Brahmabandhab Upadhyay: the Life and Thought of a Revolutionary.

• Author: McDermott, Rachel Fell
• Position: Book Review

By JULIUS J. LIPNER. Delhi: OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1999. Pp. xxiv + 409. $26.

Brahmabandhab Upadhyay (born Bhabanicaran Bandyopadhyay, 1861-1907) was a complicated, rebellious, and seemingly contradictory man in a turbulent period of colonial Bengali history. Fired from an early age with a patriotic zeal for freeing his country from the British, at age seventeen he decided not to complete his education or to marry but to devote himself to the struggle for independence as a celibate journalist. In time, as a young adult, he became increasingly attracted to the Brahmo teachings of Kesabcandra Sen. Partly through the influence of Kesab's devotional theism, he then developed a fervent love for Jesus, which eventuated in his conversion to Roman Catholicism in the mid-1890s. Taking the saffron robes of a Hindu renouncer, going barefoot and wearing a cross, he adopted the name Brahmabanbhab, a Bengali translation of Theophilus, or Friend of God, and changed his last name from Bandyopadhyay (Venerated Teacher) to the simpler Upadhyay (Teacher). After beginning his early theological life as a Christian by attacking Brahmoism, neo-Vedanta, the Arya Samaj, Theosophy, and ideas of karma, rebirth, and polytheism, after 1897 he made an abrupt change and began to use the very concepts which he had just repudiated, but in the service of Christian teaching: Advaita Vedanta became a bridge on which he hoped to help Hindus make the journey to Catholic faith. Once again, after 1905, his writing veered away in unexpected directions; increasingly critical of British attitudes and imperialism, Brahmabandhab claimed in his English writings that Vedanta was superior to neo-Thomism as a vehicle for teaching Christianity in the Indian context, and in his Bengali essays embraced the charter of the so-called Extremists, exhorting Hindus to view their country as the Motherland and to revere the example of the martial Krsna. In 1907 he underwent a prayascitta ceremony for readmittance into Hindu society, but died in 1908 with "Oh Thakur!," the Bengali Christian name for God, on his lips.

Writing a historically and theologically sensitive biography of such a complex person requires multiple skills: linguistic facility in Sanskrit, Bengali, and English; training in Catholic (and especially neo-Thomist) theology; and knowledge of Advaitic philosophy, Bengali colonial history, the development of Indian Christianity, and the modern controversies over indigenization. As this...