Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu had started His movement in Bengal three hundred years earlier. By the second half of the nineteenth century, educated society looked down on it, and it had almost completely lost its good name. There was no single, clearly written body of Gaudiya Vaishnava teaching that could say with authority what a Vaishnava was and was not. Into this empty space a confusing mix of sects had grown up. They dressed like Vaishnavas and used Vaishnava words. But in Bhaktivinoda Thakura's judgement, they had almost nothing to do with what Chaitanya Mahaprabhu had actually taught. Saving the tradition from this confusion became one of the main works of his life. He did it in print, not by using any official authority.
Thirteen Named Deviations #
Vaishnava tradition, following a verse of Totarama Dasa Babaji, counts thirteen such false branches by name: aula, baula, kartabhaja, neda (or neria), daravesha, sani, sahajiya, sakhibheki, smarta, jata-gosani, ativadi, curadhari and gauranga-nagari. Wikipedia's separate account of Bhaktivinoda's writing also names several of the same groups, including aul, baul, saina, darvesa and sahajiya. This confirms that the traditional list of thirteen is the same set of groups he was writing about. Some were orders of wandering holy men who lived by begging, and who had slowly moved into practices that had nothing to do with Krishna bhakti. Others taught that ordinary men and women could literally copy, in their own conduct, the erotic relationship between Krishna and the gopis described in scripture. In this way they treated sexual license as a spiritual practice. The most notorious of these were the sahajiyas and sakhibhekis. Bhaktivinoda criticised this last group more sharply, and for longer, than any other.
The Method Was the Printing Press, Not the Courtroom #
We should be clear about what Bhaktivinoda Thakura actually did about this. People sometimes remember his campaign as something bigger than it was, almost as if he formally expelled these groups. He held no official religious post. He led no organisation that had the power to put anyone out of the faith. What he had was his own pen and his magazine, Sajjana-tosani, which he had founded and edited. In a long series of articles there, he wrote about the qualifications for initiation, the correct meaning of scripture, and the theology of devotional practice. Argument by argument, he built up a public account of true Gaudiya Vaishnava teaching, and it gained more and more authority. The apasampradayas could be compared with this standard, and they fell short. His literary works more broadly are described here. He named the deviant groups. Using scripture, he explained exactly where each one had left Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's teaching. Then he trusted educated public opinion, once it was properly informed, to do the rest. At that time no Gaudiya Vaishnava institution existed that could enforce the limits of correct teaching. So, in practice, this was the only tool he had. And it proved to be a very effective one.
The Chastisement of Bisakisen: An Exception That Proves the Rule #
There was one clear exception to this rule of persuading people, not forcing them. It did not come from any claim of religious authority. It came from Kedarnath's ordinary duty as a serving magistrate. A man named Bisakisen claimed to be an incarnation of Maha-Vishnu. He belonged to the ativadi lineage. That lineage was founded by a follower of Haridasa Thakura who had gone astray, and whom Chaitanya Mahaprabhu himself had rejected. Bisakisen had gathered a large following in the jungle near Sharadaipur in Orissa. He claimed that he would soon destroy every European in India, and he showed feats of what seemed to be yogic power. Most seriously, he had taken sexual liberties with the wives of leading citizens of a nearby town, using the promise of a rasa dance as a cover. When the wronged husbands brought their complaint to the government, the case came to Kedarnath. He personally led the party that arrested Bisakisen. The yogi made flames shoot from his own hair and eyes to frighten the police, but Kedarnath was not moved. The trial lasted eighteen days. During it Bisakisen fasted completely and threatened Kedarnath's family with ruin. For a time he even seemed to cause unexplained pain in Kedarnath's own body. But Kedarnath did not waver. He told his anxious wife, "Yes, let us all die, but this rascal must be punished." He convicted Bisakisen of conspiracy against the government and sentenced him to eighteen months of hard labor. The yogi was said to store his mystic power in his matted locks. The moment a court doctor cut them off, Bisakisen collapsed, powerless, and at that same instant Kedarnath's own pain vanished. Bisakisen took poison and died in prison in 1873. This was different from the writing campaign described above. It was a magistrate's judgment on a charge of stirring up rebellion against the government and of abusing the public. It was not a religious verdict, and Kedarnath had no personal authority to give one. But it shows that when the law itself gave him the power to act, he did not hesitate to use it. He used it against exactly the kind of false devotion that his pen spent decades exposing in print.
Refuting the Sahajiya Interpretation #
His sharpest argument was against the way the sahajiyas understood raganuga-bhakti. Raganuga-bhakti is a high form of devotion in which a devotee develops the spontaneous loving moods of Krishna's eternal associates in Vrindavana. The sahajiyas took the erotic language about Krishna and the gopis as permission to act it out literally in sexual behaviour. Bhaktivinoda argued at length that this was the crudest kind of mistake. It wilfully confused a transcendental, spiritual feeling with something material that only looks like it on the surface. Srimad-Bhagavatam itself draws the same line. After describing the rasa dance, Shukadeva Goswami gives this warning: "One who is not a great controller should never imitate the behavior of ruling personalities, even mentally. If out of foolishness an ordinary person does imitate such behavior, he will simply destroy himself, just as a person who is not Rudra would destroy himself if he tried to drink an ocean of poison" (Srimad-Bhagavatam 10.33.30). Krishna's dealings with the gopis are the Lord's own transcendental pastime. They do not give anyone else permission to act in the same way. Bhaktivinoda said that the sahajiya teaching was not an advanced or secret teaching at all. It was simply "non-Vaishnava," dressed in Vaishnava clothing. And it did lasting damage to the good name of Chaitanya Vaishnavism among the very educated Bengalis he most wanted to reach.
Caste, Qualification and the Jati-Gosanis #
In the same campaign, Bhaktivinoda also worked against the jati-gosanis (hereditary caste goswamis) and smarta brahmanas. This work was quieter, but just as determined. These groups claimed that only they, by birth, had the right to initiate disciples into Gaudiya Vaishnavism. They denied that right to devotees who were not born into a brahmana family. Bhaktivinoda used Vaishnava scripture to show that such gurus failed in the very duty that their claim by birth was supposed to justify. They did not care whether their own disciples actually practised what they preached. He held that spiritual qualification could never be a simple accident of birth. Vaishnava scripture itself settles the point: "If one shows the symptoms of being a brahmana, kshatriya, vaishya or shudra, as described above, even if he has appeared in a different class, he should be accepted according to those symptoms of classification" (Srimad-Bhagavatam 7.11.35). Birth only shows where a soul entered this life. It is not proof of what that soul has actually developed. He even proposed that a village committee should judge a child's varna early in life by examining the child's nature and abilities. The decision would then be reviewed again after a two-year trial. In this way the varna would not simply be assumed from the parents' caste.
The historical record is clear that Bhaktivinoda did not push this position into any direct public fight during his own lifetime. Historians give two reasons for this restraint. One was his position as a serving government magistrate and a family householder. The other was where he chose to focus his own spiritual practice. He had prepared the theological ground, but the public confrontation itself was left to his son. In 1911 he was no longer able to attend in person. So he sent Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati, who was not yet a sannyasi, to represent him at a public debate at Balighai, in Midnapore district. The debate was on caste and Vaishnava qualification. There, the arguments that Bhaktivinoda had spent decades developing in print were finally tested in open debate. That debate, and the rest of Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati's own confrontations over caste and doctrinal deviation, are told in full here.
What the Campaign Achieved #
By the time of his disappearance, Bhaktivinoda Thakura had not removed the apasampradayas. Sects of exactly this kind still survive on the edges of Bengali religious life today. But he had done something that may well last longer. For the first time in generations, he had given the wider Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition a clear standard. It was based on scripture and set out openly in public. By this standard, genuine Chaitanya Vaishnavism could be told apart from its false imitations. His son inherited that standard and built an institution to defend it. Through Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati, and after him Srila Prabhupada, that standard still shapes how the guru-parampara account given here describes the difference between genuine and deviant Gaudiya Vaishnava practice today.
