Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura is remembered by his followers as a reformer, and for him reform was never a gentle thing. He spent much of his missionary life in open conflict with two different groups that he considered obstacles to genuine Gaudiya Vaishnavism. The first were hereditary brahmana communities, who restricted priestly authority and temple worship to birth, not qualification. The second were Vaishnava lineages that he judged had drifted from the teaching of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. Both fights cost him supporters, and on at least one occasion they exposed him to physical violence. To present these fights fairly, we must not soften his positions into a vague acceptance of everyone, and we must not treat the controversy as a scandal. He held these views as sincere theological convictions. He argued them in print, and he accepted the consequences.
The 1911 Balighai Debate #
Even before the Balighai debate described below, Bhaktisiddhanta had already come into conflict with a popular Puri preacher, Radharamana-charana Dasa Babaji. Bhaktisiddhanta considered this preacher's rhyming style of kirtana and his sakhibheki practices (men dressing as sakhis, the female companions of Radha) a serious deviation. The matter went far enough that Bhaktivinoda Thakura told his son to withdraw for a time and take up bhajana near the Yogapitha instead, to spare him further criticism. The Midnapore conference arose against this same background of controversy.
On 8 September 1911, Bhaktisiddhanta was invited to a conference at Balighai in Midnapore. He was not yet a sannyasi and was still working under his father's mission. The conference was called to debate the position of non-brahmana Vaishnavas. The questions were limited, but they were important. Could someone who was not born a brahmana, but was formally initiated as a Vaishnava, worship a shalagram-shila, the sacred stone representing Vishnu? And could such a person give initiation in Vaishnava mantras to others? Bhaktivinoda Thakura had been invited to the conference himself, but he was bedridden with rheumatism. When he heard of the challenge, he exclaimed, "Is there no one manifest in the Vaishnava world who is capable of meeting with them and, by the conclusions and original logic of the scriptures, put an end to their lowly activities?" Bhaktisiddhanta answered his father by writing a paper titled Brahmana o Vaishnavera Taratamya Vishayaka Siddhanta ("The Conclusion Concerning the Comparison of Brahmanas and Vaishnavas"). It argued that a devoted Vaishnava, whatever his birth, stood spiritually higher than a ritually correct brahmana who lacked devotion. Hearing it read aloud, Bhaktivinoda Thakura sat up in delight and declared, "Sarasvati, truly, truly Sarasvati! Truly, truly he is the acharya-sun illuminating the face of the Vaishnava world," and acharya-sun became the title by which his son was known for the rest of his life. Bhaktisiddhanta did not reject the brahminical order completely. He continued to regard brahmanas as keepers of genuine spiritual and ritual knowledge. But he insisted that the varnashrama system, as it was then practiced around him, had become corrupted by misguided, self-serving custom.
Sri Vishvambharananda Deva Gosvami presided over the Midnapore assembly. He was chosen by common consent of those present. Bhaktisiddhanta divided his paper into two parts. First he recited the scriptural glories of the brahmanas, and the opposing pandits were visibly delighted. Then he turned to define the qualifications of a true guru and Vaishnava. At this point objection after objection was raised, and over three days of debate each one was answered. He was backed by Sri Madhusudana Gosvami, Sarvabhauma Sri Ramananda Dasa Babaji, and Sri Sitanatha Bhaktitirtha Mahodaya. Along with him, they argued that a Vaishnava's qualification to worship the shalagram-shila and recite the Vedas did not depend on the family into which he was born. When Bhaktisiddhanta rose to give the concluding address, he spoke for two hours with such force that no one on the opposing side could offer a reply. Then the crowd surged forward in great numbers to take the dust of his feet. To protect him from being crushed, the guards had to dip his feet in a basin of water and distribute the water among the thousands present. Bhaktisiddhanta himself always tried to refuse this honor, because it was his own principle to return obeisances, not to accept them.
The Cost of the Position #
The paper was Bhaktisiddhanta's first public statement on the question, and it did not go unanswered. Scholars who have studied the episode note that it drew long and continued criticism from smarta brahmana communities in the Nabadwip region. These communities' claim to priestly and guru status rested on hereditary birthright, not on any test of devotional qualification. The paper may also have been one of the causes of later violence directed at Bhaktisiddhanta and his disciples. On 29 January 1925, an upper-caste mob attacked Bhaktisiddhanta and a large gathering of his devotees during a pilgrimage procession in Nabadwip. The surviving accounts of exactly who organized the attack, and why, are incomplete. But the episode fits with years of friction between his mission and the town's established brahmana community. It was also one reason for a lasting decline in the Gaudiya Math's activity there.
Defending the Gaura Mantra #
Later in 1911, a related controversy arose when smarta critics argued that the name Gaura in the Gayatri mantra chanted by Gaudiya Vaishnavas had no basis in the Vedas, and that Chaitanya Mahaprabhu was merely a devotee rather than an incarnation of Godhead. Addressing a large assembly of scholars at Navadvipa's Bada Akhada Hall, Bhaktisiddhanta answered the challenge with scripture rather than sentiment, citing the Chaitanyopanishad of the Atharva Veda directly:
sa hovacha: rahasyam te vadishyami, jahnavi-tire navadvipe
golokakhye dhamni govindo dvibhujo gaurah sarvatma
maha-purusho mahatma maha-yogi trigunatitah sattva-rupo
bhaktim loke kashyatiti
"Brahma said: I shall tell thee a secret. On the bank of the Jahnavi, at Navadvipa, which is called Goloka Dhama, Govinda, in a two-armed form, as Gaura, the Great One, transcendental to the three modes of material nature, whose form is eternal, shall reveal bhakti to the world." He supported this with further citations from the Shvetashvatara Upanishad, the Smriti, the Tantras, and the Puranas. Unknown to him at the time, Gaura Kishora Dasa Babaji was present in a corner of that same assembly, and was greatly pleased to hear his disciple's defense of the Lord's holy name.
Gandhi's Ten Questions #
Bhaktisiddhanta's position on caste reached a wider public in January 1933. That month The Harmonist published his essay "Gandhiji's Ten Questions," which answered a challenge Mahatma Gandhi had put to orthodox Sanatana Dharma organizations the previous month about the practice of untouchability. Bhaktisiddhanta did not accept Gandhi's way of putting the question. Instead he gave its terms a new meaning. He argued that an "untouchable," properly speaking, was someone opposed to the service of God, not someone born into a particular family or occupation. He said that temples of Vishnu should stand open to anyone sincerely willing to take up devotional training, regardless of birth. He went further. He argued that untouchability as India practiced it had cultural and historical origins, not religious ones. So, in his view, it lay outside what a purely religious answer could properly decide. In place of the social category based on birth alone that was common then, he proposed a way of living based on what he called unconditional reverence for all beings as spiritual entities in service to God.
The Fight Against Apasampradaya #
Bhaktisiddhanta's second controversy mattered more within Vaishnava circles. It concerned other groups that traced their lineage to Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, but which he considered to have deviated from Chaitanya's actual teaching. He used the term apasampradaya, literally a "deviant" or "false" branch of the tradition, for these groups, and he named them openly. There were professional reciters who treated the Bhagavatam as a hereditary family trade, not a living teaching. There were advaitin interpreters who explained Krishna's personal form as ultimately unreal. And his sharpest criticism was aimed at the sahajiyas. These communities presented sexual ritual as a path to divine love, and they claimed close kinship with mainstream Gaudiya Vaishnavism. In one of his sharper sayings, he described the religious world he inherited as "a society of cheaters and the cheated," and this firm stand against loose doctrine earned him the title acharya-keshari, the "lion guru."
A Consistent, Not a Contradictory, Position #
In Bhaktisiddhanta's own understanding, the two fights were a single position, not two separate ones. In his view, both the caste-bound brahmana and the sahajiya deviant had replaced the one thing he held truly mattered with an outward or inherited sign, such as birth, ritual correctness, or social convention. For him, the one thing that truly mattered was sincere, qualified devotion to Krishna under proper spiritual guidance. This stand made him controversial in his own lifetime. Established religious leaders criticized him, and it led to at least one violent clash. This is a recorded part of his history, not something to hide or play down. It is also one reason his followers sincerely call him a reformer.
