Coming to Calcutta

At the age of 16 Gadādhar was summoned to Calcutta by his elder brother Rāmkumār, who wished help in his priestly duties.

Rāmkumār had opened a Sanskrit academy to supplement his income. He wanted to gradually turn his younger brother’s mind to education. Gadādhar applied himself heart and soul to his new duty as family priest to a number of Calcutta families.

His worship was very different from that of the professional priests. He spent hours decorating the images and singing hymns and devotional songs; he performed with love the other duties of his office. People were impressed with his ardour. But to his studies he paid scant attention.

Rāmkumār did not at first oppose the ways of his temperamental brother. He wanted Gadādhar to become used to the conditions of city life. But one day he decided to warn the boy about his indifference to the world. After all, in the near future Gadādhar must, as a householder, earn his livelihood through the performance of his brāhminical duties.

These required a thorough knowledge of Hindu law, astrology, and kindred subjects. He gently admonished Gadādhar and asked him to pay more attention to his studies. But he replied spiritedly:

Bread-winning Education

India’s inner soul was anguished. It found expression through these passionate words of the young Gadādhar.

Greed and lust held sway in the higher levels of society.

Gadādhar had never seen anything like this at Kāmārpukur among the simple and pious villagers. The sādhus and wandering monks whom he had served in his boyhood had revealed to him an altogether different India. He had been impressed by their devotion and purity, their self-control and renunciation.

He had learnt from them and from his own intuition that the ideal of life as taught by the ancient sages of India was the realization of God.

Rāmkumār reprimanded Gadādhar for neglecting a “bread-winning education”. Gadādhar’s inner voice reminded him that the legacy of his ancestors - the legacy of Rāmā, Krishna, Buddha, Sankara, Rāmānuja, Chaitanya - was not worldly security but the Knowledge of God.

These noble sages were the true representatives of Hindu society. Each of them was seated, as it were, on the crest of the wave that followed each successive trough in the tumultuous course of Indian national life. All demonstrated that the life current of India is spirituality.

This truth was revealed to Gadādhar through that inner vision which scans past and future in one sweep, unobstructed by the barriers of time and space. But he was unaware of the history of the profound change that had taken place in the land of his birth during the previous 100 years.

Hindu society during the 18th century was in a period of decadence. It was the twilight of Islamic rule. There were anarchy and confusion in all spheres.

Superstitious practices dominated the religious life of the people. Rites and rituals passed for the essence of spirituality. Greedy priests became the custodians of heaven. True philosophy was supplanted by dogmatic opinions. The pundits took delight in vain polemics.

In 1757, English traders laid the foundation of British rule in India. Gradually, the Government was systematized and lawlessness suppressed. The Hindus were much impressed by the military power and political acumen of the new rulers.

In the wake of the merchants came:

• English educators
• social reformers
• Christian missionaries

They all had a culture completely alien to the Hindu mind. Educational institutions were set up and Christian churches established.

Hindu young men were offered the heady wine of the Western culture of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and they drank it to the very dregs.

The first effect of the draught on the educated Hindus was a complete effacement from their minds of the time-honoured beliefs and traditions of Hindu society.

They came to believe that there was no transcendental Truth. The world perceived by the senses was all that existed. God and religion were illusions of the untutored mind. True knowledge could be derived only from the analysis of nature. So atheism and agnosticism became the fashion of the day.

The youth of India, taught in English schools, took malicious delight in openly breaking the customs and traditions of their society. They would do away with the caste-system and remove the discriminatory laws about food.

Social reform, the spread of secular education, widow remarriage, abolition of early marriage - they considered these the panacea for the degenerate condition of Hindu society.

The Christian missionaries gave the finishing touch to the process of transformation.

They ridiculed as relics of a barbarous age the images and rituals of the Hindu religion.

They tried to persuade India that the teachings of her saints and seers were the cause of her downfall, that her Vedas, Purānās, and other scriptures were filled with superstition.

Christianity, they maintained, had given the white races position and power in this world and assurance of happiness in the next; therefore Christianity was the best of all religions.

Many intelligent young Hindus became converted. The man in the street was confused. The majority of the educated grew materialistic in their mental outlook.

Everyone living near Calcutta or the other strongholds of Western culture, even those who attempted to cling to the orthodox traditions of Hindu society, became infected by the new uncertainties and the new beliefs.

But the soul of India was to be resuscitated through a spiritual awakening. We hear the first call of this renascence in the spirited retort of the young Gadādhar: “Brother, what shall I do with a mere bread-winning education?”

Rāmkumār could hardly understand the import of his young brother’s reply. He described in bright colours the happy and easy life of scholars in Calcutta society. But Gadādhar intuitively felt that the scholars, to use one of his own vivid illustrations, were like so many vultures, soaring high on the wings of their uninspired intellect, with their eyes fixed on the charnel-pit of greed and lust. So he stood firm and Rāmkumār had to give way.