Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī

Abstract

Swami Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Prabhupāda (b. 1874–d. 1937) was a Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava guru and preceptor of the Bengali school of Kṛṣṇa Caitanya (1486–1534). He was born as Bimalā Prasāda Dutta in the city of Jagannath Puri (located in present day Odisha). Over the course of his life he managed to build an influential religious institution, the Gaudiya Math (1920) and the Gaudiya Mission (1919), which strove to respond to the social, political, and religious challenges of India’s late colonial period. Bhaktisiddhānta’s institution gradually reached an international platform, with centers in Rangoon, London, and Berlin. Later, through offshoots such as the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), popularly known as the Hare Krishna movement, Bhaktisiddhānta’s mission spread to most parts of the world, giving new momentum to Caitanya Vaiṣṇavism in Bengal, and it is now a well-established feature of the unfolding layers of modern global Hinduism. Following the work of his father, Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura, a colonial judge and Vaiṣṇava writer, Bhaktisiddhānta published a large number of philosophical texts and journals, all of which were highly complex and detailed. Scholars have researched his contribution to the fields of sociology and religion, particularly with respect to colonial Bengal’s social and intellectual elite. Most of Bhaktisiddhānta’s published works and journals were written in the Bengali language, although some were written in English as well; several of these texts will be mentioned in this article. The global spread of Bhaktisiddhānta’s teachings in English, largely through disciples like Swami Bhaktivedānta, gradually enabled Western academics to gain access to his thought. The Journal of Vaishnava Studies is an example of one such English-language publication. Between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Vivekānanda (b. 1863–d. 1902), a contemporary of Bhaktisiddhānta, was responsible for popularizing the philosophies of Vedānta and Yoga in the West. Bhaktisiddhānta’s institution followed a similar pattern, the difference being that it was based on the philosophy, traditions, and practices of Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism. The International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), founded in New York in 1966 by his disciple, Swami A. C. Bhaktivedānta, enabled Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism to be spread throughout the world. Today a number of independent institutions have followed ISKCON’s example in contributing to the global spread of the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava tradition.