Chaitanya in His Times and in Ours

This is a highly critical chapter that joins the twin issues of how Chaitanya was perceived in his own life time and thereafter. Of particular interest here is how Chaitanya was invoked in post-Chaitanya Bengal for a wide variety of reasons and purposes. Dissenting and non-conformist religious cults in post-Chaitanya Bengal cited his life and work to register their protest against Brahmanical and upper-caste excesses; the educated and upper-caste followers, on the other hand, converted him into a symbol of political resistance in a manner that strengthened their own political ambitions under a colonial regime. This chapter brings back the issue of just how the lay reader and the scholar alike need to be clearer about the use of nomenclatures such as ‘Bengal Vaishnavism’ or Gaudiya Vaishnavism. The author argues how in modern Bengal, there were major cultural figures who were Vaishnava by persuasion and yet not affiliated to the Chaitanya camp. This chapter also includes interesting and original studies of Chaitanya’s religion, his approach to the question of women and sexuality, and also how Chaitanya was perceived by the most prominent religious groups in colonial Bengal such as the Brahmos.