Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati

Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati (; bn, ভক্তিসিদ্ধান্ত সরস্বতী; ; 6 February 1874 – 1 January 1937), born Bimala Prasad Datt (, ), was a Gaudīya Vaisnava Hindu guru (spiritual master), ācārya (philosophy instructor), and revivalist in early 20th century India. To his followers, he was known as ''Srila Prabhupāda'' (an honorific also later extended to his disciple A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada).

Bimala Prasad was born in 1874 in Puri (then Bengal Presidency now Orissa) in a Bengali Hindu Kayastha family as a son of Kedarnath Datta Bhaktivinoda Thakur, a recognised Bengali Gaudiya Vaishnava philosopher and teacher. Bimala Prasad received both Western and traditional Indian education and gradually established himself as a leading intellectual among the ''bhadralok ''(Western-educated and often Hindu Bengali residents of colonial Calcutta), earning the title Siddhānta Sarasvatī ("the pinnacle of wisdom"). In 1900, Bimala Prasad took initiation into Gaudiya Vaishnavism from the Vaishnava ascetic Gaurkishor Dās Bābājī.

In 1918, following the 1914 death of his father and the 1915 death of his guru Gaurakisora Dasa Babaji, Bimala Prasad accepted the Hindu formal order of asceticism (''sannyasa'') from a photograph of his guru and took the name Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Goswami. Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati inaugurated in Calcutta the first center of his institution, later known as the Gaudiya Math. It soon developed into a dynamic missionary and educational institution with sixty-four branches across India and three centres abroad (in Burma, Germany, and England). The Math propagated the teachings of Gaudiya Vaishnavism by means of daily, weekly, and monthly periodicals, books of the Vaishnava canon, and public programs as well as through such innovations as "theistic exhibitions" with dioramas. Bhaktisiddhanta is known for his intense and outspoken oratory and writing style as the "''acharya-keshari''" ("lion guru"). Bhaktisiddhanta opposed the monistic interpretation of Hinduism, or ''advaita'', that had emerged as the prevalent strand of Hindu thought in India, seeking to establish traditional personalist ''krishna-bhakti'' as its fulfillment and higher synthesis. At the same time, through lecturing and writing, Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Prabhupāda targeted both the ritualistic casteism of smarta brahmanas and sensualised practices of numerous Gaudiya Vaishnavism spin-offs, branding them as ''apasampradayas'' – deviations from the original Gaudiya Vaishnavism taught in the 16th century by Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and his close successors.

The mission initiated by Bhaktivinoda Thakur and developed by Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Goswami Prabhupāda emerged as "the most powerful reformist movement" of Vaishnavism in Bengal of the 19th and early 20th century. However, after the demise of Srila Prabhupāda in 1937, the Gaudiya Math became tangled by internal dissent, and the united mission in India was effectively fragmented. Over decades, the movement regained its momentum. In 1966 its offshoot, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), was founded by Prabhupāda's disciple Bhaktivedanta in New York City and spearheaded the spread of Gaudiya Vaisnava teachings and practice globally. Prabhupāda's branch of Gaudiya Vaishnavism presently counts over 500,000 adherents worldwide, with its public profile far exceeding the size of its constituency.

Early period (1874–1900): Student

Birth and childhood

Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Goswami Prabhupāda was born Bimala Prasad at on 6 February 1874 in Puri – a town in the Indian state of Orissa famous for its ancient temple of Jagannath. The place of his birth was a house his parents rented from a Calcutta businessman Ramacandra Arhya, situated a few hundred meters away from the Jagannath temple on Puri's Grand Road, the traditional venue for the renowned Hindu Ratha-yatra festival.

Bimala Prasad was the seventh of fourteen children of his father Kedarnath Datta and mother Bhagavati Devi, devout Vaishnavas of the Bengali kayastha community. At that time Kedarnath Datta worked as a deputy magistrate and deputy collector, and spent most of his off-hours studying Sanskrit and the theistic ''Bhagavata Purana'' text (also known as the ''Shrimad Bhagavatam'') under the guidance of local ''pandits''. He researched, translated, and published Gaudiya Vaishnava literature as well as wrote his own works on Vaishnava theology and practice in Bengali, Sanskrit, and English.

The birth of Bimala Prasad concurred with the rising influence of the ''bhadralok'' community, literally "gentle or respectable people", a privileged class of Bengalis, largely Hindus, who served the British administration in occupations requiring Western education, and proficiency in English and other languages. Exposed to and influenced by the Western values of the British, including their condescending attitude towards cultural and religious traditions of India, the ''bhadralok ''themselves started questioning and reassessing the tenets of their own religion and customs. Their attempts to rationalise and modernise Hinduism to reconcile it with the Western outlook eventually gave rise to a historical period called the Bengali Renaissance, championed by such prominent reformists as Rammohan Roy and Swami Vivekananda. This trend gradually led to a widespread perception, both in India and in the West, of modern Hinduism as being equivalent to Advaita Vedanta, a conception of the divine as devoid of form and individuality that was hailed by its proponents as the "perennial philosophy" and "the mother of religions". As a result, the other schools of Hinduism, including ''bhakti, ''were gradually relegated in the minds of the Bengali Hindu middle-class to obscurity, and were often seen as a "reactionary and fossilized jumble of empty rituals and idolatrous practices."

At the same time, nationalistic ferments in Calcutta, the then capital of the British Empire in South Asia, social instability in Bengal, coupled with British influence through Christian and Victorian sensibilities contributed to a portrayal of the hitherto popular worship of Radha-Krishna and Chaitanya Mahaprabhu as irrelevant and deeply immoral. The growing public disapproval of Gaudiya Vaishnavism was aggravated by the prevalently lower social status of local Gaudiya Vaishnavas, as well as by erotic practices of '' tantrics'' such as the '' sahajiyas, ''who claimed close affiliation with the mainstream Gaudiya school. These negative perceptions led to the slow decline of Vaishnava culture and pilgrimage sites in Bengal such as Nabadwip, the birthplace of Chaitanya.

To avert the decay of Vaishnavism in Bengal and the spread of nondualism among the ''bhadralok'', Vaishnava intellectuals of the time formed a new religious current led by Sisir Kumar Ghosh (1840–1911) and his brothers. In 1868 the Ghosh brothers launched the pro-Vaishnava '' Amrita Bazar Patrika'' that pioneered as one of the most popular patriotic English-medium newspapers in India and "kept Vaishnavism alive among the middle class".

The father of Bimala Prasad, Kedarnath Datta, was also a prominent member of this circle among Gaudiya Vaishnava intelligentsia and played a significant role in their attempts to revive Vaishnavism. (His literary and spiritual achievements later earned him the honorific title Bhaktivinoda).

After being posted in 1869 to Puri as a deputy magistrate, Kedarnatha Datta felt he needed assistance in his attempts to promote the cause Gaudiya Vaisnavism in India and abroad. A hagiographic account has it that one night the Deity of Jagannath personally spoke to Kedarnath in a dream: "I didn't bring you to Puri to execute legal matters, but to establish Vaishnava ''siddhanta.''" Kedarnath replied, "Your teachings have been significantly icdepreciated, and I lack the power to restore them. Much of my life has passed and I am otherwise engaged, so please send somebody from Your personal staff so that I can start this movement". Jagannath then requested Kedarnath to pray for an assistant to the image of the Goddess Bimala Devi worshiped in the Jagannath temple. When his wife gave birth to a new child, Kedarnath linked the event to the divinatory dream and named his son Bimala Prasad ('"the mercy of Bimala Devi"). The same account mentions that at his birth, the child's umbilical cord was looped around his body like a sacred brahmana thread (''upavita'') that left a permanent mark on the skin, as if foretelling his future role as religious leader.

Education

Young Bimala Prasad, often affectionately called Bimala, Bimu or Binu, started his formal education at an English school at rirampur[Ranaghat._In_1881_he_was_transferred_to_the_ rirampur[Ranaghat._In_1881_he_was_transferred_to_the_Oriental_Seminary">anaghat.html"_;"title="rirampur[Ranaghat">rirampur[Ranaghat._In_1881_he_was_transferred_to_the_Oriental_Seminary_of_Calcutta_

Kolkata_(,__or_,_;_also_known_as_Calcutta_,__the_official_name_until_2001)_is_the_capital_of_the_Indian__state_of_West_Bengal,_on_the_eastern_bank_of_the__Hooghly_River__west_of_the_border_with_Bangladesh._It_is_the_primary_business,_commer_...