Keshub Chandra Sen

Keshub Chunder Sen

Keshub Chunder Sen (Bengali: কেশব চন্দ্র সেন Keshob Chôndro Shen) (also spelt Keshab Chandra Sen) (1838-1884) was a Bengali religious preacher and reformer. Keshub Chunder was an organiser of the Adi Brahmo Samaj for eight years from 1857.

Life

Baboo Keshub Chandra Sen was born on November 19, 1838 into an affluent, 'service class' family of renaissance Bengal. His grandfather, Ramkamal Sen (1783-1844) was an employee of the Tagore family as secretary of Zamindari (Landholders) Association of Bengal founded by Dwarkanath Tagore and had compiled an early English-Bengali Dictionary (in two volumes published in 1830 and 1834) for William Carey. Ramkamal Sen is well known as being a staunch pro-sati Hindu and lifelong opponent of Ram Mohan Roy the Brahmo reformer and for publicly opposing (with Radhakant Deb) Roy's agitation against Sati (the cruel practice of forcing Hindu widows to be burnt on their husbands funeral pyre) . His father Peary Mohan Sen was made the secretary of the Asiatic Society in 1831 after Dwarkanath Tagore joined in 1829 and K.C. Sen himself also briefly held the position in 1854. For a short time thereafter Sen was also a clerk in the Bank of Bengal, but resigned his post to devote himself exclusively to literature and philosophy. The background to this important development in Sen's life is recounted by his biographer and intimate associate Rev. P.C. Mazoomdar as follows-

Keshub Chunder Sen

"When going through the Senior Scholarship Examination in 1856, now corresponding to the First Arts, a most unnatural accident befell him, which cast a gloom upon the remaining years of his college life. On the day when the Mathematical questions were set, one of the professors, who was appointed to watch the examinees, found him comparing papers with the young man who sat next to him. It is difficult to say with whom the irregularity originated, whether with Keshub or his neighbour, but he was most severely handled for it. He was not permitted to appear at the rest of the examination ; they threatened to rusticate him but on urgent and influential remonstrance took him back again. His sensitiveness, naturally great, was most deeply offended, the whole circumstance depressed him most seriously, and affected his mental development ever afterwards."

In 1857 a depressed Keshub Chandra Sen again took employment in clerkship, this time as private secretary, to Dwijendranath Tagore and got himself subscribed to membership of the Brahmo Samaj while its founder Debendranath Tagore was away in Simla.With the love and affection of the Tagore family he got over the trauma in his past, and after 1859, Keshub Chandra Sen dedicated himself to the organisational work of this faith and in 1862 was assigned, by Hemendranath Tagore, a stipendary ministry (Acharya) of one of its worship houses despite being a non-Brahmin (previously a Shudra untouchable Lala Hazarilal had been made an Acharya to Nadia in 1851 by Debendranath Tagore). In the course of his 8 years in the Calcutta Brahmo Samaj the Tagore family found Sen a useful employee to evict many inconvenient associates from the Tattwabodhini days such as Pandit Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar from Samaj. In 1862 Sen also helped found the Albert College and wrote articles for the Indian Mirror, a weekly journal of Calcutta Brahmo Samaj in which social and moral subjects were debated.

In 1863 he wrote The Brahma Samaj Vindicated. He also travelled about the country lecturing and preaching the Adi Dharm. The steady development of his Christian zeal, however, led to his expulsion from Adi Dharm, and Sen's followers took on the name "Brahma Samaj of India", and tried to propagate its doctrines by missionary enterprise. Its tenets at this time were the following:

1. The wide universe is the temple of God.
2. Wisdom is the pure land of pilgrimage.
3. Truth is the everlasting scripture.
4. Faith is the root of all religions.
5. Love is the true spiritual culture.
6. The destruction of selfishness is the true asceticism.

In 1866 Sen delivered an address on Jesus Christ, Europe and Asia, in which he proclaimed that "India would be for Christ alone who already stalks the land" and which fostered the impression that he was about to embrace Christianity. This drew attention to him and in 1870 he journeyed to England where he remained for six months, visiting many towns there. England somewhat disappointed him, as he records, "I came here an Indian, I go back a confirmed Indian; I came here a Theist, I go back a confirmed Theist. I have learned to love my own country more and more." These words spoken at the farewell soiree may furnish the key to the change in him which so greatly puzzled many of his English friends.

He developed a tendency towards mysticism and a greater leaning to the spiritual teaching of the Indian philosophies, as well as a somewhat despotic attitude towards the Samaj. He gave his daughter, Suniti Devi in marriage to Maharaja Nripendra Narayan of Cooch Behar; he revived the performance of mystical plays, and himself took part in one. These changes alienated most of his followers, who deserted his standard and founded the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj in 1878.

Some reasons for the extreme dissatisfaction of Mr. Sen's erstwhile followers are summarised in extracts from the "Statement of 5 Reasons" issued by them at the time-

1. "uncontrolled individual authority",
2. mismanagement in "collection and disbursement of funds the appointment or removal of missionaries,"
3. "many erroneous and superstitious doctrines were also being silently introduced",
4. "often heard many un-Brahmic doctrines preached in the name of the Brahmo Samaj of India, and as a consequence of the acceptance of these erroneous doctrines, we have also seen several members prostrating themselves at the feet of an individual, and many others leaving the Samaj in disgust and horror at such proceedings",
5. " by marrying his daughter who is aged only thirteen and [a] half, to a boy who is fifteen and [a] half, by allowing certain idolatrous rites to be observed in connection with that marriage, and also by allowing the essential elements of a real Brahmo marriage to be subordinated to, and made secondary to those idolatrous rites, has made himself open to the serious charge of having countenanced early-marriage and idolatry, and has thereby violated two principal doctrines of the Somaj."

Sen did what he could to reinvigorate his own small faction by a new infusion of Christian ideas and phrases, e.g. the New Dispensation, the Holy Spirit. He also instituted a sacramental meal of rice and water in imitation of the Sikh system of Amrit (nectar) initiation for new converts. On his return to India he established the Indian Reform Association.

Two lectures delivered between 1881 and 1883 throw a good deal of light on his latest doctrines. They were The Marvelous Mystery, the Trinity and Asia's Message to Europe. The latter is an eloquent plea against the Europeanizing of Asia, as well as a protest against Western sectarianism. During the intervals of his last illness he wrote The New Samhita, or the Sacred Laws of the Aryans of the New Dispensation. He died in January 1884, leaving many bitter enemies and some warm friends.

Universal religion

Sen’s primary quest was for a universal religion or belief-system. After his expulsion from Brahmoism which was completed in 1878, Sen established a syncretic school of spiritualism, called the Nabo Bidhan or 'New Dispensation', which he intended to amalgamate the best principles of Chritianity and of the western spiritual tradition with Hinduism.

The Nabo Bidhan school generated considerable antagonism among Brahmo Samajists, since Sen's followers represented that they were also Brahmos. As recorded by Sivnath Sastri, 8 notable Brahmos of Sylhet (now in Bangladesh) including Raj Chandra Chaudhuri and Pandit Sitanath Tattvabhushan issued the following proclamation in 1880 which exemplify the protests.

"Let us all, every Brahmo and Brahmo Samaj, combine to let the world know that the New Dispensation is not the Brahmo religion: That we have not the least sympathy for the creed : That the New Dispensation is totally opposed to Brahmoism"

This proclamation of the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj resulted in 1881 of the formation of the Brahmo Conference Organisation to publicly denounce and expose Keshab Sen and his Nabo Bidhan movement from every platform as being "anti-Brahmo" in terms of the aforesaid proclamation.

Bipin Chandra Pal has succinctly summarised the evolution - "It is considered by many philosophers and thinkers that Raja Rammohun Roy had given us a philosophy of a universal religion. But philosophy was not religion. It is only when philosophy becomes organised in ethical exercises and disciplines and spiritual sacraments that it becomes a religion. Debendranath gave us a national religion, on the foundations of Rammohun’s philosophy of universal religion. To Keshub, however, was left the work of organising Rammohun Roy’s philosophy into a real universal religion through new rituals, liturgies, sacraments and disciplines, wherein were sought to be brought together not only the theories and doctrines of the different world religions but also their outer vehicles and formularies to the extent that these were real vehicles of their religious or spiritual life, divested, however, through a process of spiritual sifting, of their imperfections and errors and superstitions."

The attempt to create a universal religion has been analytically explained by Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das. Speaking in 1917 he said, "The earlier religion of his (Keshub Chunder Sen’s) life was perhaps somewhat abstract. But his religion in developed form, as we find it, in his Navavidhan, is full of concrete symbols of all religions…This brings me to another predominant note of Bengali culture. This is the note of universality… The different sects into which our country is apparently divided, all point to this universalism. The differences are deceptive. They deceive those that are strangers to our thought and culture. Every Hindu is conscious of the underlying unity of this universalism. Read the devotional poems of the Vaishnavas, read the devotional poems of the Shaktas and the other sects, you will find they were identical in this character. The life and work of Keshub Chunder Sen also point to attempt after attempt at this very universalism. The earlier attempt was abstract in its character, brought about by what is called the universal of subtractions. It was based on this, ‘There is truth in every religion! Thus in discarding what it conceived to be false in every religion, and accepting what it conceived to be true build up a sort of an abstract universal religion.’ From Hinduism it took the Upanishads discarding the subsequent scriptures and systems. From Christianity it took the ideal of the son ship of man and the Fatherhood of God divorced from it scriptures and its traditions. From Mohammedanism it took the idea of equality of man without the characteristic traditions in which that idea lived and moved and had its being. Similarly, from all known systems of religion. But as the spiritual experience of Keshub Chunder Sen deepened, he could not remain satisfied with abstract ideas thus taken and formulated. He wanted flesh and blood for the life of his religion. It was then that he formulated what I regard, as one of the grandest attempts at universal religion… The result may or may not be considered satisfactory. But I refuse to judge it by the results. I rejoice in the glory of the attempt."

His book, the Slokasangraha, was a collection of texts from Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, Christian, Islamic and Chinese scriptures. It was a movement brought to birth by the conflict of East with West in the realm of intellect. Pandit Sivanath Sastri gives an insider's view of History of the Brahmo Samaj. Later Sen became a devotee of Sri Ramakrishna and New Dispensation followers publicized Ramakrishna before the larger public of Bengal through their speeches and writings.

External links

• Hindu School, Kolkata - Web Site
• Evolution of Brahmo Samaj
• The Banglapedia article on Keshub Chunder Sen
• India Post page on Sen and the postage stamp released in his memory