Against Vaiṣṇava Deviance: Brāhmaṇical and Bhadralok Alliance in Bengal

Abstract

This article sets out to problematise the notion that late nineteenth and early twentieth century Vaiṣṇava anti-sahajiyā polemics can be taken as a definitive index of colonial wrought rupture within Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism. It proceeds by (1) drawing attention to oblique, yet unmistakably polemical, forms of response to sahajiyā currents in pre-colonial Gauḍīya literature that are indicative of a movement towards a brāhmaṇically-aligned Vaiṣṇava normativity; and (2) highlighting how this movement towards normativity was further fostered in colonial times by Gauḍīya gosvāmī types, who were often extensively involved in bhadralok Vaiṣṇava domains.

1. Introduction

The Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava tradition2 featured prominently in the socio-religious landscape of Bengal in the mid-nineteenth century in spite of the fact that it had become a palpable source of discomfort for the region’s emerging western-educated indigenous middle class. The tradition thus frequently came in for scathing criticism from this small but socially powerful group—commonly referred to as the ‘bhadralok’ (‘gentlefolk’)—on account of its perceived promotion of sexual and other forms of moral impropriety.

It might therefore seem surprising that, in the latter decades of the century, a notable section of the bhadralok began to turn to Vaiṣṇavism as a source of religious and cultural inspiration. Bhadralok involvement with the tradition appears, however, to have been determined from the outset by the colonially-shaped moral framework that distinguished the group—a framework often regarded as characterised, above all, by a rigid Victorian puritanism (Banerjee 1987). Bhadralok Vaiṣṇava enthusiasts thus took great pains to set a ‘pure’ (śuddha) or ‘genuine’ (prakṛta) Vaiṣṇava tradition apart from all that did not meet the demands of their distinctive moral sensibilities.

This dissociative undertaking took shape most notably in a broad polemical campaign against Vaiṣṇava currents bearing the mark of tantric and other such transgressive influences. These currents—which, I broadly denote ‘sahajiyā’ (a term largely employed adjectivally rather than nominally in the context of the present discussion)3—were frequently denounced by bhadralok Vaiṣṇavas as deviant on account of their alleged illicit sexual practices, such as ritual copulation with the wife of another (parakīyā-sādhana), and other morally problematic behaviour. The burgeoning arena of Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava print served as the principal site for this campaign, with diatribes against sahajiyā depravity being an especially prominent feature of the many bhadralok-directed Vaiṣṇava periodicals that began to circulate in Bengal in the later decades of the nineteenth century.4 As the esteemed Vaiṣṇava scholar and regional historian Achyutacharan Chaudhuri Tattvanidhi wrote in one such article, entitled ‘Sub-religion’ (upadharmma) and published in Kedarnath Datta Bhaktivinod’s pioneering Vaiṣṇava journal, Saj-jana-toṣạṇī (4.7):

Just as on large trees there are ‘parasites’ (paragāchā), religions (dharmma), too, have parasites. Absorbing the sap of the tree from which they emerge, parasites nourish themselves and make the host tree visibly ugly. Many such parasites or ‘sub-religions’ (upadharmma), such as the Sahajiyās, Bāulas, and so forth, feed on the support of Vaiṣṇavism. … It would not be necessary to say anything about them if Vaiṣṇava society was not harmed by this. But this is not actually the case. [These groups] continue to present themselves as Vaiṣṇava. As a result, external observers of Vaiṣṇavism witness their conduct and conclude that Vaiṣṇavism is a religion of abominable practices (kadācāra) and unrestrained behaviour (yathecchācāra).

(Tattvanidhi 1892, p. 133)5

It is, perhaps, tempting to construe this pervasive drive against sahajiyā currents as instantiating a broader cultural dissociative programme through which the bhadralok sought to oppose itself to, and elevate itself above, the chotolok (‘small folk’) and their uncivil (abhadra) ways. This programme has been highlighted as constitutive of the bhadralok’s very identity, which was otherwise fraught with internal tensions and disparities (e.g., Broomfield 1968, pp. 153–54, 322; Mukherjee 1993, p. 73). Operative here was a strategy of deflection through which bhadralok agents redirected well-documented colonial moral criticism towards those they deemed more properly deserving of it, thereby implicitly acknowledging its force. We might think of this as a form of what Jeanne Openshaw neatly styles ‘displaced acquiescence’ (Openshaw 2002, p. 21). To frame nineteenth century Vaiṣṇava anti-sahajiyā polemics along these lines is, as I see it, to hold to the notion of a distinct ‘rupture’ within Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism wrought by the importation of a new colonially-shaped bhadralok morality. The concrete implications of this were the marginalisation and expulsion of a host of currents and communities that had hitherto been an integral part of the tradition.

We must, however, be wary of oversimplification. I would argue that there are clear indications that an emerging Vaiṣṇava orthodoxy, with discernible brāhmaṇical predilections, had begun to dissociate itself from sahajiyā currents prior to the advent of British power in the region, and certainly well before the formative processes of bhadralok moral and social identity were underway in the mid-nineteenth century. Bhadralok morality was no mere colonial derivative; rather, as Brian Hatcher maintains, it was the outcome of a ‘complex process of cultural convergence through which alien discourse and practice becomes affiliated to indigenous traditions’. As Hatcher advises, we would do well to keep an eye on the persistent force of ‘indigenous sources and modalities’, particularly those of brāhmaṇical discourse, when dealing with expressions of it (Hatcher 1996, p. 7). It should come as little surprise, then, that bhadralok Vaiṣṇava concerns about sahajiyā currents do in fact find a notable degree of resonance in pre-colonial Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava literature.

2. Brāhmaṇical Predilections

Contrary to idealised characterisations of Caitanya as a radically iconoclastic social emancipator—a vision of the ecstatic Kṛṣṇa devotee frequently championed by left-leaning Bengali social and cultural historians (e.g., Bandyopadhyay 2004, pp. 80–81; Chakrabarti 1985, pp. 6–7; Chakrabarti 1999, p. 223; Sanyal 1981, p. 58)—his discernibly brāhmaṇical aversion to transgressive and impure behaviour is an unmistakable theme in many of his early biographies. Just what constituted such behaviour for Caitanya is clearly indicated by, for example, the numerous biographical narratives surrounding his ‘deliverance’ (uddhāra) of the two debauched brothers Jagāi and Mādhāi, who serve as paradigms of sin (pāpa) and fallenness (patitatā) in the literature on account of their unrestricted indulgence in (among other polluting activities) meat eating, alcohol consumption, and unrestricted sex (O’Connell 1971, p. 156). Caitanya’s uncompromising stance on sexual impropriety is particularly stressed in narratives treating his later life as a renunciant (Majumdar 1939, pp. 570–75). The moral proclivities articulated in these works are, of course, ‘only a reassertion of what had been the Vaiṣṇava preference for centuries in Bengal and elsewhere in India’ (O’Connell 1971, p. 176), and exhibit a discernible affinity with those of brāhmaṇical orthopraxy, however much they also report Caitanya’s criticism of Smārta ritual and social rigidities. Such notions of purity entailed that Caitanya and his followers were often portrayed as relating to groups and practitioners advocating transgressive ritual behaviour ‘with reservations if not hostility’ (Valpey 2014, p. 14). In his Caitanya-bhāgavata (2.19.86–4), for instance, Vṛndāvanadāsa reports that Caitanya once became so disturbed by the offer of wine (ānanda) from an eccentric and co-habiting sannyāsī of the left path (vāma-pathi) that he immediately jumped into the Ganges while repeatedly calling out the name ‘Viṣṇu’ in an urgent attempt to purify himself.

It is true that these images of Caitanya come to us through the various lenses of his early hagiographers, and we should be aware that, as Heidi Pauwels observes, all hagiographers ‘have their own agenda, creating according to their own preoccupations’ (Pauwels 2010, p. 518). Unfortunately, since Caitanya left only a handful of verses in writing (notably in Sanskrit), any claim of unmediated access to some kind of ‘original ideal’ against which later developments in the tradition can be definitively measured (Chakrabarti 1999, p. 223) seems a little far-fetched. Yet, irrespective of the socially subversive intent of Caitanya’s inceptive devotional movement (or lack thereof), pronounced brāhmaṇical influence in the post-Caitanya tradition in Bengal is undeniable.

This influence is evidenced not least by the ascendance of gosvāmī lineages (vaṃśa) tracing hereditary descent from one of Caitanya’s companions, which provided a loosely-knit Gauḍīya community with its principal form of leadership. Most prominent among these were brāhmaṇa gosvāmī lineages tracing descent from Caitanya’s two intimate companions, Nityānanda and Advaita, described in the Caitanya-caritāmṛta (1.9.19) as the two main ‘trunks’ (skandha) of Caitanya’s ‘wishing tree of devotion’ (bhakti-kalpa-taru).6 While differences in the degree of ritual and social orthopraxy exhibited by these communities may be discernible, they were on the whole marked by a pronounced ‘conservative character’ (O’Connell 1971, p. 310).7

It is true that not all the major Gauḍīya communities that arose in post-Caitanya Bengal were brāhmaṇa-led. Around the middle of the seventeenth century, for instance, there emerged discipular communities (parivara) affiliated with the pivotal Gauḍīya missionaries, Narottama and Śyāmānanda, who hailed from the kāyastha and sādgopa castes respectively. These important Gauḍīya leaders even famously breached an established prohibition on the acceptance of brāhmaṇa disciples by non-brāhmaṇa gurus, or ‘initiation against the grain’ (pratiloma-dīkṣā), commonly attributed to Gopāla Bhaṭṭa’s Hari-bhakti-vilāsa. Yet, while the intention behind such a move was no doubt socially reformative and its radicalism glorified in much of the hagiographical literature of the period, it by no means entailed the wholesale subversion of brāhmaṇical values, remaining ‘consistent with the principles of purity’, however much these may have been grounded on ‘new criteria, devotion rather than birth’ (Stewart 2010, p. 283).

3. Oblique Response

In view of these developments in the tradition, it is only natural that we should find signs of pre-colonial Gauḍīya disapproval of Vaiṣṇava currents with a bent for the transgressive. Admittedly, pre-colonial Gauḍīya criticism of such currents may not have been quite as explicit as later Vaiṣṇava polemicists might have us believe. Joseph O’Connell has drawn attention to what he perceives as a marked difference between seventeenth and eighteenth century ‘canonical’ Vaiṣṇava attempts to address the problem of sahajiyā-type ‘deviance’ on the one hand, and those produced during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries on the other. Whereas the latter are generally characterised by their overt ‘denunciation of sexual promiscuity’, the former are conspicuously devoid of such a morally polemical tone, being more concerned with ensuring a ‘clearer restatement’ of their own theological position in relation to passion-pursuant devotional practice (rāgānuga-sādhana-bhakti) (O’Connell 1971, p. 273n.), which would appear to lend itself readily to sahajiyā appropriation. According to O’Connell, writers of this earlier period chose to direct their polemical proclivities more towards those considered ‘slanderers’ (nindaka), ‘who harassed and ridiculed Hari and his Vaiṣṇavas’, than towards those merely deemed to have misappropriated Vaiṣṇava ideas and symbolism (O’Connell 1971, p. 275).

We should note that O’Connell takes the ‘wave of canonical writing’ produced around the turn of the eighteenth century by the likes of Viśvanātha Cakravartī, Rādhāmohana Ṭhākura, and Narahari Cakravartī as providing a definitive yet somewhat indirect response to the ‘mass of hybrid cults’ that had begun to make themselves felt on the Gauḍīya scene. He reads, for example, the concerted attempts of Viśvanātha and Rādhāmohana to vindicate the doctrine of Kṛṣṇa’s illicit love (parakīyā-vāda) as being (rather paradoxically) constitutive of a general strategy to counter sahajiyā co-optation of the same ‘in the face of those who would recoil from the dangers of sahajiyā into cautious substitution of svakīyā for parakīyā’ (O’Connell 1971, p. 274).

O’Connell certainly makes a valuable point in highlighting the indirect mode in which much of the response to the sahajiyā phenomenon may have been articulated by pre-colonial Gauḍīya writers, particularly when it is compared with that of their colonial Vaiṣṇava counterparts. His suggestion, for instance, that the controversy surrounding the status of Kṛṣṇa’s love with the gopīs, which consumed the Gauḍīya community during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, can be read against a background of concern about physical parakīyā ritual practices of the kind advocated by sahajiyā currents proliferating at this time, adds an important social dimension to what might otherwise simply appear as an abstruse theological debate. It further entails that the Gauḍīya response to the sahajiyā phenomenon may have been far more pervasive than might initially appear to be the case, especially if nineteenth century polemical modes serve as one’s principal template.

A potential clue regarding the cause of this obliqueness is provided, somewhat ironically, by a notably anomalous instance of a rather more direct form of assault against sahajiyā-type practices—namely, Manohāradāsa’s early to mid-seventeenth century Dīna-maṇi-candrodaya, the ‘bluntness’ of which, Tony K. Stewart conjectures, likely led to its ‘suppression or failure to circulate’ (Stewart 2010, p. 340). In his analysis of the text, Stewart flags a curious trait: while Manohāradāsa appears to set forth a ‘near diatribe of frustration and criticism’ against physical interpretations of esoteric Gauḍīya worship or sādhya-sādhana (Stewart 2010, p. 342), he himself nevertheless has occasional recourse to an ‘alchemical’ idiom characteristic of siddha and sahajiyā discourse (Stewart 2010, p. 345). Stewart proposes that this apparent peculiarity of the Dīna-maṇi-candrodaya may well be more reflective of its context than the more popular, idealised narratives of the tradition let on, with the boundaries between what we now think of as ‘normative’ and ‘deviant’ Vaiṣṇava modes likely being far less ‘clear cut’ at this time (Stewart 2010, pp. 346–47). The indirect nature of the pre-colonial Gauḍīya response to proliferating sahajiyā currents might accordingly be understood as the natural corollary of such nebulous sectarian boundaries; it is obviously difficult to respond directly to things that do not yet have clearly formed identities.

Any attempt to locate pre-colonial forms of Gauḍīya response to the sahajiyā phenomenon would therefore do well to take note of these important observations regarding its general obliqueness. I would, however, question the assumption that such obliqueness invariably precluded more polemical modes of response. In what follows, I want to draw attention to passages from popular pre-colonial Gauḍīya hagiographies that I believe can be understood as oblique, yet unmistakably polemical, forms of response to sahajiyā currents. Doing so will necessitate a method of reading that not only (1) attempts to discern some of the implicit markers of pre-colonial Vaiṣṇava discourse about sahajiyās; but also (2) displays a sensitivity to the signifying potential of these passages—what, following Paul Ricoeur, we might call their ‘semantic autonomy’—in full awareness that the meaning of a text is never contained simply within its author’s ‘finite intentional horizon’ (Ricoeur 2008, p. 80). My selection of material from the genre of hagiography for this investigation is not without significance. Gauḍīya authors in pre-colonial Bengal displayed a distinct preference for expositing theology through the hagiographical (and predominantly vernacular) medium. With the tradition’s Sanskritic analytic-philosophical corpus being ‘the preserve of a select few’, the ‘biographical image’ appears to have served as the apparatus of choice for the transmission of the Gauḍīya devotional ideal to a mass audience (Stewart 2010, pp. 6–7). That passages from prominent examples of this genre of Gauḍīya literature betray such polemical tendencies is thus, I would argue, indicative of the pervasiveness of concerns about the sahajiyā phenomenon within the pre-colonial tradition. In sum, I see these pre-colonial concerns as expressive of a movement towards a brāhmaṇically-aligned Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava normativity.

In the final section of this article, I examine how this movement towards normativity was further fostered in colonial times by Gauḍīya gosvāmīs, who often voiced a similar moral aversion to sahajiyā currents. By drawing attention to the extensive involvement of these gosvāmī types within bhadralok Vaisṇava domains, I make a case for understanding the colonial Vaiṣṇava campaign against the sahajiyā phenomenon as a development of pre-colonial Gauḍīya tendencies. In doing so, I hope to problematise the notion that this campaign can be taken as a definitive index of rupture within the Gauḍīya tradition.

4. Rūpa Kavirāja as a Sahajiyā Proxy

The name ‘Rūpa Kavirāja’ holds a particularly unenviable position within the Gauḍīya tradition’s history, being inextricably associated with deviance and offence. From the little biographical information available, it appears that he began his Vaisṇava sojourn in Bengal sometime in the early to middle part of the seventeenth century. While there are conflicting reports regarding his spiritual heredity, it seems that at some point Kavirāja came under the tutelage of Mukundadāsa at Radhakund in Braj, and ultimately ascended to a position of some authority within the Gauḍīya community of the region, probably on account his evident theological acumen.

Kavirāja was the author of at least two substantial Sanskrit theologico-practical treatises, Sāra-saṃgraha and Rāgānuga-vivṛti. Both evince detailed knowledge of Gosvāmī literature, especially the writings of Rūpa Gosvāmī. By the early decades of the eighteenth century, however, Kavirāja’s views on doctrine and practice had come under severe scrutiny within Vaiṣṇava communities in Braj and Jaipur. This culminated in 1727 in the official declaration of his works as heretical by a theological council set up at the behest of Jai Singh II. While Kavirāja’s advocacy of the supremacy of parakīyā love was challenged by Jai Singh’s council, it was his radical interpretation of passion-pursuant devotional practice (rāgānuga-sādhana-bhakti) that appears to have been the council’s principal bone of contention (Delmonico 1999, p. 96).8

It is around this time that Kavirāja began to serve as something of a symbol of deviance within Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava literature. The most well-known Gauḍīya account of his fall from grace is presented by Narahari Cakravartī’s early eighteenth century Narottama-vilāsa. Intended primarily as a devotional biography about the famed Narottama and his pivotal missionary work, the Narottama-vilāsa contains an appendix entitled ‘Introduction to the Author’ (grantha-kartāra paricaya), which recounts a rather unhappy incident involving Kavirāja and Kṛṣṇapriyā Ṭhākurāṇī, the granddaughter of one of Narottama’s disciples, Gaṅgā-nārāyaṇa Cakravartī. The incident is alleged to have occurred in the vicinity of Radhakund some days after the passing of Kavirāja’s śikṣā-guru, Mukunda.

According to the text, Kṛṣṇapriyā—who had cared for Mukunda toward the end of his life with ‘the affection of a mother’ (mātāra samāna sneha), and ‘upon whose tongue the name of Hari was constantly present’ (nirantara harināma yā̃hāra jihvāya) (Cakravartī 1921, pp. 204–5)—arrived at a reading of the Bhāgavata attended by all the Vaiṣṇavas of Radhakund. Except for Kavirāja, all those present paid their respects to the revered Vaiṣṇavī (Cakravartī 1921, p. 205). Unperturbed by Kavirāja’s slight, Kṛṣṇapriyā readily joined the assembly. Kavirāja, however, proceeded to challenge her, questioning how she could properly engage in two activities (karma) simultaneously: listening to the Bhāgavata (bhāgavata-śravaṇa) and chanting God’s name (nāma-grahaṇa). Kṛṣṇapriyā retorted, ‘This [chanting] is a habit of the tongue. My listening is not obstructed by it’ (Cakravartī 1921, p. 206).9 Hearing this, Kavirāja is said to have become enraged, thereby meeting with ‘utter ruin’ (sarvva-nāśa). As the text claims,

First he disregarded guru, then similarly the Vaisṇavas, who are the embodiment of Kṛṣṇacaitanya. He became destitute on the rarest path of bhakti; not a trace of his absorption in prema remained. Thinking himself great in all respects, he committed offences elsewhere too. He became eager to create a different view, and set on diverting others from the path.

(Cakravartī 1921, p. 206)10

Kavirāja’s deviant activity was soon exposed in Braj, and he fled to Bengal, returning deceitfully (kapaṭa-rūpete) to the place of his guru. There, too, his deviance came to light, and he was branded a ‘guru renouncer’ (guru-tyāgi). Ultimately, he is reported to have retreated to the village of Khuriya in Orissa, where he died from leprosy (kuṣṭha-roga)—only to become a ghost (bhūta) (Cakravartī 1921, p. 206)!

Questions of historical veracity aside, the polemical intent of this rather dramatic narrative is undeniable. The explicit connection drawn by the text between Kavirāja’s contempt for the esteemed Kṛṣṇapriyā and his subsequent divergence from the tradition is underscored at the end of the narrative as its principal moral. As Narahari writes, ‘If you say, “Being qualified, why [did Rūpa Kavirāja engage] in this conduct (ācāra)?” I respond, “What will one not do due to offence (aparādha) to the Vaiṣṇava?”’ (Cakravartī 1921, p. 206).11 Thus, although O’Connell may certainly be correct to observe that, in the context of pre-colonial Gauḍīya literature, it was principally the ‘slanderer’ (nindaka)—or, as in the case of the Narottama-vilāsa, the ‘offender’ (aparādhī)—‘who drew upon himself the Vaiṣṇava’s wrath’, it seems he sets up too rigid a distinction between this group and those deemed to be guilty of misrepresenting Vaiṣṇavism (O’Connell 1971, pp. 274–75). As illustrated by the Narottama-vilāsa’s treatment of Kavirāja, the two groups were often seen as coterminous; in other words, deviants simply were offenders.

In drawing on the case of Kavirāja, it is not my intention to suggest, as Jan Brzezinski has, that Kavirāja posed what we can properly call a ‘sahajiyā challenge to Gauḍīya orthodoxy’ (Brzezinski 1996, p. 73). As should be evident from even a cursory reading of Kavirāja’s construal of rāgānuga-sādhana-bhakti, his general religious orientation does not neatly correlate with that of those I am broadly designating sahajiyā, at least as far the available textual evidence goes. For one thing, whereas in sahajiyā practices male practitioners generally retain a distinct sense of their masculinity in the understanding that Kṛṣṇa predominates within the male body and Rādhā within the female body, Kavirāja proposed that male practitioners of rāgānuga-bhakti actively cultivate bodily femininity (Haberman 1992, p. 317). Moreover, Kavirāja does not appear to have advocated the ritual use of conventionally impure substances, such as the so-called ‘four moons’ (cari candra) (most commonly, semen, menstruation, urine and faeces), that are integral to sahajiyā practice (Jha 1995). What we appear to be presented with in Kavirāja’s work is a reading of rāgānuga-sādhana-bhakti embedded within a general framework that is still very much devotional rather than tantric.

A case might be made, however, for tracing certain incipient sahajiyā-type tendencies in Kavirāja’s writings. This is in fact a line of thought indicated by Neal Delmonico, who argues that, irrespective of the precise nature of his own practice, Kavirāja may have proffered ‘a theoretical basis and justification for the hetero-practical [i.e., sahajiyā] sub-sects’, highlighting Kavirāja’s notion that rāgānuga-sādhana-bhakti is to be performed ‘with both physical and mental bodies’ (Delmonico 1999, p. 99). In support of this thesis, Delmonico points to the fact that both Kavirāja and his teacher, Mukunda, often feature prominently in sahajiyā lineages (parampara) (Delmonico 1999, p. 100). According to Glen Hayes, Mukunda was ‘perhaps the most influential [sahajiyā] guru in the medieval period’ and is still highly revered in Bāula and Kartābhajā communities today (Hayes 1985, p. 105n.). Regarding Kavirāja himself, Shaktinath Jha observes that many sahajiyā-type groups in Bengal engaged in some form of four moons practice explicitly trace the dissemination of this practice to him. Jha specifically mentions a tradition associated with one Kālācā̃da Vidyālaṃkāra,12 which apparently has forty-nine branches and sub-branches across Bengal that all identify Kavirāja as one of their principal gurus (Jha 1995, p. 88).

While such appropriation does not necessarily imply substantive theological heredity, it certainly highlights a dimension of the Kavirāja affair germane to the present discussion. Regardless of whether characterisations of Kavirāja as an exponent of incipient sahajiyā ideas are warranted, the fact that he came to acquire symbolic significance for sahajiyā currents is quite evident. I would argue that it is against this background of significance that pre-colonial Gauḍīya narratives pertaining to Kavirāja’s rejection by the tradition, such as that presented by the Narottama-vilāsa, can be profitably read. This is to propose, then, something of an inversion of Edward Dimock’s evaluation of the Narottama-vilāsa’s Kavirāja rejection narrative; while Dimock also discerns sahajiyā significance in it, he curiously identifies Kavirāja, in view of his deprecatory attitude toward women, as representative of the orthodox tradition and the Narottama-vilāsa as itself articulating a sahajiyā-type position (Dimock 1989, pp. 100–1).

My reading of the Narottama-vilāsa is, admittedly, more exploratory than definitive. It is difficult to say whether Narahari consciously employs Kavirāja in the text as a proxy for sahajiyā currents. Whatever the case regarding Narahari’s authorial intention, however, it is, I submit, hard to imagine pre-colonial readers of the Narottama-vilāsa living in a period that witnessed the proliferation of sahajiyā currents (many of whom symbolically aligned themselves with Kavirāja) not deriving such an import from the text.13

5. Deviance in Rarh and Banga

That deviance from emerging orthodox Vaiṣnava tenets and practices was often intimately associated with perceived offense, and thus deemed contemptible, is evinced by another well-known pre-colonial Gauḍīya text of the biographical genre: the mid-seventeenth century Prema-vilāsa of Nityānandadāsa. Proffered largely as an account of the activities of the celebrated missionary trio of Śrīnivāsa, Narottama, and Śyāmānanda in early seventeenth century Bengal, the twenty-fourth chapter of the text presents a vivid account of Vaiṣṇava-related deviance perpetrated in the regions of Rarh and Banga14 during the time of Caitanya.

We hear, for instance, of Vāsudeva, an ‘exceedingly depraved’ (baḍa durācāra) brāhmaṇa from Rarh, who was guilty of certain ‘abominable practices’ (baḍa anācāra) in that region. While Vāsudeva considered himself to be ‘Gopāla, the son of Nanda’ (nandera nandana gopāla), he was known by others simply as ‘the jackal’ (śiyāla). We also learn of a ‘sinful’ (pāpī) kāyastha named Viṣṇudāsa, who ‘broadcast his own majesty (aiśvaryya) in Banga’,15 claiming to be ‘Raghunātha’, who had ‘come to earth from Vaikuṇṭha for the deliverance of the world’.16 Coming to be known in the region as ‘Kapīndrī’, Viṣṇudāsa corrupted people ‘through his various deceptions’ (nānā chale) and ‘depraved practices’ (durācāra). Both individuals are said to have been ‘disowned’ (tyājya) by Caitanya and ‘rejected’ (agrāhya) by his devotees (Nityānandadāsa 1913, p. 246).

While the depravities and abominations indulged in by these two individuals is left unspecified, indication of the sorts of activities alluded to by the text is provided by the account of a third renegade, a brāhmaṇa known as Mādhava. Briefly, the text explains that Mādhava was originally the priest of an unnamed rājā, from whose deity (vigraha) he stole ornaments and fled to a village of cowherds (goyāla), where he assumed the role of a priest (Nityānandadāsa 1913, p. 246). Being ‘lustful’ (kāmuka) and an ‘extreme sinner’ (pāpīṣṭha), he donned a ‘crown’ (cūḍā)17 and proclaimed, ‘I am a wearer of the crown (cūḍādhārī), Kṛṣṇa-Nārāyaṇa himself. If you worship me, you will go to my abode, Vaikuṇṭha’.18 On the pretext of enacting Kṛṣṇa-līlā, Mādhava is alleged to have had sexual relations (saṅgama) with low-caste (antyaja) women of the area (Nityānandadāsa 1913, p. 247). On one occasion, he is reported to have arrived in Puri accompanied by his female entourage with the intention of participating in Caitanya’s group chanting (saṅkīrtana). Caitanya, however, is said to have immediately put a stop to this intrusion:

The Lord said, ‘That crown-wearer (cūḍādhārī) has come. He enacts līlā with females, defiling dharma. O devotees, that crown-wearer has deviated (bhraṣṭa) from dharma. The land in which he lives will be defiled (naṣṭa). Don’t look at the face of that fallen offender (aparādhī). Quickly banish him from Purushottama [i.e., Puri]’.

(Nityānandadāsa 1913, p. 247)19

We are thus presented once again with an explicit polemic against Vaiṣṇava-related deviance. As in the case of the Narottama-vilāsa’s Kavirāja rejection narrative, misappropriation of Vaiṣṇava symbolism, far from being tolerated, is looked upon by the Prema-vilāsa with patent disapprobation, its perpetrators deemed ‘extreme sinners’ (pāpīṣṭha) and ‘offenders’ (aparādhī).

Brāhmaṇical concerns are undoubtedly at play here. This is signalled by the text’s emphasis on the defiling nature of the behaviour of the individuals concerned. In branding this behaviour ‘abominable’ (anācāra) and ‘depraved’ (durācāra), the text implicitly counterposes it to orthoprax notions of good (sat) or pure conduct (śuddhācāra), thus evoking the quintessentially brāhmaṇical discourse of the Dharma-śāstras.20 The brāhmaṇical orientation of the text’s assault is further underscored by its derogatory reference to the low-caste status of the women with whom Mādhava is said to have cavorted—those from the lowest castes (antyaja), such as caṇḍālas (Nityānandadāsa 1913, p. 247). These observations are borne out by the evident brāhmaṇical concerns articulated throughout the twenty-fourth chapter of the text, which even waxes lyrical about the history of the kulīna system in Bengal.

What does this reveal about Gauḍīya attitudes toward sahajiyā currents? Based on the sketchy and clearly partisan account of the three individuals proffered by the Prema-vilāsa alone, it is admittedly difficult to ascertain definitively whether their practices constituted what we could properly designate as ‘sahajiyā’, or even broadly ‘tantric’. Irrespective of the precise religious orientation of the three deviants in question, however, there do appear to be legitimate grounds for reading the text’s criticisms as expressive of a polemic against sahajiyā currents, even if only by implication.

For one thing, although claims to divinity of the kind the Prema-vilāsa denounces were not a universal feature of the sahajiyā milieu, it was by no means uncommon for adherents of many sahajiyā groups to exalt their founders to the status of descents (avatāra) of Kṛṣṇa or Caitanya (Chakrabarti 1985, p. 8). Moreover, the text’s unequivocal disapproval of such claims—what it styles ‘self-deification’ (īśvarābhimānitva) (Nityānandadāsa 1913, p. 247)—can, I suggest, be read as a variant expression of Gauḍīya distaste for ‘self-worship’ (ahaṃgrāhopāsana), a practice explicitly proscribed in the writings of Viśvanātha Cakravartī, for example.21 O’Connell argues that the pronounced attention the practice of ahaṃgrāhopāsana receives in the writings of Viśvanātha serves as another index of the oblique response of mainstream Gauḍīyas to the perceived ‘self-apotheosis’ of proliferating sahajiyā currents (O’Connell 1971, p. 271). That is to say, the sahajiyā practice of āropa—the essential ‘attribution of divinity’ to humanity, through which women and men realise their true nature (svarūpa) in their present physical form (rūpa) (Dasgupta 1969, p. 133)—was simply equated with ahaṃgrāhopāsana, or self-worship, when interpreted through the conceptual resources available to mainstream Gauḍīyas. The Prema-vilāsa’s treatment of īśvarābhimānitva, or self-deification, thus serves as another example of how sahajiyā ideas and practices may have been rendered by a Gauḍīya devotional schema. The text’s overtly polemical stance against this practice offers, however, a notable counterpoint to O’Connell’s insistence that Gauḍīya warnings about ahaṃgrāhopāsana generally ‘fall short of denouncing presumably well-meaning persons who may have slipped into such an un-Vaiṣṇava posture’ (O’Connell 1971, pp. 274–75).

Whether Nityānandadāsa was aware of the anti-sahajiyā implications of his polemic is a moot point. I would contend, however, that, as in the case of the Narottama-vilāsa, conservatively orthoprax Vaiṣṇavas in pre-colonial Bengal who were witness to the burgeoning of sahajiyā currents and their perceived practices of self-deification could not but have derived such implications from it.22 We might note in this regard that many areas within the regions of Rarh and Banga have historically been sites of substantial sahajiyā-type activity. The district of Birbhum in Rarh, for example, with its predominantly tantric religious landscape (Chakrabarty 1985, p. 136; Dimock 1989, p. 65), has long been associated with sahajiyā figures (Chakrabarti 1989, p. 194). Likewise, Murshidabad, much of which falls within the Rarh region, has hosted manifold Vaiṣṇava sahajiyā-type minor sects (upasampradāya) engaged in forms of body-oriented ritual practice (deha-sādhana). Interestingly, the deifying projection of guru ‘as the living God’ appears to have been a pervasive trend among such groups (Jha 1988, p. 110). We see a history of similar kinds of activity in areas of Banga like Vikrampur and Faridpur (both in present day Bangladesh), where, in the eighteenth century, a slew of Vaiṣṇava-oriented brāhmaṇa gurus are reported to have propagated transgressive modes of tantric worship among low-caste and untouchable followings (Chakrabarty 1985, pp. 324–25).

The notion that the views articulated by this section of the Prema-vilāsa can be taken as broadly representative of mid-seventeenth century orthodox Gauḍīya attitudes toward sahajiyā currents, however, run into a significant difficulty. This is not so much to do with any ostensibly sectarian agenda on the part of the text’s author, Nityānandadāsa, a disciple of Nityānanda’s second wife, Jāhnavā Devī. The Prema-vilāsa was in fact the first among hagiographies pertaining to the second generation of Caitanya’s followers to move beyond the provincial history of an individual lineage and attempt a broader treatment of the various Gauḍīya communities of the period (Stewart 2010, p. 337). Rather, the difficulty lies in the fact that the provenance of the text’s twenty-fourth chapter (where the polemical narrative in question is located) has come under serious scrutiny.23 It is unfortunately beyond the scope of the present article to weigh in on this issue (an undertaking contingent on the findings of further historical-critical work on the chapter), but the argument I am developing here does not hinge on it. For the polemical narrative the chapter presents finds palpable tonal and material resonance with passages in other more assuredly pre-colonial biographical sources.

The chapter itself supplies verses in support of its claims from Vṛndāvanadāsa’s sixteenth century Caitanya-bhāgavata (1.14.82–8), which relate the deviant behaviour of individuals who broadly correspond with those targeted by its own polemic (Nityānandadāsa 1913, p. 247). In these verses, Vṛndāvanadāsa reports on the ‘many sinners’ (kata pāpīgaṇa) who moved among Caitanya’s followers in the land of Banga. Inciting others to accept their divinity (āpanāre laoyāiyā), these miscreants are said to have ‘defiled the people’ (loka naṣṭa kare) for the sake of ‘filling their bellies’ (udāra-bharaṇa). One of these ‘extreme sinners’ (pāpīṣṭha) called himself ‘Raghunātha’. Another ‘made [the people] sing of him as ‘Nārāyaṇa’’ (āpanāre gāoyāya baliyā ‘nārāyaṇa’). Vṛndāvanadāsa expresses disbelief in the audacity of such self-deification by those manifestly subject to the constraints of mundanity. ‘Out of what shame’, he asks, ‘does that scoundrel, whose three states (tina avasthā) we see daily, sing hymns of himself?’24 Vṛndāvanadāsa also tells us of a third reprobate, a ‘demon brāhmaṇa’ (brahma-daitya) from the region of Rarh, who claimed to be ‘Gopāla’, but was known by others as ‘the jackal’ (śiyāla). Vṛndāvanadāsa decries this ‘extreme sinner’ as being unworthy of the status of a genuine brāhmaṇa: ‘A demon within, he merely donned the dress of a brāhmaṇa’ (antare rākṣāsa, vipra-kāca mātra kāce) (Vṛndāvanadāsa 1928, p. 284).

Another passage redolent of the Prema-vilāsa’s polemic is found in Narahari’s popular early eighteenth century Bhakti-ratnākara, the fourteenth chapter of which levels charges of self-deification against deviant individuals hailing, once again, from Rarh and Banga. Narahari highlights the pernicious influence in these regions of ‘those averse [to bhakti]’ (bahirmukha-gaṇa)’, who became ‘independent’ (svatantra) and thus ‘transgressed dharma’ (dharmma karaye laṅghana). Forsaking chanting (kīrtana) to Kṛṣṇa, these ‘great sinners’ (mahāpāpīgaṇa) are said to have ‘caused [others] to sing hymns to them’ (āpanāke gāoyāya) (Cakravartī 1912, p. 1045). One such deviant deceived the people by masquerading as ‘Raghunātha’. Indulging in ‘depraved practices’ (durācāra), he came to be known throughout Banga as ‘Kavīndra’ (Cakravartī 1912, p. 1045). Similarly, in Rarh there roamed a ‘fallen brāhmaṇa’ (viprādhama) known as ‘Mallika’, whose ‘wicked’ (duṣṭa) nature was unparalleled. ‘That great sinner’, Nararahari reports, ‘declared himself ‘Gopāla’. Displaying his demonic magic (rākṣasa-māyā), he deceived the people’ (Cakravartī 1912, p. 1045).

Both the Caitanya-bhāgavata and the Bhakti-ratnākara thus set forth similar, brāhmaṇically-informed diatribes against deviant Vaiṣṇavas in the regions of Rarh and Banga.25 As can be seen, many of these miscreants go by names that are either identical with (Raghunātha, Gopāla/Śiyāla) or very similar to (Kapīndrī/Kavīndra) those targeted in the Prema-vilāsa. Like the Prema-vilāsa, both texts home their polemics in on the transgressive practice of self-deification and its associated immoral activity. The Bhakti-ratnākara’s polemic in fact exhibits a parallel structure with that of the Prema-vilāsa, substantiating its claims by citation of the very same Caitanya-bhāgavata verses as those invoked in the context of the latter. It thereby presents itself as a likely candidate for the immediate source of the Prema-vilāsa’s polemic—assuming, of course, that the twenty-fourth chapter of the Prema-vilāsa is indeed a later production.26

6. Vaiṣṇava Normativity

It is no coincidence that our search for indications of pre-colonial Gauḍīya anti-sahajiyā polemics should lead us once again to the early eighteenth century hagiographical writings of Narahari. The missionary work of Śrīnivāsa et al. precipitated a process of doctrinal and ritual standardisation within the Gauḍīya tradition that led to the emergence of what Stewart dubs a ‘corporate identity’, the tangible origins of which can be located in the famed late sixteenth century festival (mahotsava) of Kheturi (Stewart 2010, p. 336). Kheturi may have afforded the various Vaiṣṇava communities of Bengal a concrete platform for cohesion under the overarching authority of the Vrindavan Gosvāmīs, but, as Stewart argues, the tradition’s ‘consolidation’ would not be realised at a ‘metadiscursive’ level until the appearance of Narahari’s Bhakti-ratnākara and its supplement, the Narottama-vilāsa. In many ways, these works replicated the metanarrative style and function of Kṛṣṇadāsa’s monumental Caitanya-caritāmṛta in relation to seventeenth century Gauḍīya hagiographical literature, serving to ‘redefine the relationships among the texts and … curb and contain the direction of thought and practice’ (Stewart 2010, p. 334). It thus seems only natural that Narahari’s works should make efforts to suppress or expunge expressions of Vaiṣṇavism that did not cohere with the ‘normative’ form they sought to promote, founded on the theological and ritual authority of the Vrindavan Gosvāmīs as mediated by the Caitanya-caritāmṛta. It is not without significance, then, that the Bhakti-ratnākara frames its depiction of deviance in Rarh and Banga as a vivid counterpoint to the missionary work undertaken by Śrīnivāsa, portrayed as one who ‘destroys the pride of those who are opposed to devotion, preaching the books of the Gosvāmīs’ (Cakravartī 1912, p. 1045).27

This normative, brāhmaṇically-aligned form of Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism would persist well into the period of British colonial rule, sustained particularly by Vaiṣṇava gosvāmī communities throughout Bengal (the orthoprax proclivities of which were highlighted above). Contrary to colonial accounts of the Gauḍīya tradition that emphasise the diminishing efficacy of gosvāmī leadership in the post-Bhakti-ratnākara period (e.g., Kennedy 1925, pp. 76–77), there is evidence of the continued flourishing of a number of gosvāmī śrīpāṭs. While, as the conflicting nature of colonial period reportage indicates, some śrīpāṭs had indeed ‘fallen upon hard times’ by the middle of the nineteenth century, others appear to have displayed continued growth and prosperity (Bhatia 2017, pp. 73–74). Referencing the cases of Srikhand and Baghnapara, Bhatia concludes: ‘It seems obvious that some of these shripats flourished, gained disciples, ran schools, and became rich centres of Vaishnava doctrine and practice, by the mid- to late nineteenth century’ (Bhatia 2017, p. 74).

7. Brāhmaṇical and Bhadralok Vaiṣṇava Alliance

There are also clear indications of the persistence of broad gosvāmī influence over the tradition well into the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a period in Gauḍīya history often portrayed as dominated by an emerging bhadralok Vaiṣṇava leadership.28 Most significantly, perhaps, we know that many bhadralok Vaiṣṇavas established discipular relationships with representatives of gosvāmī communities. Achyutacharan Chaudhuri Tattvanidhi (1866–1953) and Kedarnath Datta Bhaktivinod (1838–1914)—both of whom we briefly encountered toward the beginning of this article—are cases in point. Both of these figures featured centrally in the wave of Vaiṣṇava-related activity that swept across the bhadralok religious and cultural landscapes during the later decades of the nineteenth century.29 Any attempt to understand their pivotal roles in this context must, however, contend with the fact both received their initiations (dīkṣā) into Vaiṣṇavism from, and cultivated enduring relationships with, respected hereditary members of gosvāmī communities. Tattvanidhi’s dīkṣā guru, Radhikanath Goswami (dates unknown), was a leading light of the gosvāmī community of Shantipur, which traces lineal descent from Advaita. Likewise, Bhaktivinod’s dīkṣā guru, Bipin Bihari Goswami (1850–1919), was a notable ambassador for the gosvāmī community of Baghnapara, which claims descent from Caitanya’s associate, Vaṃśīvadanānanda.

Admittedly, it would be distorting to give the impression that these ‘traditional’ Vaiṣṇava figures and their communities were wholly impervious to the pervasive impact of British colonialism. The intimate relationships developed by certain representatives of these communities with those members of the late nineteenth century bhadralok who began to turn to Vaiṣṇavism itself stands as testament to gosvāmī implication in colonially-wrought social and cultural change; but the concrete impact of colonialism on these communities goes even further back. From the late eighteenth century, patronage of gosvāmī śrīpāṭs often fell to that new class of Bengali ‘comprador-rajas’ who had made their fortunes as agents and intermediaries to the East India administration (Bhatia 2017, pp. 62–64). I would thus propose a softening of the rigid boundaries sometimes drawn between colonially-implicated bhadralok Vaiṣṇava types, on the one hand, and gosvāmīs, bābājīs, and other ‘standard bearers of traditional Vaiṣṇavism’, on the other (Fuller 2005, p. 31). Nevertheless, it would be similarly misleading to deny the persisting, brāhmaṇically-aligned orthopraxy that often characterised these colonial gosvāmī figures—an orthopraxy that would naturally shape their basic attitudes toward the sahajiyā phenomenon.

Take, for example, the case of Radhikanath. Brāhmaṇical concerns pervaded his Vaiṣṇava thinking.30 They are clearly on display in, for instance, his Yati-darpaṇa (Goswami 1910). This is perhaps only to be expected in a work that attempts to establish the legitimacy of the sannyāsa order—the pinnacle of the ‘fundamentally Brāhmaṇical institution’ of the āśrama system (Olivelle 1993, p. 19)—within Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism. Announcing his brāhmaṇical credentials at the outset of the text, Radhikanath identifies himself as a tenth-generation member of the Advaita-vaṃśa and proceeds proudly to extol his Vaiṣṇava community as ‘continually honoured by dutiful brāhmaṇas for its virtue of observing the scriptural rites expected of brāhmaṇas’ (Goswami 1910, p. 1).31 Such predilections naturally entailed a palpable distaste on Radhikanath’s part for acts transgressing orthoprax standards of social and ritual purity. He provides ample indication of this in his Bhakti-śikṣā, wherein he outlines the behavioural norms to which he expects all Gauḍīya initiates to strictly conform. Drawing on Gopāla Bhaṭṭa’s decidedly brāhmaṇical Hari-bhakti-vilāsa—a work that principally sets out to ‘define the orthopraxy of Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavas’ (Broo 2009, p. 68)—Radhikanath details the activities he regards as most detrimental to the cultivation of a life of Vaiṣṇava devotion, including the partaking of grains (anna) prepared by those of sinful livelihood, among whom he singles out prostitutes (veśyā); the eating of fish (mātsya) and meat (māṃsa), which he denounces as ‘thoroughly contemptible’ (nitānta garhita); and association with women (yoṣit-saṅga), by which he means illicit encounters with the wives of others (para-strī) and prostitutes (veśyā) (cited in Bhaktiratna 1928, pp. 208–11). Radhikanath characterises these activities as both ritually and morally polluting, and thereby as obstructive (anārtha-kāraka) to the purity he sees as a prerequisite for the effective pursuit of Kṛṣṇa-bhakti. Regarding sexual transgression, he adopts an unequivocally hard line:

Those who keep the company of other’s wives (para-strī-saṅgī-gaṇa) perform evil acts in secrecy; therefore, they lack honesty. Purity, too, vanishes as a result of association with women (strī-saṅga). All virtues, such as compassion, controlled speech, intelligence, modesty, wealth, fame, forbearance, equanimity, steadfastness in God, self-command, and restraint of the external senses, are thoroughly and completely destroyed [by such association]. Womanisers (yoṣit-saṅgī-gaṇa) are thus agitated. [They are] deluded, believers that the body is the self, self-destructive, deplorable, and controlled by women like toy-deer. Never associate with them’.

(cited in Bhaktiratna 1928, p. 211)32

The framework of moral evaluation Radhikanath employs here is plainly brāhmaṇical. Many of the virtues (guṇa) enumerated in the passage, for example, are closely associated with the model brāhmaṇa of Dharma-śāstric discourse. His adherence to such a framework makes it near impossible to conceive that he would have remained silent on the subject of sahajiyā currents, the practices of which often flouted orthoprax notions of purity in the name of Vaiṣṇavism.

That Radhikanath was an ardent opponent of such currents is borne out by his serving an extended term as co-editor of the popular Bengali language Vaiṣṇava periodical Viṣṇupriyā-patrikā in the final decade of the nineteenth century. A literary project of the renowned anti-colonial bhadralok journalist and Vaiṣṇava organiser Sishir Kumar Ghosh (1840–1911), the Viṣṇupriyā-patrikā made the task of redressing what it deemed the Gauḍīya tradition’s many ‘untidy realms’ one of its chief objectives (Bhatia 2017, p. 140). As one might expect, sahajiyā currents featured regularly within the pages of the journal, with contributors frequently levelling attacks against groups such as the Bāula, Daraveśa, and Kartābhajā. The Viṣṇupriyā-patrikā thus became a significant voice in the broad anti-sahajiyā campaign of the period (Bhatia 2017, pp. 140–45). As the journal’s co-editor, one can safely assume this campaign had Radhikanath’s full backing.33

Bipin Bihari, too, serves as an exemplar of gosvāmī brāhmaṇicism within the Gauḍīya tradition during this period. His brāhmaṇical bent is unmissable, for instance, in his Hari-bhakti-taraṅgiṇī (Goswami 1902), a comprehensive Sanskrit treatise on the duties (kṛtya) and conduct (vyavahāra) of Gauḍīya practitioners. In terms of both content and structure, the text draws heavily on the Hari-bhakti-vilāsa. Predictably, then, one of its distinguishing features is its emphasis on good or proper—that is, brāhmaṇically-aligned—Vaiṣṇava conduct (sadācāra). Directly citing the Hari-bhakti-vilāsa (3.3–4),34 Bipin Bihari signals the centrality of sadācāra to his vision of the ideal Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava life in the work’s opening verses (1.5–6):

Since nothing could be accomplished by anyone without good conduct (sadācāra), it is certainly required at all times. For one who is devoid of [good] conduct, there is no happiness in either this world or the next. Sacrifice, charity, and austerity does not benefit a person in this world who lives by transgressing good conduct.

(Goswami 1902, p. 3)35

Once again, the position set forth in this text appears to leave little room for compromise with views and practices in contravention of the unmistakably brāhmaṇical standards that underpin it—not least those associated with sahajiyā currents. This is corroborated by comments Bipin Bihari makes further along in the Hari-bhakti-taraṅgiṇī in a section treating passion-pursuant devotional practice (rāgānuga-sādhana-bhakti) (3.570–1):

Indeed, the imitation (anukaraṇa) of passion (rāga) by one whose mind is engrossed in the objects of the senses and who is devoted to his penis and belly is mere deception of the people. Almost all of those who currently pursue passion (anurāgin) in this holy land [i.e., Bhārata-varṣa] are cheaters, who steal others’ wives, etc. (para-stry-ādy-apahāraka). Those who keep their company will surely go to hell.

(Goswami 1902, p. 359)36

This passage is most properly a reference to the perceived travesty of devotion perpetrated by those who engage in rāgānuga-sādhana-bhakti without appropriate qualification and motive. Its pertinence to an appraisal of a sahajiyā practice like parakīyā-sādhana should nevertheless be plain to see.37

There are good contextual grounds for reading sahajiyā currents as one of the passage’s implied targets. We learn from a short, unattributed biographical note included in the prefatory section of the Hari-bhakti-taraṅgiṇī38 that, during his youth, Bipin Bihari spent time briefly with a sahajiyā-type ‘minor sect’ (upasampradāya) by the name of the Navarasika (Goswami 1902, p. iv), a group identified by some as a Kartābhajā community (Sil 2003, pp. 48–49; Urban 2001, p. 246n.). His encounter with the group is said to have led to his realisation of its ‘degenerateness’ (apakarṣatā) and the concomitant solidification of his faith in the ‘pure’ (viśuddha) Vaiṣṇava religion of Caitanya preserved by his ancestral community in Baghnapara, to the sanctuary of which he swiftly returned (Goswami 1902, p. iv). The demarcation of well-defined boundaries between a normative, brāhmaṇically-aligned form of Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism, on the one hand, and what he considered to be deviant, sahajiyā perversions of it, on the other, was thus a framing concern of Bipin Bihari’s Vaiṣṇava thinking.

This concern is even more explicitly operative in Bipin Bihari’s Daśa-mūla-rasa (Goswami 1904), a systematic theological Bengali verse treatise on ten essential Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava themes. The final section of the Daśa-mūla-rasa narrates a history of the Baghnapara śrīpāṭ based largely on pre-colonial hagiographical sources. At several points in the narrative Bipin Bihari broaches the issue of what he deems the questionable nature of some of the available material pertaining to the Baghnapara community. He points, for instance, to two works purporting to present accounts of the śrīpāṭ’s revered founder, Rāmacandra Gosvāmī (otherwise known as Rāmāi Ṭhākura):39 Ākiñcanadāsa’s Vivarta-vilāsa, regarded by some as ‘the principle treatise of the Sahajiyā Vaiṣṇavas’ (Sanyal 1989, p. 131),40 and a text he refers to simply as ‘Rāmāñi-chalā’.41 Accusing both works of having perverted (vikṛta kariyā) Rāmacandra’s life and teachings, Bipin Bihari denounces them as ‘books authored by Bāulas’ (bāulera kṛta grantha) and ‘unworthy of acceptance by true Vaiṣṇavas’ (sad-vaiṣṇava grāhyāyogya haite nāraya) (Goswami 1904, p. 1135). He also detects suspicious elements in sources on which his own narrative is otherwise heavily reliant. He discerns, for instance, ‘repugnant philosophy’ (viruddha darśana) in places in the available manuscripts of Premadāsa Miśra’s early eighteenth century Vaṃśī-śikṣā.42 Seeking to distance the celebrated Baghnapara author from such unsavoury views, Bipin Bihari dismisses it as ‘the interpolated narration of a Sahajiyā’ (sahaja vādīra … prakṣipta varṇana) (Goswami 1904, p. 993). He deals in much the same way with those features of Rājavallabha Gosvāmī’s early seventeenth century Muralī-vilāsa that do not sit well with his own orthoprax sensibilities. He denounces, for example, the current text’s ‘detestable’ (jaghanya) version of Rāmacandra’s famous reception of the 1200 shaven-headed (neḍā) disciples of Vīracandra as the interpolation of a ‘Bāula poet’ (bāula kavi) (Goswami 1904, pp. 1049–50). Bipin Bihari indicates further along in the text that he finds the notion that a Vaiṣṇava of Rājavallabha’s pedigree could have countenanced the view that Rāmacandra fed his guests the impure food of fish particularly troubling: ‘The learned declare that the talk of hilsa fish we see in the [Muralī-] vilāsa was interpolated by a Bāula. A Bāula has mischievously inserted views that are repugnant to Vaiṣṇavas in various places of the Muralī-vilāsa’ (Goswami 1904, p. 1136).43

Bipin Bihari had the opportunity to give expression to this dissociative impulse at an institutional level in the early twentieth century. In 1909, a society by the name of Sri Krishna Chaitanya Tattva Pracharini Sabha was founded in Calcutta by Dr Priyanath Nandy, a vocal participant in urban Bengal’s bhadralok Vaiṣṇava milieu. The society’s stated purpose was the purging of unwanted elements from the contemporary Gauḍīya world—as Nandy put it, ‘reforming the diverse forms of licentiousness (byabhichar) and corruption (glani) and different types of deviant sects (upadharma) that have crept into the “pure” (bisuddha) [Vaishnava] religion’ (cited in Dey 2015, p. 224). The society sought to realise this objective by harnessing consensus among respectable quarters of the tradition against sahajiyā currents and other forms of Vaiṣṇava deviance, often by means of official decrees (vyavasthā-patra) (Dey 2015, pp. 225–26). Along with several other representatives of gosvāmī communities in Bengal, Bipin Bihari appears to have lent his full support to this cause (Dey 2015, pp. 225, 227), to the point of serving as the society’s president (sabhāpati) during its inceptive years (Goswami 2008, p. 527).

Aspirations for a brāhmaṇically-aligned Vaiṣṇava normativity in the pre-colonial Gauḍīya tradition were thus further fostered in colonial times by gosvāmī types like Radhikanath and Bipin Bihari. Their bid to demarcate the boundaries of this normativity frequently entailed express moral condemnation of sahajiyā-type deviance. It is thus no coincidence that when members of the colonial Bengali bhadralok such as Tattvanidhi and Bhaktivinod turned to Vaiṣṇavism in the late nineteenth century, they often found allies in these gosvāmī figures. Far from being relationships of mere convenience, as some have suggested—an attempt, perhaps, on the part of bhadralok Vaiṣṇavas to ‘fit rhetorically into the authority structures of the larger tradition’ ((Fuller 2005, p. 327); italics in original)—I would argue that brāhmaṇical-bhadralok Vaiṣṇava alliances were founded on a commonality of purpose and shared values. After all, bhadralok Vaiṣṇavas were invested in a very similar programme of dissociation from the transgressive. In other words, there was something of an elective moral affinity between these two broad Vaiṣṇava groups in colonial Bengal. Without positing an affinity of this kind, it simply does not seem possible to adequately account for the pervasive and committed participation of gosvāmī figures within bhadralok Vaiṣṇava domains, as gurus to figures like Tattvanidhi and Bhaktivinod; as editors for journals such as the Viṣṇupriyā-patrikā; or in leadership positions in organisations such as the Sri Krishna Chaitanya Tattva Pracharini Sabha.

8. Conclusions

In sum, then, the Vaiṣṇava campaign against sahajiyā currents that took shape in colonial Bengal in significant ways built upon antecedent polemical proclivities within the Gauḍīya tradition. To be sure, anti-sahajiyā polemics of this later period often assume a more explicit form than the oblique mode in which they are expressed in precolonial Gauḍīya writings. Not only do they commonly deploy more direct modes of reference to sahajiyā groups (not least their use of designators like ‘sahajiyā’, ‘sahaja vādī’, ‘bāula’, etc.), but also place a new accent, as O’Connell rightly notes, on the perceived ‘sexual promiscuity’ associated with the sahajiyā phenomenon (O’Connell 1971, p. 273n.). A variety of factors may be at play here: decades of foreign and indigenous attacks on Vaiṣṇavism in what is often portrayed as a colonial climate of moral obsession with ‘obscenity’ (aślīlatā) (Banerjee 1987, 1989; Ghosh 2006); increased exposure to sahajiyā currents as a result of their continued proliferation on the ground (Banerjee 1989, pp. 68–69; Bhatia 2017, p. 89; Chakrabarty 1985, p. 326); unprecedented access to sahajiyā literature through the burgeoning medium of print, particularly that associated with the ‘Battala’ presses of north Calcutta (Chakrabarty 1985, pp. 392–93; Dimock 1989, p. xxii; Sarkar 1999, p. 57); and the emergence of new forms of research on sahajiyā-type groups by both western scholars (e.g., Wilson 1846; Wise 1893) and their Orientalist-inspired indigenous counterparts (e.g., Datta [1870] 1987; Bhattacharya 1896)—to list but a few. Whatever the case, it is clear that long before these late nineteenth and early twentieth century bhadralok Vaiṣṇava attempts to ‘define, delimit and discipline’ the tradition (Bhatia 2017, p. 145), representatives of Vaiṣṇava communities across Bengal had already openly and vocally taken issue with sahajiyā or tantric-style tendencies as inimical to the truth they understood Caitanya and his immediate entourage to have exemplified. To attribute this intervention to a newly instigated morality born of the colonial experience is thus to fail to recognise the ethical impulses of early modern, pre-colonial Vaiṣṇavas. In short, bhadralok Vaiṣṇavas only continued what was already a vibrant discourse of censure and reprimand within the Gauḍīya tradition, though they did manage to focus attention using the new technologies of print and formal corporate entities that emerged in the colonial era.