Obscure Religious Cults as Background of Bengali Literature c5.41

c5.41

The nineteenth century dawned with a new ideal of life, religion and literature. The spirit, form and technique of the old and mediaeval literature, flourishing up to the end of the eighteenth century, grew hopelessly monotonous and roused a subconscious feeling of dissatisfaction in the mind of the people and also an inward demand for a change; and a change was inevitable in the course of nature. The most important factor, that intensified this demand for a change and accelerated its speed, was the influence of Western thoughts and ideals on our political, cultural and religious life. From the beginning of the seventeenth century Bengalees began to come in contact with the European merchants, and clergies and as time went on, the contact began to be more and more intensified. This began to bring about a slow and gradual change in our general outlook. This was much more accelerated by the consolidation of British power in Bengal, and the political conquest soon brought with it a cultural conquest. Through the propaganda of the European clergies, whose principal business was to point out the illogicality, absurdity and immorality of the mythological Hindu faith, and through the easy accessibility of the theological and philosophical works embodying the spirit of the Western religion and culture, there actually dawned a great change in the mental horizon of the Bengalees. Western education and culture roused a spirit of revolution in the mind of youths and the revolution found expression first through the life and activities of Rājā Rām Mohan Roy, who by the first quarter of the nineteenth century had, at the very prime of his youth, the courage of standing against the prevalent religious beliefs of the Hindus, which he called superstitious and mythological. His call for revolution was responded to instantaneously by a section of the educated Bengalees and he did succeed in establishing a new religious school which was fundamentally based on Upaniṣadic monism, supplemented by cognate thoughts of Islam and Christianity. This newly reformed religion soon developed into the religious school known as Brāhmoism, which broke asunder the barriers of the caste-system and the orthodox canons of the Hindu Smṛtis (canonical texts) and stood against all formalities in life and religion. Through the life and activities of Maharṣi Devendranāth Tagore, Brahmānanda Keśav Chandra Sen, Vijay-kṛṣṇa Gosvāmī and a host of other staunch followers of this new faith this religion soon gained a strong footing among an educated and cultured section of the Bengalees and it cannot be gainsaid that this new faith of rationalism has been exerting a reformative influence on orthodox Hinduism for more than a century, and that it exerted an appreciable influence also on the literature of the nineteenth century.