Overview

Did Śrīla Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura champion caste-Brahmanism? We recently received a letter from a concerned devotee who, while reading Jaiva Dharma, became extremely troubled by passages concerning varṇāśrama, social identity, and the eligibility of devotees born outside brāhmaṇa families. Finding these statements seemingly at odds with the teachings of Śrīla Prabhupāda Sarasvatī Ṭhākura and Śrīla A.C. Bhaktivedānta Swami Prabhupāda, he sought clarification on whether Bhaktivinoda advocates hereditary caste distinctions or whether these passages should be understood in a different historical and theological context. Gaura Gopāla Dāsa responds.

Dear K____,

Hare Kṛṣṇa.

Thank you for your letter. Don’t lose any more sleep over this. There is no real contradiction, and it is not worth your distress.

Śrīla Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura is simply speaking on two different levels. The soul’s eternal nature (nitya-dharma) is to be the servant of Kṛṣṇa, and on that level there is no question of varṇa, birth, or social position at all. Bhakti and the Holy Name are open to everyone equally, Indian or foreigner, high-born or low. That is the heart of Jaiva Dharma – otherwise the book would have been titled ‘Brāhmaṇa Dharma.’

In Jaiva Dharma, when Vaiṣṇava Dāsa speaks of maintaining one’s social order, he is speaking on a completely different level – the external, practical arrangement of society during his era (naimittika-dharma). A devotee may outwardly keep his social position so as not to disturb the common people, while inwardly being transcendental to all of it. It is a concession to circumstance, not a statement about the soul. When one sets out to disturb the social order, one becomes consumed with trying either to break it, or to maintain the status quo, and thus becomes lost in mundane social problems.

You are quite right that a brāhmaṇa is determined by guṇa and karma, not birth, and Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura held exactly that view. He was no caste-conscious Smārta. And this was not Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura’s innovation alone. Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura himself wrote against caste Brahmanism in book after book and article after article, because this is nothing other than the philosophy of Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu. He is not contradicting Mahāprabhu – he is speaking the very same conclusion.

You have written:

The pontiff of Advaita mutt in Kanchipuram has said if any outcaste people or foreigner chants Vedas, those who hear or listen will be punished with pouring molten iron on to their ears.

This harsh exclusivism is exactly what our whole line has opposed; Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura gave brahminical initiation to devotees regardless of birth on that very strength. So Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura and the two Prabhupādas are in full agreement; there is nothing to reconcile. One need only see what else Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura wrote on the subject and there can be no doubt.

What, then, is he actually recommending when he speaks of keeping to one’s social position?

In the time of Bhaktivinoda for example, he recommended that one marry within one’s own community, simply to keep life simple, so one can focus on spiritual life rather than become mired in social drama because one married “the wrong girl from the wrong community” and now two families are at war. That is all. It is household common sense in the service of one’s spiritual life, not a doctrine about the soul.

It also helps to remember the times these great souls lived in. Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura was writing in the heyday of British rule, when he had already watched foreigners shaking the Indian social order to a large degree and did not feel the burning necessity in that time to create so much social upheaval. Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura on the other hand, came at the close of that era, when the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava community was spiralling into sahajiyāism, imitation, and immorality, all under the cover of high birth and brahminical respectability, and so he came forward in a revolutionary mood, cutting that hypocrisy down. The same philosophy, but a different medicine for the particular disease of each age. We should be careful to second-guess such expressions from our armchair a century later. It is easy to imagine that, had we only been there, we would have seen everything clearly and acted boldly, just as people today like to imagine they would have freed the slaves in North America, or stood up to Hitler, had they been born in that time and place. In truth we are very much the products of our own time, place, and circumstance, and we think a great deal too much of ourselves in this regard.

My one suggestion, offered as a well-wisher, has to do with how such a book should be approached, because the mindset we bring to it matters as much as the book itself. There is a tendency, especially among those of us who have come up through the modern system of education (especially in India), to “study, study, study” in order to master a subject for the sake of a degree or a good position, and then to come to the Gauḍīya literature in the very same way, as one more subject to be analyzed and debated. But this is not that kind of study. My Guru Mahārāja did not recommend people reading these books on their own or on a whim. They are not academic exercises or commentaries on social questions; they are meant to be received on the order of the spiritual master, in the association of Vaiṣṇavas, with service as the foundation.

The subtle danger is that we carry our own mental baggage into the book without noticing. If we are women, we read it through the lens of women’s rights; if we are Indian, through caste; if we belong to some minority, through social equality. Whatever we happen to be carrying, we bring it forward into the philosophy, and it quietly keeps us from hearing what is actually being said on the level of the soul. A single passage, read alone and misinterpreted, can disturb us in just the same way as this one has disturbed you. Far better to study this literature in the association of an advanced Vaiṣṇava who can clarify these points as they arise. Hold firmly to the Holy Name, and don’t let a fine point of social arrangement steal your peace.

Hoping this meets you well.

Gaura Gopāla Dāsa

About the Author: Gaura Gopāla Dāsa

Gaura Gopāla Dāsa Brahmacārī was born in 1987 to Dhīra Lalitā Dāsī and Jagadīśvara Dāsa, both disciples of Śrīla Prabhupāda. He first met his guru, Śrīlā B.G. Narasiṅgha Mahārāja in 1993 and took initiation from him in 1995. He joined his guru’s āśrama full time in 2000, serving in various capacities for over 20 years and recently moved to Vṛndāvana where he is serving at the Rupanuga Bhajan Ashram.