bounden duty of every serious theist.

Keshab had had a good English education and had obtained a post in the Bank of Bengal. In 1861 he and several of his young friends gave up their positions, in order to become missionaries of the Samāj. Shortly afterwards, Keshab, though he was not a Brāhman, was formally made a minister of the Samāj with the title of Āchārya.¹ At this time also it was arranged that no minister of the Samāj, whether Brāhman or non-Brāhman, should wear the sacred thread.

Amongst the new activities of the movement were the Brāhma Vidyālaya, a sort of informal theological school, and a fortnightly English journal, The Indian Mirror, which soon became influential.

In 1864 Keshab made a long tour extending as far as Madras and Bombay, and preached with great power and success wherever he went. As a result of his labours, a new society called the Veda Samāj was founded in Madras that same year. From this society the present Brāhma Samāj of Madras has grown. During this tour the welcome which he received far and near, and the many openings which he saw, suggested to him the possibility of a Brāhma Samāj for the whole of India.

Three years later the men whom he had influenced in Bombay formed themselves into the Prārthanā Samāj.¹

8. But all the changes and reforms which had come through Keshab’s activity proved too much for the older members of the society; and Debendra himself, though he felt like a father towards his gifted young helper, was very much afraid that spiritual religion would be sacrificed to the new passion for social reform. To him the latter was of very little consequence as compared with the former. He was still very much of a Hindu in feeling; he believed that, however evil caste might be, members of the Samāj ought not to be compelled, in the circumstances of those days, to give it up. He was opposed to marriages between people of different castes; and he could not endure the thought of widow-remarriage. Keshab’s Christian studies, on the other hand, had led him and his associates to see that the overthrow of caste and the complete reform of the Hindu family were altogether necessary for the moral and religious health of India. There were religious differences between them also. Debendra was a deeply devotional spirit, but the fact of sin and the need of repentance had made very little impression upon him; while, through the teaching of Christ, Keshab and his party had become fully alive to the supreme importance of the ethical side of religion, both for the individual and the country.

The consequence was the formation of two parties within the Samāj, each eager to be friendly with the other, and yet each unable to yield to the other; and suspicion grew apace. On the 5th of October, 1864, a very violent cyclone visited Calcutta and Bengal, and so damaged the Brāhma building that it became necessary to hold the services in Debendra’s house. He seized this opportunity to allow ministers wearing the sacred thread to officiate. Keshab and his party protested against this breach of the rules, while Debendra would not budge. Negotiations were carried on for some time, but without result. Consequently, early in 1865, Keshab and his party withdrew, leaving Debendra and his followers with all the property of the Samāj. Keshab was only twenty-four years of age. There were already fifty Samājes in Bengal, three in North India and one in Madras.

9. Since the secession, the old Samāj has become more Hindu than before. Its ambiguous theological position is reflected in its undecided attitude to caste. On this latter point one of its leaders wrote:

In conformity with such views, the Ādi Samāj has adopted a Hindu form to propagate Theism among Hindus. It has therefore retained many innocent Hindu usages and customs. . . . It leaves matters of social reformation to the judgments and tastes of its individual members. . . . If it be asked why should such social distinctions as caste be observed at all, the reply is that the world is not yet prepared for the practical adoption of the doctrines of levellers and socialists.¹

10. We may here sum up what we have to say about Debendra Nath Tagore; for, though he preached from time to time, and now and then published something, during the forty years that intervened between the secession and his death in 1905, yet he no longer occupied his old prominent position. He spent most of his time in retirement and devotional exercises, either on the Himalayas or in his own home in Calcutta. His great and noble character and his lofty spiritual nature so impressed his fellow-citizens that he was universally known as the Maharshi, the great Rishi or Seer; and he was looked up to by all sections of the Samāj as the saintly patriarch of the movement. I had the pleasure of seeing and talking with him a few months before his death.

Image: From portrait by W. Archer, R.A. MAHARSHI DEBENDRA NATH TAGORE

The bleached complexion and massive architecture of his face revealed even then, at the age of eighty-seven, the lofty spiritual nature and the sensitive heart which had done so much in the far-away years.

He regarded himself as a true Hindu, standing in the long noble succession of the thinkers and rapt devotees of the Vedānta; and it is indeed true that a large measure of their reverence and inspiration had descended to him. But he failed to realize that the rejection of the authority of the Vedas, and above all of the doctrine of transmigration and karma, had set him outside the nexus of the peculiar beliefs and aspirations of Hinduism. Since he was unwilling to learn from Christ, and since he stood apart from the chief source of Hindu religious passion — the desire for release from rebirth, — his Samāj has barely succeeded in keeping afloat amid the fierce currents of modern thought and practical life.

11. Third Period, 1865–1878: Two Samājes: Theism and Social Reform. At this time Keshab read a great deal of Christian literature and came more and more under Christian influence. Dean Stanley’s Works, Robertson’s Sermons, Liddon’s Divinity of our Lord, the Theologica Germanica and Seeley’s Ecce Homo were among the volumes which touched him most deeply. The influence of Seeley can be very distinctly felt in the lecture delivered in 1866 on Jesus Christ: Europe and Asia. He called attention to the fact that Jesus was an Asiatic, and spoke very freely of Christ’s greatness and his supernatural moral heroism. The chief point of the lecture, however, is a straightforward, manly appeal, addressed to Europeans as well as his fellow-countrymen, to follow the moral precepts of Jesus. His enthusiasm for Christ led many to believe that he was about to become a Christian.

Many of his followers turned enthusiastically to the study of the Bible at this time; and the touch of Christ produced a new seriousness among them, which showed itself in an eager desire to lead a pure and holy life, and a passion for saving souls. It was this that formed the temper of the missionary body. These men, seven or eight in number, all of them attached by the closest personal ties to Keshab, were the strength of the new movement. They were great in enthusiasm and self-sacrifice. They lived lives of simplicity and hard work, and suffered both privation and persecution. They went about preaching, and many individuals were won to the cause. Yet the seeds of future difficulty were already visible. There was no organization; and so, although each missionary was bound to Keshab by strong religious ties, lack of definite arrangement and rule led to frequent quarrels amongst them, which Keshab found it hard to compose.

12. At the end of 1866 he formed a new society, called the Brāhma Samāj of India, and invited all Brāhmas throughout the country to join it. Henceforward the original Samāj was called the Ādi Brāhma Samāj, or original society. A number of the steady old members held by Debendra, but nearly the whole of the younger and more enthusiastic men followed Keshab; and many noteworthy Brāhmas in other parts of India also adhered to him. Unfortunately there was no constitution, no governing body, no rules. Everything was left in Keshab’s hands. Very soon afterwards a selection of theistic texts from the Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, Christian, Muḥammadan and Chinese Scriptures was published, under the title Ślokasangraha, or Collection of Texts, for use in the services of the Samāj. The wider, freer outlook of the new body thus received very vivid expression. The society held its weekly service in Keshab’s own house on Sundays, while the leaders still attended the regular service of the Ādi Samāj, which was held on Wednesday.

13. The separation from Debendra depressed Keshab, and threw him back on God. Hence, he and his fellow-mission-aries spent long days of fervent prayer and adoration in his house, seeking strength and courage from God. Ever since his conversion he had been a man of prayer, but he now entered into a deeper experience of its joy and power than ever before.

Set free from old restraints, and having round him a large body of enthusiasts who were ready for progress, he adopted a number of new practices which were meant to deepen and strengthen the religious life of the Samāj. The sources of his new methods were the Vishnuism of Chaitanya,¹ which was traditional in his own family, and Christianity, which was now influencing him so deeply. He began to use the old Vishnuite word bhakti, which covers both love for God and faith in Him, and to stir the members of the Samāj to live by it. One of his missionaries, Bijay Kṛishṇa Gosvāmī, was a lineal descendant of one of the companions of Chaitanya. Keshab commissioned him to introduce the instruments used in the old sect, and begin sankīrtana,¹ the enthusiastic singing in chorus, with musical accompaniments, of hymns of praise and devotion. Chaitanya had also taught his followers to move in procession through the streets of a town, dancing and singing praise to God, with flags flying and drums beating. This nagarkīrtana,¹ town-praise, was adopted and used in Calcutta with much success. He also drew up a new liturgy for use in the services, which is still widely used. From this time too the Brāhmas have held several annual festivals, each lasting two or more days. The whole time is spent in prayer, worship and the hearing of religious addresses. Keshab thus did all in his power to start the new society in a living experience of God and His service.

14. In August, 1869, a building in Machua Bazaar Street was opened for the use of the new Samāj with great rejoicings. Then, just as Ram Mohan did, after the opening of the original

building, Keshab suddenly announced, to the amazement of his friends, his intention of going to England. The Samāj was altogether without organization, and all its activities depended entirely on Keshab himself ; so that it seemed rather unwise for him to go away. But some sort of arrangement was made, and Keshab took the journey. He was received in England with the utmost cordiality, delivered addresses in all parts of the country, met many noteworthy people, and made many new friends. The visit was also a great experience for Keshab : he returned to India with a new sense of the priceless value of the Christian home, and with his head filled with fresh schemes for social reform.

15. The younger members of the new Samāj had been very busy socially from the very outset. They were, above all, enthusiastic advocates of the education of girls and of the emancipation of women. Some of them began to take their wives with them to call on Christians and to social gatherings. They invented a new and becoming dress, more suited for outdoor wear and social intercourse than the rather scanty clothing of the stay-at-home Bengali wife. A new form of marriage-ritual was created, more truly expressive of progressive Brāhma feeling than the form in use in the old Samāj, and in it were included marriage-vows to be taken by the bride and bridegroom, in imitation of Christian marriage. They struggled to put down child-marriage. Several widows were remarried and more than one marriage between persons of different castes was solemnized. Philanthropy was not neglected. In time of famine or epidemic they were ready to help.

Later, it became clear that there was no law in existence under which Brāhma marriages could come. Hence Keshab appealed to the Government, and, after much discussion and difficulty, an Act was passed in 1872 which legalized them. Paṇḍit S. N. Śāstrī remarks:

The passing of this Act may be justly regarded as the crowning success of the prolonged efforts of the reformers for the amelioration of their social life. It abolished early marriage, made polygamy penal, sanctioned widow marriages and intercaste marriages. As such it was hailed with a shout of joy by the progressives; but ever since it has been one of the principal causes that have alienated the Brahmos from the sympathies of their orthodox countrymen.¹

The new social activities which Keshab inaugurated on his return from England included a Normal School for girls, an Industrial School for boys, the Victoria Institution for women, and the Bhārat Āśram, a home in which a number of families were gathered together for the cultivation of a better home-life, and for the education of women and children. Journalism was also eagerly pursued. The Indian Mirror became a daily paper, and the Sulabh Samāchār, the Cheap News, a Bengali weekly published at a farthing, began to appear.

The movement was very successful. The tours of the missionaries in country towns, Keshab’s tours to distant cities, and his great lectures in English drew great numbers of men to theism and rapidly built up the membership of the Samāj. Several of the other missionaries, notably Pratap Chandra Mozoomdar, were growing in strength and spiritual power.

16. Yet Keshab began to be conscious that all was not well in the Samāj. An opposition party was being formed. There were several reasons for their dissatisfaction. While Keshab was in most things very progressive, he was opposed to giving women much freedom, and was very much afraid of the effects which a university education would produce on them. He had already done much to release them from the restraints of Hinduism, and he was in favour of giving girls a simple education; but a large and growing party were coming more and more under the spell of Western ideals, and they were determined that their daughters should receive a good modern education. The second point of difference sprang from the supremacy of Keshab in the Samāj. He was so much bigger than any other Brāhma, and his addresses showed so much inspiration, and influenced men so deeply, that he began to believe himself different from other men, dowered with a constant inspiration from heaven; and some of his youthful followers began to fall at his feet and to address him as Hindus have been accustomed to address their gurus for many centuries. The party of progress and freedom were very sensible of the extreme dangers of guruism in a modern body like the Samāj, and they protested seriously against it. Two of the missionaries actually left Keshab. It seems clear that he rebuked his young disciples when their enthusiasm carried them to extremes; yet in his lectures he used expressions which might well lead people to treat him as different from other men; and Mozoomdar tells us frankly that he always favoured those who regarded him as the divinely commissioned leader of the movement, and severely criticized the opposite party. The worst point of all was his doctrine of adesh (ādeśa). He declared that from time to time a direct command from God was laid upon him by special revelation. The want of organization in the Samāj made matters still worse. It is probably true that he had no desire to be an autocrat; yet, since there was no constitution, and since he objected to every form of popular government proposed by the other party, everything depended upon him, and he occupied, as a matter of fact, the position of master of the Samāj, whether he deserved to be charged with autocracy or not.

17. In a temple a few miles to the north of Calcutta there lived an ascetic known as Rāmakṛishṇa Paramahaṁsa, of whom we shall hear later.¹ Keshab made his acquaintance, went frequently to see him, and now and then took a large company of his followers with him. There can be no doubt that Keshab’s appreciation of the man and his frequent praise of his devotion and his stimulating conversation did much to bring Rāmakṛishṇa into public notice, and to draw to him the crowds of disciples who listened to his words. We do not know when Keshab made his acquaintance, but Rāmakṛishṇa’s latest biographer states that it was about the year 1875; and that seems, on the whole, the most likely date.¹ Rāmakṛishṇa was a man of deeply religious nature. He was a true Hindu, little touched by Western influences, holding the Vedānta philosophy, ready to worship any Hindu idol, and prepared to defend any Hindu belief or practice against all comers, yet also convinced that all religions are true and that no man should leave the faith into which he has been born.

Feeling very distinctly the growing opposition in the air around him, Keshab sought once more by prayer, consecration and new forms of renunciation to unite and strengthen the missionary body, and to fill the whole Samāj with such enthusiastic devotion as to preclude the possibility of disunion. The practices which he adopted himself and which he induced his missionaries to adopt at this time are so very different in spirit from the methods of devotion that he employed earlier, and are so distinctly Hindu, that one is tempted to see in them evidence of the influence of Rāmakṛishṇa. Here is the account given by Śāstrī:

It was not entirely the asceticism of the spirit that he inculcated at this time; for he countenanced, both by precept and example, some of the external forms of it. For instance, he himself gave up the use of metallic drinking cups, substituting earthen ones for them, his example being followed by many of the missionaries; he took to cooking his own food and constructed a little thatched kitchen on the terrace of the third story of his Kalutolah house for that purpose; and introduced the ektara, a rude kind of musical instrument and the mendicant’s drinking bowl, well-known to a sect of Vaishnavas. . . . One thing, however, was remarkable. Along with the development of these tendencies there was visible a decline of the old philanthropic activities of the Samaj. The educational and other institutions started under the Indian Reform Association, for instance, began to decline from this time. Very great stress was laid on meditation and retirement from the world. With a view to giving practical effect to these ideas, Mr. Sen purchased a garden in the village of Morepukur, within a few miles of Calcutta, in 1876, and duly consecrated it to that purpose on the 20th of May that year, under the name of Sadhan Kanan, or “Forest Abode for Religious Culture.” Here many of the missionaries of the Samaj spent with him most of the days of the week in meditation and prayer, in cooking their own food, in drawing water, in cutting bamboos, in making and paving roads, in constructing their cabins, in planting and watering trees, and in cleansing their bedrooms. As marks of their asceticism they began to sit below trees on carpets made of hides of tigers and of other animals, in imitation of Hindu mendicants and spend long hours in meditation. . . . It was towards the end of this year that Mr. Sen introduced a fourfold classification of devotees. He chose from amongst his missionaries four different sets of men to represent four types of religious life. The Yogi, or the adept in rapt communion, the Bhakta, or the adept in rapturous love of God, the Jnani, or the earnest seeker of true knowledge and the Shebak, or the active servant of humanity. These four orders were constituted and four different kinds of lessons were given to the disciples of the respective classes.¹

He succeeded by these means in binding the missionaries to himself, but he failed with a large section of his followers.

18. Yet things might have continued as they were for some time, but for a chance occurrence, which led to a serious practical application of the doctrine of adesh² by Keshab, and which convinced the opposing party that they were absolutely right in their estimate of him. The Government of Bengal had had the young heir to the native state of Kuch Bihar (in North Bengal) carefully educated under English officials, so that he might become a capable modern ruler, and they had arranged that he should proceed on a visit to England. But his mother demanded that he should be married before leaving India; and the Government officials who were responsible for his training were most anxious that he should be married to a cultured girl who would be a help and not a hindrance to him. Consequently, the proposal was made that he should marry Keshab’s daughter. Now, the Brāhma leader had been fighting idolatry and child-marriage for many years; and, through his influence, a special Marriage Act had been passed for Brāhmas.¹ The young prince and Keshab’s daughter were both under age from the point of view of the Brāhma Marriage Law. Further, the Kuch Bihar family were Hindus; and, consequently, the prince could not be married as a Brāhma. His marriage would necessarily be a Hindu marriage; and there could be no guarantee that he would not marry other wives. It was thus perfectly clear that Keshab could not consistently agree to the marriage. But several things conspired to make it difficult to refuse. The Government were most eager to see it carried out. Already tentative proposals had been made with regard to the daughter of another Brāhma, with whom the alliance would be made, if Keshab declined it. The young man himself declared that he was a theist, and that he would not marry more than one wife; yet, as he was not a member of the Samāj, that could not alter the character of the marriage. Indeed, since Kuch Bihar is a native state, the Brāhma Marriage Act was altogether inapplicable. Government, however, extracted promises from the Kuch Bihar family, that everything idolatrous would be excluded from the ceremony, and that the marriage would be in fact a betrothal, as the parties would not live together until the young man returned from England, when both would be of age. But what decided Keshab was the doctrine of adesh. He believed that he had received from God a command to go on with the wedding; and therefore, in spite of all the facts already mentioned, and in spite of the vehement protests of a large party in the Samāj, he gave his consent.

As was to be expected, the Kuch Bihar family did not carry out their promises. The wedding as celebrated was a Hindu marriage; idolatrous implements and symbols were in the pavilion; and, though Keshab and his daughter both withdrew before any idolatrous ceremonies took place, the ritual was completed by the Hindu priests in the presence of the bridegroom in the usual way.

19. A tremendous storm followed in Calcutta. The opposing party did their best to depose Keshab, and to seize the building, but failed in both attempts. Finally, they left the Samāj, a great body of intelligent and influential men. For many years a fierce controversy raged round the details of the wedding; but the facts are now quite clear. A little pamphlet, called A Brief Reminiscence of Keshub Chunder Sen,¹ written by Miss Pigot, the pioneer Zenāna Missionary of the Church of Scotland, who was most intimate with Keshab and his family, and accompanied the little bride to the wedding, gives a clear and intelligible account of all that happened.

20. Fourth Period, 1878-1884: Three Samājes: Keshab’s New Dispensation. Most of the missionaries, a number of outstanding men and a section of the rank and file held by Keshab, but the major portion of the membership went out. All the provincial Samājes were consulted, and the majority fell in with the new movement. The name chosen was the Sādhāran Brāhma Samāj; and great care was taken to organize the society in a representative way, so as to avoid the single-man government and the consequent changes of teaching which had caused so much trouble in the old body. The word sādhāran means “general,” and is clearly meant to suggest that the society is catholic and democratic. With regard to doctrine and practice, they were anxious to continue the old theistic teaching and the social service and philanthropy which had characterized Keshab’s Samāj to begin with. They were especially eager to go forward with female education. It was the easier to organize a representative government and to secure continuity of teaching, because, while there were many able men among them, there was no outstanding leader. Of the four missionaries appointed the most prominent was Paṇḍit Śiva Nāth Śāstrī. On the 22nd of January, 1881, their new building in Cornwallis Street was opened.

Image: KESHAB CHANDRA SEN

Yet, despite the great schism, Keshab retained the primacy in Brāhmaism by sheer genius and force of character until his death in 1884. His achievements during the last six years of his life are very remarkable, the extraordinary freshness of his thinking and writing, and the many new elements he introduced into his work. Yet, though very brilliant, these innovations have not proved nearly so fruitful and lasting as his early contributions to the cause. They will be more intelligible grouped under three heads, than set out in chronological order.

21. The first group comes under the head of his own phrase, the New Dispensation. For some years it had been clear that he thought of himself as having a special divine commission. That idea now becomes explicit. There have been a number of divine dispensations in the past: he is now the divinely appointed leader of the New Dispensation, in which all religions are harmonized, and which all men are summoned to enter as their spiritual home. He and his missionaries are the apostles of this new and universal church. But this claim, which, if logically carried out, would have set him, as the centre of the final religion of all time, far above Christ, Buddha, Muḥammad and every other leader, is crossed and hindered by two other thoughts, each of which influenced him powerfully during the last section of his life; first, the idea that all religions are true, which he took over from Rāmakṛishṇa Paramahaṁsa, and, secondly, a belief in the supremacy of Christ as the God-man. Consequently, all his teaching about the New Dispensation lacks consistency and grip.

On the anniversary day in January in 1881 he appeared on the platform, with twelve of his missionaries around him, under a new red banner, on which were inscribed the words Naba Bidhan (Nava Vidhāna), that is, New Dispensation, and also an extraordinary symbol made up of the Hindu trident, the Christian cross and the crescent of Islam. On the table lay the Scriptures of the four greatest religions of the world, Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity and Muḥammadanism. Four of the apostles were specially appointed that each might study the Scriptures of one of these religions. Henceforward, the phrase Brāhma Samāj falls into the background, and Keshab’s body is known as The Church of the New Dispensation.

Feeling now more confident of his own inspiration, he frequently issued proclamations in the name of God, calling upon all men to accept the New Dispensation, and pronouncing those who had left him infidels, apostates and disobedient men. In keeping with the universality ascribed to the New Dispensation, the faithful were exhorted to turn their thoughts to the great men of all nations. One of the methods employed was to go on pilgrimage in imagination to see one of the great ones, and to spend some time in meditation on his teaching, achievements and virtues. Men and women were formed into orders of various kinds, and solemn vows were laid upon them.

22. The second group of innovations comes from Hinduism.

How far Keshab had moved from his early theism may be seen from the following facts. In his early days he was a stern theist, and vehemently denounced polytheism and idolatry of every type. He was seriously opposed to all coquetting with other systems, believing that it was dangerous. When Mr. Sasipada Banerjea founded at Baranagar, near Calcutta, in 1873, the Sādhārana Dharma Sabhā, i.e. the General Religious Association, the platform of which was open to Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims and Christians as well as to Brāhmas, Keshab roundly condemned it, as the following sentences from his own paper show:

We cannot but regard this new Society as a solemn sham before God and man. The members seem to have no fixed religion in them, and, in endeavouring to commend every creed, they only betray their anxiety to mock and insult everything sacred. Such dishonest latitudinarianism ought to be put down.¹

But somewhere about 1875 Keshab made the acquaintance of Rāmakṛishṇa, and thereafter saw him frequently and listened with great pleasure and interest to his teaching. Now one of the most outstanding ideas of that gifted man was this, that all religions are true.² In January, 1881, the New Dispensation was formally announced, as described above; and in the Sunday Mirror of October 23rd the following sentences appeared :

Our position is not that truths are to be found in all religions; but that all the established religions of the world are true. There is a great deal of difference between the two assertions.

The glorious mission of the New Dispensation is to harmonise religions and revelations, to establish the truth of every particular dispensation, and upon the basis of these particulars to establish the largest and broadest induction of a general and glorious proposition.¹

One of Rāmakrishna’s friends had a picture painted symbolizing the dependence of Keshab on Rāmakrishna in this matter. It is dealt with below.²

It was doubtless this idea, that all religions are true, and that their harmony can be demonstrated, which prompted Keshab to adopt a number of ceremonies from both Hinduism and Christianity and to seek so to interpret a great deal of Hindu doctrine and practice as to make it appear consistent with theism. He called God Mother. He adopted the homa sacrifice and the āratī ceremony (the waving of lights) into Brāhma ritual. He expounded polytheism and idolatry as if they were variant forms of theism. He found spiritual nourishment in the Durgā Pūjā, i.e. the annual festival held in October in Bengal in honour of the demon-slaying Durgā, the blood-thirsty wife of Śiva. In imitation of the 108 names of Vishṇu, a Sanskrit hymn of praise, recounting 108 names of God, was composed, and became an integral part of the liturgy of his Church.³ Chaitanya’s religious dance was introduced to express religious joy.⁴ Prayers were addressed to the Ganges, to the moon and to fire, as creatures of God and expressions of His power and His will.

23. The third group of innovations come from Christianity. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper were both introduced into New Dispensation ritual. But of far more importance than these ceremonies were the new pieces of Christian doctrine adopted, above all, certain new convictions about the person of Christ.

Ram Mohan Ray recognized clearly that Christ had a great contribution to make to Indian religion. He believed that the ancient Vedānta was all that India needed in the way of theology; but in the matter of ethics he saw the supremacy of Jesus; and in The Precepts of Jesus¹ he laid the ethical teaching of Christ before his fellow-countrymen, and told them plainly that they required to study it and live by it. To him these precepts were the path to peace and happiness.

Keshab from the very beginning realized the truth which Ram Mohan had expressed; but, even in his early lectures, he went far beyond Ram Mohan’s standpoint, and that in three directions.

a. The first of these is the recognition of the glory of the character of Christ, and its value as an example to man. We quote from Keshab’s lecture, Jesus Christ: Europe and Asia:

What moral serenity and sweetness pervade his life ! What extraordinary tenderness and humility — what lamb-like meekness and simplicity ! His heart was full of mercy and forgiving kindness : friends and foes shared his charity and love. And yet, on the other hand, how resolute, firm, and unyielding in his adherence to truth ! He feared no mortal man, and braved even death itself for the sake of truth and God. Verily, when we read his life, his meekness, like the soft moon, ravishes the heart and bathes it in a flood of serene light ; but when we come to the grand consummation of his career, his death on the cross, behold he shines as the powerful sun in its meridian splendour !

Christ tells us to forgive our enemies, yea, to bless them that curse us, and pray for them that despitefully use us ; he tells us, when one smites the right cheek, to turn the left towards him. Who can adequately conceive this transcendent charity ? The most impressive form in which it practically manifests itself is in that sweet and tender prayer which the crucified Jesus uttered in the midst of deep agony — “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.“²

b. The second is the sense of sin and all it leads to. We quote from the historian of the Brāhma Samāj. He remarks :

Keshub Chunder opened his heart to the Christian spirit, and it begat a sense of sin and the spirit of earnest prayer.¹

The infusion of the Christian spirit brought into the field another characteristic Christian sentiment, namely, an enthusiasm for saving fellow-sinners by carrying to them the new gospel. . . . The spirit of utter self-surrender in which the new missionaries took up their work after the schism was a wonder to all. . . . Amongst the new principles imbibed from the study of the life of Christ was one, “Take no thought for the morrow,” which they wanted to carry literally into practice. . . . Their young wives, most of them below twenty, touched by the new enthusiasm, shared in all their privations with a cheerful alacrity. The memory of these days will ever remain in our minds as a truly apostolic period of Brahmo history, when there was a spirit of real asceticism without that talk of it, in which the Church abounded in subsequent times.²

c. The third is the Christian attitude to social life. We again quote from the history :

Mr. Sen tried to view social questions from the standpoint of pure and spiritual faith, making the improvement of their social life an accessory to men’s progress in spiritual life. Social reform naturally came as a part of that fundamental conception. Under the influence of their leader the progressive party tried to abjure those social abuses that tended to degrade society or encourage vice or injustice. The conviction became strong in them that it was only by raising and ennobling man’s social life that a pure and spiritual religion like theism could establish itself as a social and domestic faith of man and convert human society into a household of God. This conviction took firm possession of Mr. Sen’s mind and he unfurled the banner of social reform by systematic efforts for the abolition of caste and also by trying to communicate new light and new life to our womanhood.

We may justly ascribe this passion for social reform to the influence of Mr. Sen’s Christian studies. The reason for my ascribing it to Christian influence is that it is so unlike the Hindu teaching on the subject, with which we are familiar.¹

These three aspects of Christ scarcely appear in Ram Mohan’s teaching, but they were the very pith and marrow of Keshab’s doctrine. Indeed, as the last extracts shew, they were the source of all the life and vigour which Keshab succeeded in pouring into his missionaries and followers during the first twenty years of his public life. This fact was very vividly present to Keshab’s mind. Here are his own words:

Christ has been my study for a quarter of a century. That God-Man — they say half God and half man — walks daily all over this vast peninsula, from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin, enlightening and sanctifying its teeming millions. He is a mighty reality in Indian history. He is to us a living and moving spirit. We see him and commune with him. He permeates society as a vital force, and imbues our daily life, and is mixed with our thoughts, speculations and pursuits.²

24. But from 1879 onward there is a further advance. Thus far Christ had been to Keshab only a religious leader, distinctly the greatest of all the prophets, but in no sense divine. From now the problem of the person of Christ occupies a large place in his mind. He began the discussion of the question in his lecture, India asks: Who is Christ? delivered in 1879. He starts from the words, “I and My Father are one,” and explains them as follows:

Christ really believed that he and his Father were one, or he would not have said so. He spoke the truth, unmixed and pure truth, when he announced this fact. “I can of mine own self do nothing,” “I am in my Father, and my Father in me.”

I am, therefore, bound to admit that Christ really believed that he and his Father were one. When I come to analyse this doctrine, I find in it nothing but the philosophical principle underlying the popular doctrine of self-abnegation, — self-abnegation in a very lofty spiritual sense.¹

Therefore, I say this wonderful man had no thought what-ever of self, and lived in God. This unique character of complete self-surrender is the most striking miracle in the world’s history which I have seen, and which it is possible for the mind to conceive.²

He declares that God sent Christ to be the perfect example of sonship to men :

An example of true sonship was needed. . . . Perfect holiness dwelt in the Father, the eternal fountain-head of all that is true, and good and beautiful. It comprehended all manner of holiness. It had in it the germs of all forms of virtue and righteousness. Purity of life dwelt in Him in its fulness and integrity. Out of this substance the Lord took out only one form of purity, that which applies to the son in his relations to the Father and his brethren, and comprises the whole round of human duties and virtues, and having given it a human shape, said, — Go and dwell thou in the world and show forth unto nations divine sonship.³

He also declares that Christ fulfils Hinduism:

He comes to fulfil and perfect that religion of communion for which India has been panting, as the hart panteth after the waterbrooks. Yes, after long centuries shall this communion be perfected through Christ.⁴

Then in his lecture on the Trinity, in 1882, Christ is definitely called the Logos, the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity :

You see how the Lord asserted His power and established His dominion in the material and the animal kingdom, and then in the lower world of humanity. When that was done the volume of the Old Testament was closed. The New Testament commenced with the birth of the Son of God. . . . Having exhibited itself in endless varieties of progressive existence, the primary creative Force at last took the form of the Son in Christ Jesus.¹

Gentlemen, look at this clear triangular figure with the eye of faith, and study its deep mathematics. The apex is the very God Jehovah, the Supreme Brahma of the Vedas. Alone, in His own eternal glory, He dwells. From Him comes down the Son in a direct line, an emanation from Divinity. Thus God descends and touches one end of the base of humanity, then running all along the base permeates the world, and then by the power of the Holy Ghost drags up regenerated humanity to Himself. Divinity coming down to humanity is the Son; Divinity carrying up humanity to heaven is the Holy Ghost.²

Through Israel came the First Dispensation; in Christ we have the Dispensation of the Son; while Keshab’s own movement is the Dispensation of the Holy Spirit:

The Old Testament was the First Dispensation; the New Testament the Second; unto us in these days has been vouchsafed the Third Dispensation.³

25. But all this inevitably raises the question, How could Keshab teach in this strain and yet declare all religions true, and introduce Hindu ceremonies into the ritual of his services? — There is only one way of accounting for it: we must recognize that Keshab was not a consistent thinker, far less a systematic theologian. Illustrations of inconsistency are sown thick in his lectures. Thus in 1876, six years before the lecture on the Trinity, while he was still pledged to the doctrine that Christ is a mere man, the very first sentence of one of his lectures runs:

I verily believe that, when Jesus Christ was about to leave this world, he made over the sacred portfolio of the ministry of his Church to the Holy Spirit.¹

What manner of man is this who stands in official relations with the Spirit of the Universe? — The truth is that he was dazzled with the glitter of Rāmakṛishṇa’s idea of the harmony of all religions; and, having once accepted the thought, he proceeded, in confidence in it, to attempt to hold in his own mind, at the same moment, the essential principles of Hinduism, the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, and his own old theism. Perhaps the most amazing example of inconsistency occurs within the limits of a single paragraph in his lecture We Apostles of the New Dispensation, delivered in January, 1881, when the New Dispensation was announced. He first sets his own Dispensation on a level with Christ’s:

Is this new gospel a Dispensation, or is it simply a new system of religion, which human understanding has evolved? I say it stands upon the same level with the Jewish dispensation, the Christian dispensation, and the Vaishnava dispensation through Chaitanya. It is a divine Dispensation, fully entitled to a place among the various dispensations and revelations of the world. But is it equally divine, equally authoritative? Christ’s Dispensation is said to be divine. I say that this Dispensation is equally divine.²

He then sets himself on a level with Christ:

If Christ was the centre of his Dispensation, am I not the centre of this? ³

And immediately thereafter there follows this most touching piece of self-humiliation:

Shall a sinner vie with Christ for honours? God forbid. Jesus was a born saint, and I am a great sinner. Blessed Jesus! I am thine. I give myself, body and soul, to thee. If India will revile and persecute me, and take my life-blood out of me, drop by drop, still, Jesus, thou shalt continue to have my homage. I have taken the vow of loyalty before thee, and I will not swerve from it, — God help me! These lips are thine for praise, and these hands are thine in service. Son of God, I love thee truly. And, though scorned and hated for thy sake, I will love thee always, and remain an humble servant at thy blessed feet. Yet, I must tell you, gentlemen, that I am connected with Jesus’ Gospel, and occupy a prominent place in it. I am the prodigal son of whom Christ spoke, and I am trying to return to my Father in a penitent spirit. Nay, I will say more for the satisfaction and edification of my opponents. I am not Jesus, but I am Judas, that vile man who betrayed Jesus into the hands of his infuriated persecutors. That man’s spirit is in me. The veritable Judas, who sinned against truth and Jesus, lodges in my heart. If I honour Jesus, and claim a place among his disciples, is there not another side of my life which is carnal and worldly and sinful? I am Judas-like so far as I love sin. Then tell me not I am trying to exalt myself. No. A prophet’s crown sits not on my head. My place is at Jesus’ feet.¹

No further proof is wanted of the unsystematic character of Keshab’s thinking. Clearly, he had not worked the contents of his mind into any kind of consistent unity.

26. But another problem remains, his relation to Christ. His habitual want of consistency explains how he could hold self-contradictory ideas, but the extraordinary place which Christ holds in his teaching needs explanation. The needs of the time, and the wonderful way in which the teaching of Christ meets them, account for the hold which Christ’s ethical and social teaching have taken of the Brāhma Samāj as a whole; but they do not account for the tenderness and passion which mark Keshab’s every reference to Jesus nor for his interest in the problem of Christology. The simple fact is that Keshab’s religious experience was from beginning to end rooted in Christ; and he was thereby driven steadily forward, steadily nearer an adequate account of Christ’s person and His relation to God. His lectures show quite clearly that his religious experience depended largely on Christ:

My Christ, my sweet Christ, the brightest jewel of my heart, the necklace of my soul — for twenty years have I cherished him in this my miserable heart. Though often defiled and persecuted by the world, I have found sweetness and joy unutterable in my master Jesus. . . . The mighty artillery of his love he levelled against me, and I was vanquished, and I fell at his feet.1

The Father cannot be an example of sonship. Only the Son can show what the son ought to be. In vain do I go to the Vedas or to Judaism to learn sonship. That I learn at the feet of my sweet Christ, my Father’s beloved Son.2

All over my body, all through my inner being I see Christ. He is no longer to me a doctrine or a dogma, but with Paul I cry, For me to live is Christ. . . . Christ is my food and drink, and Christ is the water that cleanseth me.3

There can be no doubt as to the meaning of these words. Further, the solution of the problem of the three amazing passages quoted on page 64 lies here, that in his theory of the New Dispensation we have his loose but brilliant thinking, while in the touching sentences where he contrasts himself with Christ we have a living transcript from his religious experience. Practically every difficulty which Keshab’s life presents to the student (and they are not few) becomes comprehensible when we realize to the full these two facts: he was not a systematic thinker, and his religious experience sprang from Christ.

But we may go one step farther still. Keshab’s richest religious experience came from Christ, and, in consequence, in the latter part of his life, his deepest theological beliefs were fully Christian, but he never surrendered himself to Christ as Lord. He retained the government of his life in his own hands. I also believe that this is the only way in which we can explain the spiritual experience of his friend and biographer, Pratap Chandra Mozoomdar, and of two or three others of the missionaries.

The theological position of these men stands out quite clear from a number of facts.

The late Registrar of Calcutta University, Mr. K. C. Banurji, a Bengali Christian universally loved and respected, was very intimate with Keshab; and he maintained, with great consistency and earnestness, that Keshab died a Christian. Had Mr. Banurji been an ordinary man, it might have been said that he had been misled by some chance expression, such as one meets in Keshab’s published writings, and the inconsistency of which the leader was so often guilty would have been sufficient explanation. But Mr. Banurji was no ordinary man; and he had no hazy, indistinct conception of Christian faith. He had followed Keshab’s history closely for many years, and was most intimate with him. It is thus certain that, in conversation with Mr. Banurji, Keshab gave expression to a full, clear, distinct faith in Jesus Christ.

Mr. P. C. Mozoomdar, one day, had a long unhurried conversation with a friend of the writer, a missionary in the North. In the course of the talk my friend gave expression to the deepest convictions of his Christian life. Mr. Mozoomdar assured him that his own faith, and Keshab’s also, was precisely the same, and said that the reason why he and Keshab did not give public expression to these beliefs was that they held they would be more likely to bring their fellow-countrymen to full faith in Christ by a gradual process than by a sudden declaration of all they believed.¹

Some eleven or twelve years ago, in a brief article, I had ignorantly spoken of all Brāhmas as Unitarians. In a courteous note, the only letter I ever received from Mr. Mozoomdar, he protested against the statement so far as the Church of the New Dispensation was concerned, declaring himself and his fellow-believers to be Trinitarians. During the last twenty years articles have frequently appeared in the pages of Unity and the Minister (a weekly published under the New Dispensation), which, if taken seriously from the standpoint of theology, undoubtedly imply the full Christian faith. My own personal intercourse with several of the leaders would also tend to prove that they had learned from Keshab to regard Christ as the Son of God and the Saviour.

Yet, so far as my experience and reading reach, there is no evidence that these men ever allowed their faith to rule their life. There was never the full surrender of the soul to the Saviour. There was something that restrained. They regarded Jesus as the eternal Son, but they lived the life of theists, following now one master, now another. An incident in Keshab’s life fits in well with this judgment. One of the missionaries of the New Dispensation, who was very intimate with him, and who believed that he was a servant of Christ and would remain such to the end, went to see the great leader as he lay dying in his home, Lily Cottage, Calcutta. He found him rolling on his bed in great pain, crying aloud in prayer to God in Bengali. Great was his friend’s astonishment to catch the following words repeated over and over again:

Buddher Mā, Śākyer Mā, nirbāṇ dao,

i.e. “Mother of Buddha, Mother of the Śākyan, grant me Nirvāṇa.” What an extraordinary mixture of ideas this sentence bears witness to! Thus Keshab’s deepest convictions were Christian beliefs, yet he was not a Christian.

He passed away on the 8th of January, 1884, leaving his Samāj shepherdless.

27. Fifth Period, 1884-1913: the Sādharan Brāhma Samāj. It has been already stated that, from the beginning, there were disputes, and even quarrels, among the missionaries, which Keshab found it difficult to control. One day, in Lily Cottage, when some little difference of this kind was being talked about, Keshab pointed to a velvet pincushion, and said, “You are like the pins, united in the pincushion. When I am taken away, there will be nothing to hold you together.” The words were prophetic. Ever since the leader’s death, his whole following has been reduced to the utmost weakness by the quarrels of the missionaries. There are three sub-divisions, each of which holds a separate service on Sunday, and there are individuals who will unite with none. But it is not personal differences only that have led to this state of affairs; the irreconcilable elements in the leader’s teaching, now held by different minds, render real union impossible. It was largely because P. C. Mozoomdar was so much of a Christian that his brethren refused to make him their leader. The tendency to make Keshab an inspired guru, which led to the Kuch-Bihor marriage and the great secession, operated most disastrously. After his death one party declared that he was still their leader, and that no one could ever take his place in the Samāj building, while the others opposed vehemently. Some still keep up this foolish idea. They call the anniversary of his death the day of “the Master’s Ascension”; and the room in which he died, kept precisely as it was then, is entered reverently, as if it were a shrine. For nine and twenty years the Samāj has been dismembered and rendered impotent by divisions and brawls; and there is no sign of betterment.

28. The Adi Brāhma Samāj still holds steadily on, but there are few members apart from the family of Debendra Nath Tagore. The saintly old leader lived to the age of eighty-seven, passing away in 1905. After his death a fragment of an Autobiography in Bengali was published, and later still was translated into English by one of his sons. It is a very modest document but contains a remarkable spiritual record. It is one of the most valuable pieces of literature the Adi Samāj has produced. Debendra’s fourth son, Mr. Rabindra Nath Tagore, now so famous as a poet,¹ frequently preaches in the building.

29. The Sādhāran Brāhma Samāj, on the other hand, has made steady, solid progress since its formation in 1878. It has now a large body of members and adherents in Calcutta, and its services are well attended. Most of the provincial Samājes are connected with it. It is the only section of the Brāhma Samāj whose missionaries are able from time to time to go on preaching tours. It is a living, effective body, though not large. Its history need not detain us. A brief sketch of its organization and its teaching must suffice.

The Samāj is under the control of a General Committee of a hundred members elected both from Calcutta and the provinces. The President, the Secretary with three Assistant Secretaries, and the Treasurer, together with thirteen others chosen by the General Committee from among its members, form the Executive. This form of organization has succeeded in making the government of the Samāj representative and democratic. This body governs the Sādhāran Brāhma Samāj of Calcutta and its missionaries, and also bears relations to the majority of the provincial Samājes. Forty-one of the provincial Samājes are called “Associated Samājes”: they pay a certain annual subscription to the central body, and are entitled to receive help from the missionaries. The majority of the other Samājes are in fellowship with the Sād-hāran Samāj of Calcutta, although some have closer relations with the Ādi Samāj or the New Dispensation or the Prārthanā Samāj in Bombay.

The bulk of the work of the Samāj is carried on by the nine missionaries; but a good deal is also done by the Sevak Mandali or Circle of Laymen. The heaviest work undertaken is the tours made in the provinces by the missionaries, to strengthen existing work and win new adherents. Apart from these, the chief forms of effort are the Sunday Services in the building, the Students’ Weekly Service, the Sangat Sabhā (a sort of Methodist Class Meeting), the Working Men’s Mission at Baranagar, near Calcutta, the Brahmo Young Men’s Union, and the Samāj newspapers, the Indian Messenger and the Tattva Kaumudi. The Calcutta congregation has more than 800 members and a very large number of adherents. The mission on the Khasi Hills in Assam is perhaps the most notable piece of work being done outside Calcutta. The Khasis are a very simple race, who had no education or literature until the Welsh Calvinistic Mission waked them to an altogether new life. The Brāhmas have won some fifty families.

In 1911 there were 183 Brāhma Samājes in India; and 5504 persons were entered as Brāhmas in the Census.

30. The following is a brief summary of the beliefs of the Ādi Samāj¹:

(1) God is a personal being with sublime moral attributes. (2) God has never become incarnate. (3) God hears and answers prayer. (4) God is to be worshipped only in spiritual ways. Hindu asceticism, temples, and fixed forms of worship are unnecessary. Men of all castes and races may worship God acceptably. (5) Repentance and cessation from sin is the only way to forgiveness and salvation. (6) Nature and Intuition are the sources of knowledge of God. No book is authoritative.

The following is the official statement of the principles of the Sādhāran Samāj¹ :

(1) There is only one God, who is the Creator, Preserver and Saviour of this world. He is spirit ; He is infinite in power, wisdom, love, justice and holiness ; He is omnipresent, eternal and blissful. (2) The human soul is immortal, and capable of infinite progress, and is responsible to God for its doings. (3) God is to be worshipped in spirit and in truth. Divine worship is necessary for attaining true felicity and salvation. (4) To love God and to carry out His will in all the concerns of life constitute true worship. (5) Prayer and dependence on God and a constant realisation of His presence are the means of attaining spiritual growth. (6) No created object is to be worshipped as God, nor is any person or book to be considered as infallible and as the sole means of salvation ; but truth is to be reverently accepted from all scriptures and from the teaching of all persons without distinction of creed or country. (7) The Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of man and kindness to all living beings are the essence of true religion. (8) God rewards virtue, and punishes sin. His punishments are remedial and not eternal. (9) Cessation from sin accompanied by sincere repentance is the only atonement for it ; and union with God in wisdom, goodness and holiness is true salvation.

The following statement of the faith and principles of the New Dispensation is from Keshab’s Laws of Life:²

(1) God. I believe that God is one, that He is infinite and perfect, almighty, all-wise, all-merciful, all-holy, all-blissful, eternal and omnipresent, our Creator, Father, Mother, Friend, Guide, Judge and Saviour. (2) Soul. I believe that the soul is immortal and eternally progressive.

(3) Spiritual Law. I believe in natural inspiration, general and special. I believe in providence, general and special. (4) Moral Law. I believe in God’s moral law as revealed through the commandments of conscience, enjoining perfect righteousness in all things. I believe that I am accountable to God for the faithful discharge of my manifold duties and that I shall be judged and rewarded and punished for my virtues and vices here and hereafter. (5) Scriptures. I accept and revere the scriptures so far as they are records of the wisdom and devotion and piety of inspired geniuses and of the dealings of God’s special providence in the salvation of nations, of which records only the Spirit is God’s, but the letter man’s. (6) Prophets. I accept and revere the world’s prophets and saints so far as they embody and reflect the different elements of divine character, and set forth the higher ideals of life for the instruction and sanctification of the world. I ought to revere and love and follow all that is divine in them, and try to assimilate it to my soul, making what is theirs and God’s mine. (7) Church. I believe in the Church Universal which is the deposit of all ancient wisdom and the receptacle of all modern science, which recognises in all prophets and saints a harmony, in all scriptures a unity and through all dispensations a continuity, which abjures all that separates and divides and always magnifies unity and peace, which harmonises reason and faith, yoga and bhakti, asceticism and social duty in their highest forms, and which shall make of all nations and sects one kingdom and one family in the fulness of time. (8) Synopsis. My creed is the science of God which enlighteneth all. My gospel is the love of God which saveth all. My heaven is life in God which is accessible to all. My church is that invisible kingdom of God in which is all truth, all love, all holiness.

LITERATURE. — HISTORY: History of the Brahmo Samaj, Sivanath Sastri, Calcutta, Chatterji, 1911-1912, two vols. Rs. 6. The Theistic Directory, by V. R. Shinde, Bombay, Prārthanā Samāj, 1912. THE ĀDI SAMĀJ: Life and Letters of Raja Rammohun Roy, by Sophia Dobson Collet, Edited by Hem Chandra Sarkar, Cal-cutta, 1914, Rs. 2, as. 8. The English Works of Raja Ram Mohan Ray, Allahabad, Panini Office, 1906, Rs. 2, as. 8. The Complete Works of Raja Ram Mohan Ray, Sanskrit and Bengali, Calcutta, 1880. The Autobiography of Maharshi Devendranath Tagore, Translated by Satyendranath Tagore, Calcutta, Lahiri, 1909, Rs. 2 as. 8. Brāhma Dharma, by Devendranath Tagore, Calcutta, K. K. Chakravarti, 1850. KESHAB AND THE NEW DISPENSATION: The Life and Teachings of Keshab Chundra Sen, by Pratāp Chandra Mozoomdar, Calcutta, Baptist Mission Press, 1887, out of print. Keshub Chunder Sen’s Lectures in India, Calcutta, the Brahmo Tract Society, 1899. (Most of Keshab’s writings, whether Bengali or English, can be got through the Brahmo Tract Society, Lily Cottage, Upper Circular Road, Calcutta.) Keshab Chandra Sen in England, Calcutta, 1881. The Oriental Christ, by P. C. Mozoomdar, Calcutta, Brahmo Tract Society, Rs. 3. Ślokasaṅgraha, A Compilation of Theistic Texts, Calcutta, K. P. Nath, 1904, Rs. 1. THE SĀDHĀRAN SAMĀJ: The Religion of the Brahmo Samaj, by Hem Chandra Sarkar, Calcutta, Kuntaline Press, 1911, as. 6. The Philosophy of Brahmaism, by Paṇḍit S. N. Tattvabhūshaṇa, Madras, Higginbotham, 1909, Rs. 2-8.

2. THE PRĀRTHANĀ SAMĀJ

1. We now turn our attention to Western India, the modern history of which begins in 1818 when, at the close of the last Marāṭha war, British authority became supreme in the great territory now known as the Bombay Presidency. The Hon. Mr. Mountstuart Elphinstone, who became Governor of Bombay in 1819, founded the very next year the Bombay Native Education Society, which did much to plant Western education in the city. When he retired in 1827, the leaders of the city, both Hindu and Parsee, in order to commemorate his work, raised a great fund which was used to found professorships, and became the nucleus of the Elphinstone College, the Government College in Bombay.

John Wilson of the Church of Scotland founded in 1835 the college which bears his name to-day. Wilson’s work was on the same lines as Duff’s; and under his teaching a number of young men, both Hindu and Parsee, passed into the Christian Church. The whole of Western India was moved by the baptism of three Parsees in 1839,¹ and again by the baptism of a Brāhman, Nārāyaṇā Śeshādrī in 1843. Wilson’s vital influence may also be traced in many men who remained in Hinduism and Zoroastrianism. In 1842 the London Society for the Promotion of Female Education sent out a lady missionary to work among the Parsee women in Bombay.²

2. Progressive movements among both Hindus and Parsees sprang from these educational and religious efforts. The earliest organization was a secret society called the Gupta Sabhā. The members were Hindus³ and they met for worship and religious discussion, but nothing further is known of its work. It was succeeded in 1849 by the Paramahaṁsa Sabhā.⁴ It too was a secret society, but social reform held a rather more prominent place in its discussions than religious questions. After their discussion was over the members sang hymns from the Ratnamālā and joined in a common meal, the food for which had been prepared by a low-caste cook. No one could become a member, unless he were willing to eat bread made by a Christian, and drink water brought by a Muhammadan. The influence of the society was necessarily rather limited, as everything was kept secret. Yet there were branches in Poona, Ahmadnagar and elsewhere. But in 1860 some one stole the books, and the whole thing was made public. There was great indignation against the members; and the society broke up.

The more earnest men, however, held by their convictions and watched with great interest the Brāhma movement in Bengal. In 1864 Keshab paid his first visit to Bombay, and many were delighted with both the man and his message. But his visit came at an unfortunate moment; Bombay was in a fever of excitement over share speculation; and no result followed.

3. Three years later, however, in 1867, a theistic society was actually formed and called the Prārthanā Samāj, Prayer Society, the leader being Dr. Atmaram Pandurang (1823–1898), who was a personal friend of Dr. Wilson and had been deeply influenced by him. Other members were Dadoba Pandurang, Bhaskara Pandurang (brothers of the leader), Ram Bal Krishna, N. M. Paramanand, Bhare Mahajan, W. B. Naorangi, V. A. Modak and B. M. Wagle. A weekly prayer-meeting was started, rules for the society were drawn up, and a managing committee appointed. The aims were theistic worship and social reform. Next year Keshab visited Bombay for a second time, and considerably strengthened the organization. In 1870 the first marriage celebrated according to theistic rites took place; and about the same time R. G. Bhandarkar (now Sir R. G. Bhandarkar) and M. G. Ranade (later Mr. Justice Ranade) joined the young Samāj. In 1872 P. C. Mozoomdar came from Calcutta, and spent six months in Bombay, building up the congregation, and starting night-schools for working people and the journal of the Samāj, the Subodh Patrikā. In 1874 the Samāj erected its own building in Girgaum, Bombay. Paṇḍit Dayānanda Sarasvatī came to Bombay the same year,¹ and his lectures roused much interest, but his ideas about the Vedas prevented the Prārthanā Samāj from following him. The following year he founded the Ārya Samāj in Bombay. A little later there was a proposal to change the name of the society to the Bombay Brāhma Samāj, but on account of the dissensions in the Brāhma Samāj in Calcutta the Bombay leaders were unwilling to identify themselves with it. In 1882 S. P. Kelkar became a missionary of the Samāj; and in the same year N. G. Chandavarkar, now Sir Narayan Ganesh Chandavarkar, began to take an active part in the work. Paṇḍitā Ramabai, who had not as yet become a Christian, did valuable work among the women of the Samāj in 1882–1883, and founded the Ārya Mahila Samāj, or Ladies’ Society. During recent years a number of younger men, the chief of whom are K. Natarajan, S. N. Gokhale, V. R. Shinde, V. A. Sukhtankar, and N. G. Velinkar, have joined, and have done valuable work in various ways.

Images: MR. JUSTICE RANADE SIR N. G. CHANDAVARKAR SIR R. G. BHANDARKAR KHARSHEDJI RUSTAMJI CAMA

The Prārthanā Samāj has never had such groups of missionaries as have toiled for the Brāhma Samāj. They have usually had only one or two. For this reason the movement has not spread widely; yet there are associated Samājes at Poona, Kirkee, Kolhapur and Satara. Several societies, originally connected with the Prārthanā Samāj, now call themselves Brāhma Samājes. On the other hand, the milder policy of the Prārthanā Samāj has commended itself to many in the Telugu country and further south. Out of the twenty-nine Samājes in the Madras Presidency eighteen bear the name Prārthanā Samāj.

Nor has the Prārthanā Samāj produced much literature. This failure is, doubtless, largely due to the impression so common among its members that definite beliefs and theological thought are scarcely necessary for a free theistic body. Of this serious weakness Ranade wrote¹:

Many enthusiastic leaders of the Brāhma Samāj movement have been heard deliberately to declare that the only cardinal points of Theism necessary to constitute it a religion of mankind, the only articles of its confession of faith, are the Father-hood of God, and the Brotherhood of man. These are the only points which it is absolutely necessary to hold fast to for purposes of regeneration and salvation. And with fifty years of working history, our leaders seem content to lisp this same story of early childhood. There is no attempt at grasping in all earnestness the great religious difficulties which have puzzled people’s faith during all time, and driven them to seek rest in revelation. . . . To come nearer home, our friends of the Prarthana Samaj seem to be perfectly satisfied with a creed which consists of only one positive belief in the unity of God, accompanied with a special protest against the existing corruption of Hindu religion, viz., the article which denounces the prevalent idolatry to be a sin, and an abomination; and it is ardently hoped that a new Church can be built in course of time on such a narrow foundation of belief. . . . It is time, we think, to venture on an earnest attempt to remove this reproach.

His own Theist’s Confession of Faith¹ is a brave attempt to give the thought of the Samāj something more of a theology. In February, 1913, Mr. N. G. Velinkar, one of the most capable thinkers in the Samāj, gave expression in conversation with the writer to his regret that there is so little definite teaching in the Samāj. A vigorous effort is being made at present by Mr. Velinkar and a few other leaders to produce theological and devotional books to enrich the life of the society.

4. Speaking practically, the beliefs of the Samāj are the same as those held by the Sādhāran Brāhma Samāj. They are theists, and opposed to idolatry. Their theism rests largely on ancient Hindu thought; yet, practically, they have given up the inspiration of the Vedas and the doctrine of transmigration. The latter is left an open question, but few hold by it. The Samāj draws its nourishment very largely from the Hindu scriptures, and uses the hymns of the old Marātha poet-saints in its services.

If theistic worship is the first interest of the Samāj, social reform has always held the next place. Four reforms are sought, the abandonment of caste, the introduction of widow-remarriage, the encouragement of female education, and the abolition of child-marriage. Yet some of the diffidence of the Paramahaṁsa Society still clings to the members. There has never been amongst them the rigid exclusion of idolatry, which has marked the Brāhma Samāj since Debendra Nath Tagore became leader, nor is the breaking of caste made a condition of membership, as in the two younger Samājes of Calcutta. Even though a man be a full member of the Samāj, caste may be observed and idolatry may be practised in his house. Miss S. D. Collet wrote in her Brāhma Year Book in 1880:

The Theistic Church in Western India occupies a position of its own. Although in thoroughly fraternal relations with the Eastern Samājes, it is of indigenous growth and of independent standing. It has never detached itself so far from the Hindu element of Brahmaism as many of the Bengali Samājes, and both in religious observances and social customs, it clings far more closely to the old models. It is more learned and less emotional in its tone, and far more cautious and less radical in its policy than the chief Samājes of Bengal. But it is doing good work in its own way and it has enlarged its operations considerably within the last few years.¹

A writer in the Indian Social Reformer² says:

The Prarthana Samaj may be said to be composed of men paying allegiance to Hinduism and to Hindu society with a protest. The members observe the ceremonies of Hinduism, but only as mere ceremonies of routine, destitute of all religious significance. This much sacrifice they make to existing prejudices. Their principle, however, is not to deceive anyone as to their religious opinions, even should an honest expression of views entail unpopularity.

The following is the official statement of the faith of the Samāj:

Cardinal Principles of Faith

(1) God is the creator of this universe. He is the only true God; there is no other God beside him. He is eternal, spiritual, infinite, the store of all good, all joy, without parts, without form, one without a second, the ruler of all, all-pervading, omniscient, almighty, merciful, all-holy and the saviour of sinners. (2) His worship alone leads to happiness in this world and the next. (3) Love and reverence for him, an exclusive faith in him, praying and singing to him spiritually with these feelings and doing the things pleasing to him constitute His true worship. (4) To worship and pray to images and other created objects is not a true mode of divine adoration. (5) God does not incarnate himself and there is no one book which has been directly revealed by God or is wholly infallible. (6) All men are His children; therefore they should behave towards each other as brethren without distinction. This is pleasing to God and constitutes man’s duty.¹

5. The religious activities of the Samāj are the Sunday services, the Sunday School, the Young Theists’ Union (a sort of Endeavour Society), the Anniversaries, the work of the missionaries, the Postal Mission, which sends religious literature by post, and the Subodh Patrikā.

There are eight night-schools for working-people financed and conducted by the Samāj; there is a Free Reading Room and Library in the Samāj building; and there is a Ladies’ Association for spreading instruction and culture among women and girls. The Students’ Brotherhood, a theistic replica of a Young Men’s Christian Association, is loosely associated with the Samāj. In Pandharpur an Orphanage and Foundling Asylum supported by the Samāj has done good work for many years.

But the greatest service which the Samāj has done to India has been the organization of the Social Reform Movement. Though not officially connected with the Samāj, nearly every vigorous effort made in favour of social reform during the last thirty years has been started, and largely carried on, by its members. The same is true of the Depressed Classes' Mission. We deal with these great movements below.1

An All-India Theistic Conference is held annually which brings the Brahma and Prarthana Samajes together.

LITERATURE.—HISTORY: Vol. II, pp. 411-456 of History of the Brahmo Samaj, by Sivanath Sastri, Calcutta, Chatterji, 1911-1912, two vols. Rs. 6; and pp. 33-42 of The Theistic Directory, by V. R. Shinde, Bombay, Prarthana Samaj, 1912. TEACHING: Religious and Social Reform, by M. G. Ranade, Bombay, Claridge, 1902. The Speeches and Writings of Sir N. G. Chandavarkar, Bombay, Manoranjak Grantha Prasarak Mandali, 1911, Rs. 2 as. 8.

3. PARSEE REFORM

1. One great branch of the Indo-European race lived long before the Christian era somewhere in Central Asia to the south of the Oxus River. This group finally broke in two, the eastern wing passing into India, and creating its civilization, the western colonizing Iran, and producing the Zoroastrian religion and the Persian Empire. On the rise of Islam, Arab armies marched both east and west, conquering every power that came in their way. The overthrow of Persia was complete. In their new zeal for their religion, the Muslim warriors offered the Persians the choice of Islam or the sword. Only a remnant of the people were able by escaping to the wilds of the North to retain both life and religion. Even there, they were so much harassed that a great company of them left Persia altogether, and found their way into the province of Gujarāt in Western India. There the Hindus allowed them to settle under very definite conditions. The exiles took root, and prospered. Bombay is now their greatest centre, but they are still found in Gujarāt, and small groups reside in each of the great commercial centres of the country. They call themselves Parsees, i.e. Persians; and they number about one hundred thousand.

They brought with them certain copies of their sacred books, but the disasters of their country had played terrible havoc with its sacred literature. The people ascribe their most serious losses to Alexander the Great; but it is not known how far the destruction of the Avesta is due to him, or to later conquerors. In any case there has been most pitiable loss. Professor Moulton says:

The faithful remnant who in the next century (i.e. after the Moslem conquest) took refuge on the hospitable shores of India, to find there a liberty of conscience which Mohammedan Persia denied them, brought with them only fragments of the literature that Sassanian piety had so laboriously gathered. Altogether, Prof. William Jackson calculates, about two-thirds of the Avesta have disappeared since the last Zoroastrian monarch sat on the Persian throne.¹

As the Hindus and the Parsees are sister-peoples, so the Zoroastrian religion and the Hindu faith have a good deal in common. The religious reform introduced by Zoroaster did for the Persians a larger and more fruitful service than that done for the Hindus by the Vedānta philosophy. But, though the monotheism and the ethics of Zoroaster had worked a greater revolution than the Vedānta produced, yet the religions still shewed their ancient kinship. Consequently, when a small band of hunted fugitives, carrying with them the precious fragments of their national literature, settled in a Hindu environment, they found themselves in somewhat congenial company; and, despite their exclusiveness, their life and conceptions necessarily felt the influence of the powerful community in the midst of which they were settled. Child-marriage and the Zenāna became universal among them. Polygamy was not uncommon. The men ate separately from the women. Many were ready to recognize Hindu festivals and worship. The Parsee priesthood became a hereditary caste. Religious, social and legal questions were settled, according to Hindu custom, by a small body called the Panchāyat.

2. If we consult Parsee writers as to the state of the Parsees at the beginning of the nineteenth century, we shall be told that the community was living in great ignorance, that the ordinary Parsee received little education and did not understand a word of his prayers or of the liturgy of Parsee worship, and that very few of the priests were scholarly. They knew the ritual and the liturgy, and were able to spell their way through certain books of the Avesta; but there seems to have been no thought-movement among them, and no vivid realization of the importance of the spiritual elements of their religion as compared with the ritual. The whole people tended to stand aloof from the other communities of India, making pride in their religion and race the reason for their exclusiveness.

In material things the Parsees were very prosperous. They held a great place in Indian commerce, and many families had risen to opulence. They were highly respected alike by Hindus and Muḥammadans.

3. We have seen above¹ that Western education was introduced into the Bombay Presidency in 1820, and that in 1827 money was raised which finally created the Elphinstone Col-lege. In 1835 John Wilson began Christian College education in Bombay; in 1839 three Parsees were baptized; and in 1843 Wilson’s work on the Parsee religion appeared. In a letter to me Mr. R. P. Karkaria writes:

This work, which mercilessly exposed the weak points of the popular system believed in by the laity and the clergy in their ignorance, was really epoch-making, not only for its scholarship — it was the first European book based on a first-hand knowledge of Parsi sacred language and books — but for the effect it has had on our religion itself, which it helped materially to purify. It put Parsis on their mettle. Numerous were the criticisms and replies, mostly ignorant and some downright stupid. In a few years sensible Parsis set to work to put their house in order, so to say.

In 1849 they started schools for the boys and girls of the community, so that no child should have to go without education. As the Panchāyat had lost all power over the community, and reform was seriously needed, a group of influential and wealthy Parsees and a number of young men fresh from Elphinstone College formed, in 1851, the Rahnumai Mazdayasnan Sabhā, or Religious Reform Association, which had for its object “the regeneration of the social condition of the Parsees and the restoration of the Zoroastrian religion to its pristine purity.” The more notable men in this group were Dadabhai Naoroji, J. B. Wacha, S. S. Bangali and Naoroji Furdonji. They established at the same time the Rast Goftar, or Truth-teller, a weekly journal, which proved a powerful instrument in their hands. By lectures, meetings and literature they stirred the community to its depths with their proposals of reform. At first they encountered a great deal of opposition from the orthodox.¹ But they persevered, and at last achieved considerable success:

These early reformers were very cautious, discreet, sagacious and tactful in their movement. They rallied round them as many Parsi leading priests of the day as they could and submitted to them in a well-formulated form specific questions under specific heads, asking their opinion if such and such practice, dogma, creed, ceremony, etc., were in strict con- formity with the teachings of the religion of Zoroaster, or con- travened those teachings. Fortified by these opinions, the re- formers carried on their propaganda in the way of lectures, public meetings, pamphlets and articles in the Rast Goftar. One cannot rise from the perusal of these articles without being thoroughly impressed with a sense of candour, thorough in- dependence and an unmixed desire to extricate their co-reli- gionists from the thraldorn of all those practices, rituals and creed for which there was no warrant within the four corners of the authentic Zoroastrian scriptures.¹

In 1858 a group of educated Parsees started a movement for helping their brethren, the remnant of the old Zoroastrians of Persia, now known as the Gabars,² who were very seriously oppressed by the Shah’s government. After twenty- four years of agitation, they were released, in 1882, from the poll-tax, jizya, which weighed heavily upon them. The Parsees have also assisted them financially.

A little later a new element was introduced. A young man belonging to one of the great commercial families, Kharshedji Rustamji Cama,³ went to Europe on business; and, before he returned to Bombay in 1859, proceeded to the Continent, where he studied the Avesta in the original under the greatest Avestan scholars of Europe.⁴ What he did in Bombay from 1861 onwards had better be told in the words of one of my correspondents: ⁵

On his return he began teaching to a few disciples the Avesta, the Parsi scriptures, by the Western methods — comparative study of the Iranian languages and grammar. The most famous of his disciples were Sheriarji Bharucha, who is still alive, Temurasp Anklesaria, a most distinguished scholar of Pahlavi, who died about ten years ago, and Kavasji Kanga. He also helped largely in the foundation of two Madressas, or institutions devoted to the study of the Iranian languages and scriptures.

His main purpose was to create a new type of Parsee priests who, by their education and character, might be able to lead the community, and also by study to realize what the real teaching of Zoroaster was, and so be able to show authority for casting off the many superstitious accretions which the religion had gathered in the course of the centuries.

Meantime, through the encouragement of the reformers, English education had laid hold of the Parsee community. They built schools for themselves. The education of girls made great progress. A certain amount of religious instruction was given in the schools. The age of marriage was gradually raised; and, within a comparatively short space of time, Parsee women achieved their emancipation. They began to move about freely in the open air, both on foot and in carriages, while in former years, if they went out at all, the blinds of the carriage were always closely drawn. English dress came more and more into use; the European mode of dining at table was accepted; and men and women began to eat together:

The Parsi mode of life may be described to be an eclectic ensemble, half-European and half-Hindu. As they advance every year in civilization and enlightenment, they copy more closely English manners and modes of living.¹

Many hold that Western influence has gone too far. Thus, Mr. R. P. Karkaria, writing of Government education, says:

It helped the reformers, but went much farther than they intended, and has bred up a generation which is too reformed, a generation which is not quite strictly Parsee or Christian or anything in religion.

This has helped the conservative movement dealt with below.¹

4. Mr. B. M. Malabari, a Parsee government servant, who later became a journalist, exercised a very wide and powerful influence in the cause of women and children in India. His pamphlet on Infant Marriage and Enforced Widowhood,² published in 1887, stirred public opinion to the depths. In his journal, The Indian Spectator, he continued the struggle for more humane treatment for the women and children of India. When in England in 1890, he published, in pamphlet form, an Appeal on behalf of the daughters of India, which powerfully moved English feeling. Finally, in 1908, in conjunction with his biographer, Mr. Dayaram Gidumal, he founded the Seva Sadan.³

5. The culture and wide business relations of the Parsees have brought them into very close relations with Europeans, and there have been several intermarriages. One wealthy Parsee married a French lady. She declared herself a Zoroastrian by faith; and, wishing to be a true wife in all things to her husband, sought admission to the Parsee community, that she might share his religious life with him to the full. The advanced party wished to agree to the proposal; but necessarily opposition arose; for the Parsees have not admitted (except stealthily) any foreigner to their ranks for centuries; and the priests refused her admission.⁴ For, though reform has done much for the Parsee community in general, the priests have lagged pitiably behind. Very few of them are men of education; and, even if they know their own Scriptures, they have no knowledge of the West, and are therefore quite unfit to lead the community to-day. In consequence, a new demand has arisen for educated priests. Parsees contrast their priests with the missionaries they see around them. A valued correspondent writes:

There is an increasing demand for educated priests, capable of satisfying the spiritual needs of an educated community, which is no longer content with accepting everything on authority. Amongst us hitherto the priests have been illiterate, ignorant, and therefore unfit for the new demands created by the times. They have to depend not upon fixed salaries or endowments but upon fees and payments received for reciting prayers and performing ceremonies. There is an increasing demand for priests who by preaching and example can set up an ideal for the faithful to follow. Hitherto we have had little of preaching or sermonizing, or even of philosophical exposition of tenets.1

The most advanced party are also convinced that there is still much required in the way of religious and social reform. But a number of the leading men of the community have come to believe that the Parsees are losing their primacy in India, that they no longer control commerce to the extent they used to do, and that physical degeneration has set in amongst them. Strangely enough, one of the boldest and most cultured of modern Parsees, the Hon. Justice Sir Dinshaw Davar, puts down this supposed degeneracy to modern education. Others have, however, no difficulty in answering him. It is clear that it is city life, sedentary occupations and the want of regular exercise which is producing the phenomena referred to.

6. A Parsee priest named Dhala went to America and studied in the University of Columbia under Professor Jackson, the famous Zoroastrian scholar. He returned to India in 1909, and, in order to focus the reform movement, proposed a Zoroastrian Conference. The following quotation gives the main facts:

A couple of years ago, Dr. Dhala, a young energetic Parsi divine, fresh from his long and arduous studies of the Parsi Religion at the University of Columbia, as elucidated by scholars and savants of English, European and American reputation, whose labours and researches in the field of Avesta literature have thrown a flood of light on the philosophical teachings and speculations of our revered prophet, conceived the idea of having a Conference on some such lines as the Indian Social Conference held every year by our sister community, the Hindus. The raison d’être of the Conference was to inaugurate a liberal movement for the purpose of restoring Zoroastrian religion to its pristine sublimity and simplicity, in other words, to weed out all practices, beliefs, creeds, rituals, ceremonies and dogmas that have clustered round the true original religion, and to instruct and guide the community accordingly.¹

The Conference was held in April, 1910, and a variety of questions, religious, social and educational were discussed. The need of an educated priesthood, and the need of serious moral and religious education in schools, were strongly emphasized. But the conservatives² opposed, and violent scenes interrupted the proceedings, the result being that the gathering which had been created by the reformers for the sake of securing a great advance became rather a rallying centre for the conservative party. The Second Conference, held in 1911, also suffered seriously from the same causes.

The third and fourth Conferences, held in 1912 and 1913, were largely attended and very successful, and were not marred by violent opposition. The membership has grown to 500. The Conference is pressing forward the following schemes for the betterment of the community:

1. Lectures. Dr. Dhala and Mr. D. H. Madan, advocate of the Bombay High Court, and several others, have delivered lectures on Zoroastrianism in the vernacular to very large audiences in Bombay and throughout Gujarat.

2. Revision of the Calendar.

3. Education of Parsee priests. Money is available for this project, but the scheme is not yet ripe.

4. Industrial and Technical Education. A sub-committee has been appointed for this purpose.

5. Medical Inspection of School Children. The special Committee on this subject has 35 doctors to carry out the work.

6. Charity Organization. A scheme was proposed by Professor Henderson of Chicago but it is still in embryo.

7. Dairy Scheme. A limited liability company is being organized to supply sterilized milk, first to Parsee children, then to others.

8. Agricultural Scheme. A proposal has been made to purchase land for a new organization to conduct farming.

The leaders of the progressive party are Dr. Dhala, Sir P. M. Mehta, Sir Dinshaw Petit, the three Tatas, Mr. H. A. Wadia and Dr. Katrak. The paper that represents their position is The Parsee.

The rise and growing influence of the propaganda of the Theosophic party¹ led in 1911 to the organization within the reforming party of a society to resist and expose it. It is called The Iranian Association. The following are the objects the members have in view:

1. To maintain the purity of the Zoroastrian religion and remove the excrescences that have gathered around it.
2. To expose and counteract the effects of such teachings of Theosophists and others as tend: (a) to corrupt the religion of Zarathushtra by adding elements foreign to it, and (b) to bring about the degeneration of a progressive and virile community like the Parsis, and make them a body of superstitious and unpractical visionaries.
3. To promote measures for the welfare and advancement of the community.

Since March, 1912, the Association has published the Journal of the Iranian Association, a small monthly, partly in English, partly in Gujarātī.

LITERATURE.—History of the Parsis, by Dosabhai Framji Karaka, London, Macmillan, 1884, 2 vols., 36s. The Pārsī Religion, by John Wilson, D.D., Bombay, American Mission Press, 1843, out of print. The K. R. Cama Memorial Volume, by Jivanji Jamshedji Modi, Bombay, Fort Printing Press, 1900. Dadabhai Naoroji, A Sketch of his Life and Life Work, Madras, Natesan, as. 4. B. M. Malabari, a Biographical Sketch, by Dayaram Gidumal, with Introduction by Florence Nightingale, London, Fisher Unwin, 1892. Infant Marriage and Enforced Widowhood in India, by B. M. Malabari, Bombay, Voice of India Press, 1887.

4. MUḤAMMADAN REFORM

1. By the opening of the nineteenth century the collapse of the Muḥammadan empire in India was complete, although the name and the shadow continued to exist in Delhi for half a century longer. Necessarily, the fall of this mighty empire, which had wielded so much power and controlled so much wealth, produced the direst effects upon the Muḥammadans of North India. True, the Empire collapsed through inner decay, so that serious evils were there before the fall; yet the actual transference of the power and the prestige produced widespread degradation. The whole community sank with the empire. Necessarily, there was very bitter feeling against the European who had so unceremoniously helped himself to the empire of their fathers. The old education and culture rapidly declined; and for many decades Muḥammadans failed to take advantage of the new education planted by the conqueror. The consequence was that, throughout North India, the relative positions of the Hindu and Muḥammadan communities steadily changed, the former rising in knowledge, wealth and position, the latter declining.

2. Syed Aḥmad Khan came of an ancient noble family which had long been connected with Government. After receiving a Muḥammadan education, he had found a position under the British administration. In these and other particulars of his life and experience he was very like Ram Mohan Ray, only he came about forty years later, and was connected not with Calcutta but Delhi. While he was still young, he began to see how matters stood. During the Mutiny his loyalty never wavered, and he was instrumental in saving many Europeans. As soon as peace returned, he wrote a pamphlet, called The Causes of the Indian Mutiny, but, unfortunately, it was not published until five years later. That piece of work showed most clearly what a shrewd, capable man the writer was, and how invaluable he might be as an intermediary between the Government and the Muḥammadan community.

But the Mutiny opened Syed Aḥmad’s eyes also. It showed him, as by a flash of lightning, the frightful danger in which his community stood. He had early grasped the real value of British rule in India, and had thereby been led to believe that it would prove stable in spite of any such storm as the Mutiny. He now saw clearly that the Muḥammadans of India must absorb the science and the education of the West, and must also introduce large social reform amongst themselves, or else fall into complete helplessness and ruin. He therefore at once set about making plans for persuading his brethren of the truth of his ideas. He talked incessantly to his personal friends, published pamphlets and books, and formed an association for the study of Western science. He frankly said, “All the religious learning in Muḥammadan libraries is of no avail.” He established English schools, and struggled in every possible way to convince his community of the wisdom of learning English and absorbing the culture of the West. But he saw as clearly that Englishmen also required to learn. It was most necessary that they should know Indian opinion and sympathize with Indian aspirations. Hence in 1866 the British-Indian Association was founded, in order to focus Indian opinion on political questions, yet in utmost loyalty to the British Government, and to represent Indian ideas in Parliament. Then, in order to further his plans, both educational and political, he visited England with his son in 1869, and spent seventeen months there, studying English life and politics but giving the major part of his time and attention to education.

When he returned to India, he began the publication of a monthly periodical in Urdu, the Tahzību’l Akhlāq or Reform of Morals. It dealt with religious, social and educational subjects in a courageous spirit. He combated prejudice against Western science, advocated greater social freedom, and sought to rouse the Muḥammadan community to self-confidence and vigorous effort. He urged that there was no religious reason why Muslims should not dine with Europeans, provided there was no forbidden food on the table, and boldly put his teaching into practice, living in European style, receiving Englishmen as his guests and accepting their hospitality in return. In consequence, he was excommunicated, slandered and persecuted. He was called atheist, renegade, antichrist. Men threatened to kill him. But he held bravely on.

3. The climax of his educational efforts was the creation of the Anglo-Muḥammadan College at Aligarh. He conceived the institution, roused public opinion in its favour and gathered the funds for its buildings and its endowment. His idea was to create an institution which should do for young Muslims what Oxford and Cambridge were doing for Englishmen. He believed that a good education on Western lines, supported by wise religious teaching from the Koran, would produce young Muḥammadans of capacity and character. Aligarh is thus the first college founded by an Indian that follows the missionary idea, that education must rest on religion. The founder did his best to reproduce in India what he had seen in Oxford and Cambridge. The students reside in the College; there are resident tutors who are expected to develop character as well as intellect; athletics are prominent; and religion is an integral part of the work of the College. The Principal and several members of the staff are always Europeans. The prospectus states that the College was founded with the following objects:

4. To establish a College in which Musalmans may acquire an English education without prejudice to their religion.

5. To organize a Boarding-House to which a parent may send his son in the confidence that the boy’s conduct will be carefully supervised, and in which he will be kept free from the temptations which beset a youth in big towns.

6. To give as complete an education as possible, which, while developing intellect, will provide physical training, foster good manners, and improve the moral character.

The following sentences from the Prospectus show how religious instruction is given:

A Maulvi of well-known learning and piety has been specially appointed to supervise the religious life of the students and conduct the prayers in the College Mosque. Religious instruction is given to Musalman students, to Sunnis by a Sunni, and to Shias by a Shia; the books of Theology taught are prescribed by committees of orthodox Sunnis and Shias, respectively. The first period of each day’s work is devoted to the lectures on Theology, and attendance at these lectures is enforced by regulations as stringent as those regulating the ordinary class work of the College. Attendance at prayers in the College Mosque is also compulsory, and students who are irregular are severely punished. Students are expected to fast during the month of Ramzan. On Friday, the College is closed at eleven so as to allow the students to attend at Juma prayers, after which a sermon is delivered by the Resident Maulvi. All Islamic festivals are observed as holidays in the College.

The College has proved truly successful. It has given the Muḥammadan community new courage and confidence. A striking succession of English University men have occupied the position of Principal, and have succeeded in producing something of the spirit and tone of English public school and University life among the students. A steady stream of young men of education and character passes from the College into the service of Government and the professions. It has convinced thoughtful Muḥammadans of the wisdom of accepting Western education. It has proved a source of enlightenment and progressive thought. But, it must be confessed, the religious influence of the College does not seem to be at all prominent or pervasive.

In 1886 interest in modern education had made so much progress that Syed Aḥmad Khan was able to start the Muḥammadan Educational Conference, which meets annually, now in one centre and now in another. It has done a great deal to rouse Muḥammadans to their own backwardness and pitiable need. In recent years a Conference of Muslim ladies has met alongside the main Conference to deal with female education.¹

4. With the Syed also began the permeation of the Muḥammadan community in India with modern ideas in religion. After the death of Muḥammad, Muslim teachers gathered all the traditions about him, and sought to form a systematic body of doctrine and of law for believers. Orthodoxy gradually took shape. The doctrine of the divine will and the divine decrees was stated in such a form as to make human freedom almost an impossibility. The Koran was declared to be the eternal and uncreated Word of God. Crude concep-tions of God and His attributes became crystallized in Muslim doctrine. Rules for family and social life were fixed in rigid form.

But as conquest brought vast territories of both the East and the West under Islamic rule, the conquerors came into close touch with Greek and Christian civilization. At Baghdad, especially, the science and philosophy of Greece were carefully cultivated. Christian monks taught and translated. From this living intercourse there arose, in the eighth century A.D., a great movement of Muḥammadan thought. Learned teachers began to defend the freedom of the will, to speculate on the nature of the Godhead, and to discuss the Koran. A new school, the Mu’tazilites, arose, characterized by freedom of thought, great confidence in reason, and a keen sense of the importance of the moral issues of life. They held the freedom of the human will, pronounced against the doctrine of the resurrection of the body, and declared that the Koran was created in time, and that there was a human element in it alongside the divine. They were opposed to polygamy. But this enlightened school was soon pronounced heretical, and passed out of existence.

It is most interesting to note that Western thought produced almost identical results in India in the nineteenth century. Early in life Syed Aḥmad Khan openly abandoned the charge, which is so often made by orthodox Muḥammadans, that Christians have seriously corrupted the text of the Old and New Testaments. He urged his fellow-believers that they should not consider Christians as Kafirs and enemies, and declared that the Bible and the Koran, when rightly understood, did not contradict one another. Readers will note how closely his position approximates to the teaching of Ram Mohan Ray. The resemblance in many respects is very striking: the Hindu leader published The Precepts of Jesus: the Muḥammadan reformer published a fragment of a Commentary on Genesis, which has been of real service in opening Muhammadan minds. He held that in the Koran, as in the Bible, we must acknowledge the presence of a human element as well as a divine. The rest of his religious conceptions have been outlined by a trustworthy scholar as follows :

But his thought (system we cannot call it) is more influenced by the conceptions of conscience and nature. Conscience, he says, is the condition of man’s character which results from training and reflection. It may rightly be called his true guide and his real prophet. Still, it is liable to mutability, and needs to be corrected from time to time by historic prophets. To test a prophet we must compare the principles of his teaching with the laws of nature. If it agrees with these we are to accept it, and he quotes with approval the remark of a French writer, that Islam, which lays no claim to miraculous powers on the part of the founder, is the truly rationalistic religion. Muhammad, he claims, set forth the Divine unity with the greatest possible clearness and simplicity: first, Unity of Essence, which he promulgated afresh; second, Unity of Attributes, which the Christians had wrongly hypostatized in their doctrine of the Trinity; third, Unity of Worship in the universal and uniform rendering of that devotion which is due to God alone, thus securing the doctrine of the Unity against all practical encroachments through corrupt observances.¹

He made much of reason. One of his phrases was, ‘Reason alone is a sufficient guide.’ He spoke and wrote in favour of Natural Religion. Hence his followers are called Naturis. The word has been corrupted into Necharis, and occurs in this form in Census Reports and elsewhere. The Syed won the confidence of Government, became a member of the Viceroy’s Legislative Council, and was knighted.

His principles have been accepted and carried farther by several writers, notably Moulvie Chiragh Ali and The Right Hon. Syed Amir Ali. Their work is almost entirely apologetic. They have a double aim in view, first, to defend Islam from Christian criticism and the corroding influences of Western thought in general, and, secondly, to prove that the religious, social, moral and political reforms, which, through Christian teaching, modern thought and the pressure of the times, are being inevitably forced on Muḥammadan society, are in full consonance with Islam. As the practice of Muḥammad himself, Muḥammadan Law and orthodox teaching are all unquestionably opposed to these things, the line of argument taken is that the spirit¹ of Islam is all in their favour, and that everything else is to be regarded as of the nature of concessions to human frailty. This theory is elaborately worked out in Syed Amir Ali’s Spirit of Islam. There we are told that the Koran in reality discourages slavery, religious war, polygamy and the seclusion of women. Of this writer a competent scholar² says:

The Syed is at the stage of explaining things away, and it is fair to say that he does it at the expense of much hardly ingenuous ingenuity and a good deal of suppressio veri.

But the very hopelessness of these positions from the critical point of view may be to us the measure of the forces that are driving the writers to plead for the reforms and to find justification for them. Syed Amir Ali definitely identifies himself with the Mu’tazilite school, both in their theology and their social ideas, and believes that large numbers of Indian Muḥammadans are with him in his opinions.

As to the results of the movement the following statement may suffice:

The energies of the reform movement at present find their vent in the promotion of education and of social reforms.

The Aligarh College, under a series of capable English principals and professors, is training up a new generation of Muhammadan gentlemen in an atmosphere of manly culture and good breeding, with high ethical ideals. The yearly meeting of the Educational Conference both works practically for the advancement of enlightenment among Indian Muhammadans and also affords an opportunity for exchange of thought and propagation of reforming ideas. Thus some years ago a leading Muhammadan gentleman known as the Agha Khan, when presiding over the Conference at Madras, trenchantly impressed upon his hearers that the progress of the community was chiefly hindered by three evils: by the seclusion and non-education of women, by theoretical and practical fatalism, and by religious formalism; an enlightened self-criticism which commands sympathy and admiration. The questions of polygamy and female seclusion are being actively debated in the press and otherwise, and some leading Muhammadan gentry have broken the ordinance of the veil and appear in public with their wives and daughters in European dress.

As far as regards theological thought, competent Indian observers are of opinion that the rationalism of Sir Syed Ahmad is not at present being developed; but that there is rather a relapse towards a passive acceptance of Muslim orthodoxy.¹ Still, there is no doubt that the movement has tended to increase openness and fairness of mind among the educated classes.²

A few educated Indian Muhammadans during recent years have reached a more advanced position. Mr. S. Khuda Bukhsh, M.A., one of the Professors of the Presidency College, Calcutta, has published a volume entitled, Essays, Indian and Islamic, which the present writer has not seen, but which is characterized as follows by one of our best scholars:

He has read his Goldziher and accepts his positions. He knows what a monogamous marriage means and confesses frankly the gulf between it and marriage in Islam; and he does not try to prove that Islam does not sanction polygamy.

With similar candour he views the other broad differences of East and West. How, then, is he a Moslem? He would go back to the Koran and Mohammed and would sweep away all the labours of the schoolman by which these have been overlaid. Above all he is fascinated by the music and magic of the Koran. That book and a broad feeling of loyalty to the traditions of his ancestors are evidently the forces which hold him.¹

It is probably true, as the Right Hon. Syed Amir Ali said to me, that there are very few indeed who are ready to follow Mr. Bukhsh. For the modern conservative movement among Muslims see p. 347.

LITERATURE. — Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, by General Graham, London, Hodder, 1909. Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, Madras, Natesan, as. 4. The Spirit of Islam, by Syed Amir Ali, Calcutta, Lahiri and Co., 1890. Essays, Indian and Islamic, by Khuda Bukhsh, London, Probsthain, 1912, 7s. 6d. net.

Footnotes