Keshab Chandra Sen (1838-1884)

Keshab Chandra Sen is one of the most prominent & powerful social reformers and
religious pioneers in Bengal in the nineteenth century. He was envisioned in 1838
by the much-respected Vaishnavite people of the Baidya Station. Keshab Chandra
Sen is considered to be responsible for participating in the development of Brahmo
Samaj in Bengal. He was also responsible for bringing Brahmo Samaj activities to
a few urban communities in South India.

His Life
Keshab Chandra Sen is regarded as the third great leader of the Brahmo
movement. He transformed the Brahmo Theism into a universal and cosmopolitan
religion and brought out a series of far-reaching social reforms. But at the same
time, his image had remained consistently controversial among Brahmos as his
personality was of multiple identities.
Keshab Chandra Sen was born on November 19, 1838 in Calcutta. He was the
grandson of Dewan Ram Kama Sen and was brought up in a strict religious
atmosphere. His father, Pyarimohan Sen was a devout follower of Vaishnava cult
and died at the early age of the thirty four when Keshab was only ten years of age.
It was his mother; a devotional and excellent woman was responsible for making
the character of their son.

Education
Keshab Chandra Sen received his earliest education first at home and then went to
Hindu College. As a student of Hindu College (1854-56) he was deeply attracted to
the Unitarian theological and social gospels propounded in the writings of
Theodore Parker, FW Newman, RW Emerson, Miss Francis Cobbe and others.
CHA Dall, the American Unitarian Missionary also convinced Keshab of the
validity of the Unitarian social ideology. Under such influences Keshab At the age
of seventeen, established 'Colutola Evening School” for young men of
Neighborhoods. In 1856, at the age of eighteen, he got married to a nine years old
girl. And in 1857 at the age of 19 he established ‘Goodwill Fraternity’, a Unitarian
religious society for the students, where he was the main speaker.
In one of the meetings of this organisation, Keshab first met debendranath tagore.
Fascinated by monotheist Vedantism, as Debendranath propounded it, Keshab
joined the Brahma Samaj in 1857 and became its central figure in 1858.
Debendranath found in this brilliant orator and organiser a good leader of the
Brahma Samaj. Debendranath ended his Autobiography in 1858 stating ‘after that
is Keshab’s period’.
Keshab gave new life to Brahma Samaj introducing new ideas and activities in it
during 1858 and 1862. The movement became more dynamic than ever before and
drew numerous young men into the movement. Keshab Chandra Sen organized the
young men of the Samaj under the Sanghat Sabha. Like Rammohan Roy’s
Atmiya Sabha, the members of the Sanghat Sabha met every week and decided to
give up caste, discard the sacred Brahmanical thread, to accept no invitation to any
idolatrous festivals, to give no countenance to the dancing of public women, to
practice temperance, to give their wives and sisters the advantages of the light they
had themselves received, and to be strictly truthful, honest and just in all their
dealings with the fellow men, Keshab Chandra Sen carried his rationalistic
principles to a still further degree and founded some Brahmo rites from which
everything idolatrous was eliminated. The Brahmos who use them were known as
‘Anusthani Brahmos’. The marriage of Sukumary, the second daughter of
Devendranath Tagore was performed according to the reformed rites of the
Brahmo Samaj. Then the appointment of Keshab Chandra Sen a non-brahmin as
the Pradhan Acharya of the Samaj, a post which had always been reserved for a
Brahmin from the time of Rammohan Roy is considered a very important step in
the history of the Samaj for it gave practical proof of their disbelief in caste.
Keshab also started The Indian Mirror, an organ of the Brahma Samaj, in 1861,
through which he spread anti-sectarian, universal religious ideas. He introduced
regular and systematic missionary work in the Samaj. After being appointed the
Acharya (Preceptor) in 1862, he concentrated on the extension of missionary work
on a voluntary basis. Realizing that the Samaj needed self-sacrificing souls, ‘the
word salary’, asserted Keshab ‘should be excluded from the vocabulary of the
Brahma mission work’. Around 31 branches of the Samaj were established
between 1857 and 1866.
As the Acharya of the Samaj, Keshab insisted on giving up some Hindu customs
and practices such as caste system, untouchability, child marriage, polygamy and
became the champion of widow and inter-caste marriages. Under Keshab’s
leadership many young Brahmas gave up the practice of wearing the paita (sacred
thread). The first Brahma widow and inter-caste marriages took place in August
1862 and 1864 respectively.
Women’s education was one of Keshab’s greatest concerns. This became a vital
agenda of Keshab-controlled Brahma Bandhu Sabha (1863). He also actively
supported educational efforts of the organisers of the Bamabodhini Sabha and
Bamabodhini Patrika (both founded in 1863) and guided Bama Hitaisini Sabha
(1871) to improve the moral and material condition of women.

Formation of new samaj and ideologies

However all these reforms, especially the women’s movement created a drift
between Debendranth Tagore and Keshab Chandra Sen which led to the break of
Bramho Samaj into Adi Samaj that held onto the old values and still associated as a
part of Hindu Samaj while Keshab went on to form Bhartabarsiya Bramha samaj
(Brahma Samaj of India). The tenets of the Brahmo Samaj of India at ths time were
the following:
(1) The wide universe is the temple of God. (2) Wisdom is the pure land of
pilgrimage. (3) Truth is the everlasting scripture. (4) Faith is the root of all
religions. (5) Love is the true spiritual culture. (6) The destruction of selfishness is
the true asceticism
“Keshab’s Samaj became immensely popular among the young generation. By
1868 practically all the 65 branches of the Samaj in Eastern India joined the new
Samaj and the number rose to 101 by 1872 throughout India. This rapid growth
testified the triumph of Keshab’s ‘universalism’ over Debendranath’s
‘nationalism’. Keshab preached this ‘universalism’ in his new temple (established
on 22 August 1869) built by blending in it the architectural features of Hindu
temple, Muslim mosque and Christian church. According to some it showed
Keshab’s drift towards Christianity, which Debendranath most abhorred. However,
in his lecture on ‘Jesus Christ: Europe and Asia’ in May 1866 Keshab carefully
distinguished between ‘Christ’s message of universal harmony’ and the
institutionalised, missionary-preached Europeanised Christianity of 19th century.
He never succumbed to European cultural imperialism.
The gulf between Debendranath and Keshab widened with the enactment of the
Native (Brahma) Marriage Act III of 1872. The Act was considered as the
culmination of Keshab’s social reform activities. It sanctioned most of the reforms
advocated by the liberals like iswar chandra vidyasagar since 1850s, like inter-
caste and widow marriage, prohibited child-marriage, bigamy, polygamy and
allowed separation and divorce. The older generation considered this ‘Godless’
civil marriage Act anti-national and also as a reflection of Keshab’s Eurocentric
views. They also condemned this as undue state intervention in religious and social
matters.”
Visit to England
In 1870, Keshab Chandra Sen visited London, England. While trying to rouse
Victorian England’s interest in social condition of India Keshab became deeply
influenced by its reform activities and ‘improved’ family life. Shortly after coming
back from England, Keshab formed the Indian Reform Association (November
1870). The first meeting of the Association was held on 7th November. The
Association was opened to non-Brahmos and religion did not play a major role in
it; so, it appealed to a large section of people. The work of this Association was
divided in five sections:
(1) Charity
(2) Women's education
(3) Mass education
(4) Temperance
(5) Cheap literature.
Under this Association, Keshab set up social service committees, Temperance
Society, schools for girls, night schools for adults, industrial arts schools for
vocational training, and medical centres in Calcutta and its suburbs. Earnest efforts
were made to raise funds from amongst educated gentlemen in different parts of
the country. Public meetings were held at Allahabad, Kanpur, Lucknow, Etwa and
Agra, and appeals for fund were issued. The sum of rupees 1500 was thus raised in
aid of this great object.
His scheme for Primary Education included the following
a. "A competent Indian should be appointed Inspector-General of Vernacular
Schools;
b. A large number of Night Schools for agricultural and working classes
should be opened;
c. The masses should be instructed in useful subjects such as Elementary
Science etc.,
d. Grants-in-aid rules should be relaxed in favor of the schools for the lower
classes of people;
e. Itinerant teachers should give popular lectures in village schools;
f. Cheap newspapers which were approved and subsidized by Government
should be freely distributed in villages;
 g. Landholders should encourage and help in the establishment of schools for
mass education in the villages;
For organizing an effective system of Primary Education, Keshab recommended
that the really wealthy of all classes, European and Indian Officials - landlords,
merchants, traders, bankers, submit to a small educational tax on their income."
Thus, it is seen that Keshab Chandra wished to involve everyone into the scheme
of educating the people.
He also started publishing Sulabha Samachar (Cheap News), a weekly costing just
a pike, from November 1870. Its circulation reached its peak in February 1872
(27,202) and till 1877, it had the largest circulation in Bengal. The paper carried
articles such as: 'Distress of the Tenants', 'Lamentation of the Poor',' 'The
Sufferings of the Calcutta Workers'. The paper also stressed the responsibility of
government in the economic and intellectual regeneration of the people.

The year 1872 is considered to be the zenith of Keshab’s social reform activities.
Since then he gradually became more involved in the comparative studies of major
religions and in meditation. The opening of Sadhan Kanan as a form of hermitage
in 1875 and the assignment of the task of studying the Islamic, Hindu, Sikh,
Buddhist and Christian scriptures in the original and translating them to some
Brahma scholars pointed to this change.
Keshab established Bharat Ashram in 1878 to foster Brahma community life for
the quest of universal religion. Dependence on Divine Messages or Adeshas for
taking decisions in the works of the Samaj became a basic feature of his religious
belief at that time. Keshab had close personal association with sri Ramakrishna in
the period between 1875 and 1884. Keshub was intrigued by the religious
experiments performed by Ramakrishna, and wished to adapt them to his own use,
especially those elements of the Sakto tradition in Bengal that emphasised the
motherhood of God. The idea of differentiating the good and bad features within
Saktism, and incorporating the good into Brahmoism, probably came to Keshub
after his acquaintance with Ramakrishna and possibly under Ramkrishna’s
influence he introduced the concepts of yoga, vairagya and motherhood of God in
the Brahma Samaj.
Last days of Keshab Chandra Sen
In 1881 Keshab officially instituted Nava Bidhan (New Dispensation), a new
syncretistic religion based on the union of East and West, and the mouthpiece of
his new religion, New Dispensation, was started in March of that year. In this new
religion he wanted to combine the ‘pantheism’ and ‘mysticism’ of Asia with
‘positivism and science’ of Europe. The basic idea of Nava Bidhan was eclectic. It
proclaimed ‘the harmony of all scriptures and prophets and dispensations’.
According to Keshab it was a religion of catholicity that embraces all space and all
times.
For some time, previous to his death, Mr. Sen’s health had been failing. Early in
1882, he began to suffer from diabetes, and the disease gradually undermined his
system. In January- 1883, he appeared in the Town Hall, Calcutta, and the subject
of his last lecture was “Asia’s Message to Europe.” Subsequently, he spent over
five months at Simla, where at first his health much improved; but the rainy season
brought on a relapse, and by the beginning of September, when he left the hills, he
was completely prostrate.
As though anticipating a speedy end to his labors, he devoted himself assiduously,
in spite of shattered health, to the instruction of his followers ; and it was at Simla
that he drew up “ The New Samhita,” or “ Sacred Laws of the Aryans of the New
Dispensation,” containing rules and regulations for the domestic and social
guidance of ordinary Indian life. Religious and minute instructions are furnished
relating to the household, the sanctuary, meals, business, amusements, studies,
charities, domestic relationships, ceremonies, and vows. The work first appeared as
a series of articles in The New Dispensation, during the latter part of 1883, and has
since been reprinted in the form of a little book. The central point of all his
experiments was the quest for a universal religion. In his last public lecture, ‘Asia’s
Message to Europe’, on 20 January 1883, he reiterated the need of the New
Dispensation on the basis of ‘scientific unity’ to end sectarian and national strife
and bring ‘harmony’ between Indian nationalists and British imperialists.

From his Himalayan retreat he also contributed some remarkable papers to the
New York Independent, which have since been reprinted under the title of “Yoga:
or Communion with God ;” this his last work and was published on the day he
died. The work is divided into three parts: Communion with God in Nature;
Communion with God in the Soul; and Communion with God in History. It is
published by the Brahmo Tract Society, Calcutta.
Hid last days were not all given to study. Acting on medical advice, he took to
carpentry at Shimla, as an in-door recreation, and set to work as though he had
been a carpenter all his life.' Specimens of his skill are treasured at his Calcutta
residence, Lily Cottage. He also inaugurated his Domestic Chapel, Nava Devalaya
on 1st January 1884 and finally on 8th January, 1884 took his last breath
There were many important contribution to the Brahmo movement by Keshub
Chandra Sen. These can be briefly stated as follows. The first noteworthy
contribution is the enunciation and accentuation of the doctrine of God in
conscience. The second great Nava Devalayacontribution was bringing of man's
social life within the domain of his religious duty. The third was imbibing into the
spiritual life of the Brahmo Samaj - the spirit of repentance and prayer. Next was
his infusion of the bhakti or devitional fervour into the movement. Another was his
sense of universalism of theism - he found that all the religious teachers were
bound together by a common bond. Next was his faith in the Divine mission of the
Brahmo Samaj. Another important contribution was the emphasis of the principle
laid down by Rammohun Roy - service of man was the service of God.