persons. He was such a person; so too were his hearers, if they would open them-
selves to God’s inspiration as he exhorted them to do. This spiritual awakening
would be the key to social reform. His success depended on his audiences’ know-
ledge of English, and on other forms of knowledge which came with an English
education, enabling them to recognize his references to the Bible, English liter-
ature, European history and contemporary philosophers. Keshub used ideas
from Christian theology, including Jesus himself, for whom he expressed a
fervent devotion. Jesus, he pointed out, was an Asiatic, and Asiatics were better
able than Europeans to understand him (Scott 1979: 64). This argument, which
exploited the English habit of referring to Indians as Asiatics, gratified national-
istic sentiment by taking Jesus out of the hands of the missionaries and placing
him in those of Hindus.
Keshub’s emphasis on individual intuition of God made him indifferent to
religious traditions; it is impossible to identify him as a Hindu or a Christian,
because he interpreted doctrines such as the atonement or avata ̄rain his own
way. This opened him to the charge of arbitrariness, and some of his followers
objected to his acceptance of doctrines and practices which Bra ̄hmos had
rejected as idolatrous; around 1875 he became an admirer of the uncouth
sage Ramakr.s.n.a (1836–86), who despised Bra ̄hmoism and social reform. As
Keshub’s interest in Hindu traditions increased, his zeal for social reform seemed
to wane, and like Debendrana ̄th he was judged autocratic.
The incident which brought these concerns together was the marriage of
Keshub’s daughter in 1878 to the crown prince of Cooch Behar, a state under
indirect British rule. She was 13 and the prince 15 (Borthwick 1977: 180); the
ritual included elements which Bra ̄hmos condemned as idolatrous, and poly-
gyny was traditional in the family. The intention of the British officials who
arranged the marriage was to bring modernity into an underdeveloped state
(Borthwick 1977: 174–8), and this was successful (Kopf 1979: 328f.); but to
many Bra ̄hmos it was a betrayal of their struggle against child marriage and idol-
atry, and showed an arrogant disregard of their views. Rejecting Keshub’s lead-
ership, they formed a more democratic organization, the Sa ̄dha ̄ran.(“general”)
Bra ̄hmo Sama ̄j, in 1878. In 1881, Keshub formed his remaining followers into
the Church of the New Dispensation, which was more interested in worship and
spiritual experience than in social reform.
The example and missionary effort of the Bra ̄hmo Sama ̄j, particularly
Keshub’s tours, led to similar societies being formed elsewhere. The most influ-
ential was the Pra ̄rthana ̄ Sama ̄j (“prayer society”) in Bombay. The situation in
Bombay Presidency was very different from that in Bengal: British power was
established later and more quickly, from 1800 to 1818, and followed a more con-
certed policy. High positions were given to Indians, most of whom were of the
Chitpavan Brahman caste which had run the Maratha empire which the British
had conquered. They and other Hindus took up English and Western learning
eagerly, while continuing also to write in Marathi. The Pra ̄rthana ̄ Sama ̄j, avoid-
ing the problems over tradition and authority which split the Bra ̄hmo Sama ̄j,
showed its continuity with the past by using the Marathi poems of Tuka ̄ra ̄m and
other bhakti saints in its worship.
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