Kedarnath Datta Bhaktivinoda (1838-1914) was a prominent figure among the Gaudiya Vaisnavas of Bengal. He wrote more than a hundred works and was the father of Bimal Prasad Datta (Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati), guru of A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami, the founder of ISKCON.

First gaining employment as a teacher and then as a clerk, Kedarnath Datta entered government service in 1866, and remained a magistrate until 1894. Beyond his significance in the history of Vaisnavism, his dual career is intriguing, and Dr Shukavak's  study sets out the available information on both the magistrate and the theologian with care and diligence. In brief, Bhaktivinoda's course is clear cut, from Sakta family background, passion for English literature and flirtation with Christianity in his youth, and then an ever-deepening understanding of Gaudiya Vaisnavism. The stresses and strains of the life of a theologian-magistrate can for the most part be only guessed at, but Dr Shukavak finds new material, making use of a long autobiographical letter by Bhaktivinoda. It is fascinating to learn, e.g., that Bhaktivinoda's family had a dog called Tiger, who accompanied them when they moved to Bihar.

After an account of 'modernity' in nineteenth-century Calcutta in the opening chapters, most of the book has to do with Bhaktivinoda's contributions to Gaudiya Vaisnavism. Shukavak only mentions his poetry in passing. Bhaktivinoda's English poem on Porus, the Indian king defeated by Alexander, his Vijana-grama in Bengali of the destruction by cholera of his native village, and his English poem Reflections, all mentioned in the list of his works (Appendix One of the book) might supply material to further round out Shukavak's picture of Bhaktivinoda. Shukavak also mentions five 'semi-secular' works by a Kedarnath Datta, including a British Mahatmya Kavya. He tells us that as a young man Bhaktivinoda was reading Milton, Macaulay, Hazlit and Carlyle; and for a while was under the spell of an American Unitarian Missionary. It is not impossible for one or more of these works to have been written by Bhaktivinoda before he settled down to his life's work as a Vaisnava.

While referring to selected Bhaktivinoda's theological works from all periods of his literary life, Dr Shukavak relies especially on his Sajjana-tosani, his Krsna-samhita, and the autobiographical letter. In 1892-3 there are numerous articles describing Bhaktivinoda's preaching activities. In tune with modernity is the use of the image of a market, with the Bhagavata Purana and related texts as the warehouses, the principal Gaudiya Vaisnavas as traders, the people of the world as customers, and himself, Bhaktivinoda, as the lowly sweeper whose job it was to keep the marketplace clean. With great enterprise, Bhaktivinoda established over five hundred nama-hatta-sangas (associations) throughout Bengal.

Shukavak tells us that the Krsna-samhita, published serially in the Sajjana-Tosani in 1903, represents, more than any other work 'the foundations of [Bhaktivinoda's] reconciliation of tradition and modernity'. But this reconciliation goes no further than the suggestion that caste should ideally be based on character rather than birth; and the view that in the esoteric practice of siddha-pranali-diksa, the candidate and guru should confer together as to the appropriate siddha-deha, and that the siddha-deha could later be modified if it didn't suit. Certainly, this book is not the final word on Bhaktivinoda and modernity, but it is a valuable contribution to the understanding of modern Hinduism and is to be warmly welcomed.

David Smith