Brajendra Nath Seal
Encyclopedia
Sir Brajendra Nath Seal KCIE
(1864–1938) was a renowned Bengali
India
n humanist
philosopher. He was one of the greatest original thinkers of the Brahmo Samaj
and did work in comparative religion
and on the philosophy of science
. He systematized the humanism
of the Brahmo philosophical thought. In his work, he underscored the tectonic shift in Brahmo theology
in the late eighteenth century from liberal theism
to secular humanism
. Like his better known ideological precursor Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar
, Seal was an educator, a firm believer in the cause of rationalism
and scientific enquiry , a polymath
in his own right and yet at the same time a preacher of humanism as a religious doctrine (as opposed to organized religion).
an positivism
in Bengal. As a student of philosophy at the General Assembly's Institution (now Scottish Church College, Calcutta
), he became attracted to Brahmo theology. And along with his better known classmate and friend Narendranath Dutta, the future Swami Vivekananda
, he regularly attended meetings of the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj
. Later they would part ways with Dutta aligning himself with Keshub Chunder Sen's New Dispensation (and later on to found his own religious movement, the Ramakrishna Mission
) and Seal staying on as an initiated member. During this time spent together, both Seal and Dutta sought to understand the intricacies of faith, progress and spiritual insight into the works of John Stuart Mill
, Auguste Comte
, Herbert Spencer
and G.W.F. Hegel. Seal had a natural aptitude for mathematics and logic.
He earned his M.A. degree in philosophy from the University of Calcutta
in 1884 and started out as a lecturer at the City College, Calcutta.
and Krishnanath College, Berhampur
). During the time period 1883 to 1907, he composed his first major work New Essays in Criticism, in which he applied Hegelian dialectics to literary criticism
. Although he was an ardent admirer of English
Romanticism
and Romantic literature in particular, his work reveals him to be an early precursor of the school of logical positivism
. In 1915, he earned his doctorate from the University of Calcutta on the subject of The Positive Sciences of the Ancient Hindus.
In 1896, Maharaja
Nripendra Narayan Bhupa Bahadur, the son-in-law of Keshub Chunder Sen offered him the post of a principal of the newly established Victoria College in Cooch Behar
. With a certain level of financial security assured, Seal finished his New Essays in Criticism and also composed an epic poem called Quest Eternal that traced his intellectual and philosophical odyssey. His further studies on ancient Hindu scientific philosophy led him to contribute a chapter in Prafulla Chandra Roy
's History of Chemistry in Ancient India. His publications were noticed abroad and in 1902, his candidacy was seriously considered for a professorship in philosophy at the University of Cambridge
.
The financial support provided by the Maharaja helped Seal to visit Europe in 1899, 1906 and 1911. In 1906, Seal addressed the International Congress of Orientalists in Rome
and in 1911, the First Universal Race Congress in London
. In 1911, while in London, the sudden death of his patron, the Maharaja, and subsequent withdrawal of financial support for his cultural and comparative-historical studies forced him to quit his job and reconsider his philosophical beliefs. During this phase, he underwent a transformation from being a believer of Brahmo rationalist doctrine to being a spiritual humanist. His analysis on the Comparative Studies in Vaishnavism and Christianity (1912) expresses the urge to break free from the hegemony of method as applicable in Eurocentric academic enquiry (as in disciplines like Indology
and anthropology
) and instead focus on comparative method
ology, that would be largely immune to any possible colonialist bias. In this, Seal was motivated not merely as a recipient of orientalist
hegemony in the academia, or as a counter cultural or for that matter, as a cultural nationalist response to imperialist
discourse
, as he was due so a more profound love for rationalist
spirit of enquiry, albeit in a colonial context. For he was a rational humanist first, and a cultural nationalist much later.
After his resignation from Victoria College, he was offered the most prestigious chair of philosophy in India, the King George V
professorship of philosophy
at the University of Calcutta
(other holders of this chair include Professor Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan
among others). He used this period (1913-1921) to travel extensively, give lectures, publish books and philosophical tracts and support the efforts of Vice Chancellor Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee
to make the University of Calcutta one of the best known seats of learning to the east of Suez
. His scholarly contribution was recognized again with the award of an Honorary doctorate (Doctor of Science
) from the University of Calcutta, on Dec 17, 1921.
He helped Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore
in founding the Visva-Bharati University
on December 22, 1921. By virtue of being India's leading scholar on philosophy and comparative-historical studies and its first Western visiting scholar, Seal was honored as the first Chancellor of that university. During the same time, he was also appointed the Vice Chancellor of the University of Mysore
, a position he held till 1930, when ill health forced him to retire. In 1926, the government of British India knighted him. During his stay in Mysore, he authored a textbook of Indian philosophy and a biography of Raja Rammohun Roy.
After retirement, and notwithstanding his general physical deterioration and failing eyesight, he achieved the grand finale of his long philosophical journey. In 1936, when he was bedridden and blind , he finished his magnum opus called Quest Eternal, which is one of the few modern Indian epics on the theme of the Faust
ian man in search of the reason
for human existence. The conditions in which he wrote parallels that of the English poet John Milton
when he wrote his Paradise Lost
. The Faustian urge of this brilliant mind to find the meaning of life is at once an existential
quest as a Modernist one. Although Seal was writing as a subject of the imperialist enterprise, and not as a party to it, it could be argued that he was a Modernist and an existentialist without his knowing it.
to West
as being too narrow and parochial. The logical culmination of the Hegelian idea envisioned all human races as being surrogates and appendages to the dominant Greco-Roman-Gothic type, which in its wake resonated perfectly well with the Orientalist
doctrine. Seal saw this discourse as being dangerously Eurocentric that in effect precluded the possibility of an equitable cultural dialogue. As he saw it, the philosophy of the subaltern societies or those relegated to the periphery would be seen as being in a state of primitivism when compared to the philosophy of the dominant societies. As he saw it, the Orientalist bias espoused by Hegelianism:
Seal drew close to what is today called postcolonialism. As contrary to colonial discourse, he argued that in any proper comparative-historical analysis, all societies should be seen as being in similar stages in the development of culture. All cultural traditions could be relatively seen as they evolved parallel patterns wherein
As distinct from the Hegelian world view, Seal espoused that the idea of Western civilization as being the focal point or the culmination of world civilization was fundamentally erroneous, that failed to take into account the myriad richness and complex mosaic of cultural continuum that manifested themselves in Hindu, Islamic, and Chinese civilizations. Human civilization, far from being a centripetal order where the West was to be considered as the center around which other (non Western) cultures revolved was for Seal,
Thus, as he saw it (in Comparative Studies in Vaishnavism and Christianity), Vaishnavism
and Christianity
were two distinct religious traditions, each with its own uniquely rich tradition of historical exegesis that spanned two millennia and could in no way be seen as being phases in the development of (a Eurocentric) human civilization, as one leading to another in a pattern of cause and effect
. Seal's philosophical insights were to be developed by his latter day successor from his college A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada of the ISKCON movement.
in search of meaning in life. For Seal, this search for meaning has two dimensions: firstly, the historical dimension that explores how a world view
or a zeitgeist
is shaped by the continuum of the ancient, medieval and the modern, and secondly the cultural dimension which spells out how specific patterns of human configurations shape a world view in the mode of causality
. Seal's hero is on an adventure on a scale far more grandiose, magnificent, world-encompassing and demanding than Goethe's Faust
. The hero is the prototype of the modern cosmopolitan man in search of an ever elusive unity in the pluralistic universe:
It is interesting to note here that Seal's hero (in the initial stages) is not merely the man who is trapped within the confines of ancient social order where he is merely a hapless victim of circumstances beyond his control but the hero who undergoes a spiritual transformation to a medieval wizard knight (who closely resembles the modern scientific man) who seeks out scientific rationalism in nature. He seeks the truth in the "Magician Commonwealth of Reason" and eventually wins the ever elusive trophy of the "Zodiac shield of the Sun for his victories over Untruth". However like all well intended adventures, his quest is ultimately Promethean
and Sisyphean and must end in failure:
The modern man of science, much like Dr. Faustus
, (and not unlike Christian
, an Everyman
character) is an eternally homeless wanderer, "... in search of a Wisdom that is able to master Death". Death is not merely physical, but a metaphor for "the dark power in life who frustrates our goals and strivings" who assists the victory of "brute Matter and blind Sense" over "realms of Soul, of Nature, and of Man in History". In despair, the hero expostulates:
Seal's hero is not proletarian, and does not take recourse to rationalism
, scientism
, Marxism
or any salvation
theology, but a universal redeemer whose task, like Prometheus, is to "redeem humanity from the bondage of the Gods":
Seal's epic redeems collective suffering as a means to redeem humanity . His belief in the religion of universal humanity found parallel reflection in Rabindranath Tagore
's concept of the Vishwa Manav of the Universal Man
, who would rise from the ashes like a phoenix to redeem the depravities of humanity. And yet like Prometheus, he would be eternally trapped by the vicissitudes of existence.
Order of the Indian Empire
The Most Eminent Order of the Indian Empire is an order of chivalry founded by Queen Victoria in 1878. The Order includes members of three classes:#Knight Grand Commander #Knight Commander #Companion...
(1864–1938) was a renowned Bengali
Bengali people
The Bengali people are an ethnic community native to the historic region of Bengal in South Asia. They speak Bengali , which is an Indo-Aryan language of the eastern Indian subcontinent, evolved from the Magadhi Prakrit and Sanskrit languages. In their native language, they are referred to as বাঙালী...
India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
n humanist
Humanism
Humanism is an approach in study, philosophy, world view or practice that focuses on human values and concerns. In philosophy and social science, humanism is a perspective which affirms some notion of human nature, and is contrasted with anti-humanism....
philosopher. He was one of the greatest original thinkers of the Brahmo Samaj
Brahmo Samaj
Brahmo Samaj is the societal component of the Brahmo religion which is mainly practiced today as the Adi Dharm after its eclipse in Bengal consequent to the exit of the Tattwabodini Sabha from its ranks in 1859. It was one of the most influential religious movements responsible for the making of...
and did work in comparative religion
Comparative religion
Comparative religion is a field of religious studies that analyzes the similarities and differences of themes, myths, rituals and concepts among the world's religions...
and on the philosophy of science
Philosophy of science
The philosophy of science is concerned with the assumptions, foundations, methods and implications of science. It is also concerned with the use and merit of science and sometimes overlaps metaphysics and epistemology by exploring whether scientific results are actually a study of truth...
. He systematized the humanism
Humanism
Humanism is an approach in study, philosophy, world view or practice that focuses on human values and concerns. In philosophy and social science, humanism is a perspective which affirms some notion of human nature, and is contrasted with anti-humanism....
of the Brahmo philosophical thought. In his work, he underscored the tectonic shift in Brahmo theology
Theology
Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...
in the late eighteenth century from liberal theism
Theism
Theism, in the broadest sense, is the belief that at least one deity exists.In a more specific sense, theism refers to a doctrine concerning the nature of a monotheistic God and God's relationship to the universe....
to secular humanism
Secular humanism
Secular Humanism, alternatively known as Humanism , is a secular philosophy that embraces human reason, ethics, justice, and the search for human fulfillment...
. Like his better known ideological precursor Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar
Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar
Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar CIE , born Ishwar Chandra Bandopadhyaya , was an Indian Bengali polymath and a key figure of the Bengal Renaissance....
, Seal was an educator, a firm believer in the cause of rationalism
Rationalism
In epistemology and in its modern sense, rationalism is "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification" . In more technical terms, it is a method or a theory "in which the criterion of the truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive"...
and scientific enquiry , a polymath
Polymath
A polymath is a person whose expertise spans a significant number of different subject areas. In less formal terms, a polymath may simply be someone who is very knowledgeable...
in his own right and yet at the same time a preacher of humanism as a religious doctrine (as opposed to organized religion).
Early life
He was born in Calcutta in 1864. His father Mohendranath Seal was one of the earliest followers of ComteAuguste Comte
Isidore Auguste Marie François Xavier Comte , better known as Auguste Comte , was a French philosopher, a founder of the discipline of sociology and of the doctrine of positivism...
an positivism
Positivism
Positivism is a a view of scientific methods and a philosophical approach, theory, or system based on the view that, in the social as well as natural sciences, sensory experiences and their logical and mathematical treatment are together the exclusive source of all worthwhile information....
in Bengal. As a student of philosophy at the General Assembly's Institution (now Scottish Church College, Calcutta
Scottish Church College, Calcutta
The Scottish Church College is the oldest continuously running Christian liberal arts and sciences college in India. It is affiliated with the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education , the West Bengal Council of Higher Secondary Education for the awarding of baccalaureate and post baccalaureate...
), he became attracted to Brahmo theology. And along with his better known classmate and friend Narendranath Dutta, the future Swami Vivekananda
Swami Vivekananda
Swami Vivekananda , born Narendranath Dutta , was the chief disciple of the 19th century mystic Ramakrishna Paramahansa and the founder of the Ramakrishna Math and the Ramakrishna Mission...
, he regularly attended meetings of the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj
Sadharan Brahmo Samaj
The Sadharan Brahmo Samaj is a religious division of Brahmoism formed as a result of 2 schisms in the Brahmo Samaj in 1866 and 1878 respectively.-The Brahmo Samaj:...
. Later they would part ways with Dutta aligning himself with Keshub Chunder Sen's New Dispensation (and later on to found his own religious movement, the Ramakrishna Mission
Ramakrishna Mission
Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission are twin organizations which form the core of a worldwide spiritual movement known as Ramakrishna Movement or Vedanta Movement. The Ramakrishna Mission is a philanthropic, volunteer organization founded by Ramakrishna's chief disciple Swami Vivekananda on...
) and Seal staying on as an initiated member. During this time spent together, both Seal and Dutta sought to understand the intricacies of faith, progress and spiritual insight into the works of John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill was a British philosopher, economist and civil servant. An influential contributor to social theory, political theory, and political economy, his conception of liberty justified the freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state control. He was a proponent of...
, Auguste Comte
Auguste Comte
Isidore Auguste Marie François Xavier Comte , better known as Auguste Comte , was a French philosopher, a founder of the discipline of sociology and of the doctrine of positivism...
, Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer was an English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist of the Victorian era....
and G.W.F. Hegel. Seal had a natural aptitude for mathematics and logic.
He earned his M.A. degree in philosophy from the University of Calcutta
University of Calcutta
The University of Calcutta is a public university located in the city of Kolkata , India, founded on 24 January 1857...
in 1884 and started out as a lecturer at the City College, Calcutta.
Later life
Although he had started out as college lecturer, his deep insatiable thirst for knowledge, coupled with financial constraints made him shift from one college to another (the colleges where Seal taught include Morris College, NagpurNagpur
Nāgpur is a city and winter capital of the state of Maharashtra, the largest city in central India and third largest city in Maharashtra after Mumbai and Pune...
and Krishnanath College, Berhampur
Berhampur
Brahmapur , nicknamed "The Silk City", is a city located in the eastern coastline of Ganjam district of the Indian state of Orissa, about south to state capital, Bhubaneswar.It is also dubbed as "The Dance City" of Orissa after Prince Dance Group and Harihar Das made the state famous in India's...
). During the time period 1883 to 1907, he composed his first major work New Essays in Criticism, in which he applied Hegelian dialectics to literary criticism
Literary criticism
Literary criticism is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often informed by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of its methods and goals...
. Although he was an ardent admirer of English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
Romanticism
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
and Romantic literature in particular, his work reveals him to be an early precursor of the school of logical positivism
Logical positivism
Logical positivism is a philosophy that combines empiricism—the idea that observational evidence is indispensable for knowledge—with a version of rationalism incorporating mathematical and logico-linguistic constructs and deductions of epistemology.It may be considered as a type of analytic...
. In 1915, he earned his doctorate from the University of Calcutta on the subject of The Positive Sciences of the Ancient Hindus.
In 1896, Maharaja
Maharaja
Mahārāja is a Sanskrit title for a "great king" or "high king". The female equivalent title Maharani denotes either the wife of a Maharaja or, in states where that was customary, a woman ruling in her own right. The widow of a Maharaja is known as a Rajamata...
Nripendra Narayan Bhupa Bahadur, the son-in-law of Keshub Chunder Sen offered him the post of a principal of the newly established Victoria College in Cooch Behar
Cooch Behar
Cooch Behar is the district headquarters and the largest city of Cooch Behar District in the Indian state of West Bengal. It is situated in the foothills of the Eastern Himalayas and located at . Cooch Behar is the only planned town in North Bengal region with remnants of royal heritage...
. With a certain level of financial security assured, Seal finished his New Essays in Criticism and also composed an epic poem called Quest Eternal that traced his intellectual and philosophical odyssey. His further studies on ancient Hindu scientific philosophy led him to contribute a chapter in Prafulla Chandra Roy
Prafulla Chandra Roy
Prafulla Chandra Ray was a Indian academician, a chemist and entrepreneur. He was the founder of Bengal Chemicals & Pharmaceuticals, India's first pharmaceutical company...
's History of Chemistry in Ancient India. His publications were noticed abroad and in 1902, his candidacy was seriously considered for a professorship in philosophy at the University of Cambridge
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
.
The financial support provided by the Maharaja helped Seal to visit Europe in 1899, 1906 and 1911. In 1906, Seal addressed the International Congress of Orientalists in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
and in 1911, the First Universal Race Congress in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
. In 1911, while in London, the sudden death of his patron, the Maharaja, and subsequent withdrawal of financial support for his cultural and comparative-historical studies forced him to quit his job and reconsider his philosophical beliefs. During this phase, he underwent a transformation from being a believer of Brahmo rationalist doctrine to being a spiritual humanist. His analysis on the Comparative Studies in Vaishnavism and Christianity (1912) expresses the urge to break free from the hegemony of method as applicable in Eurocentric academic enquiry (as in disciplines like Indology
Indology
Indology is the academic study of the history and cultures, languages, and literature of the Indian subcontinent , and as such is a subset of Asian studies....
and anthropology
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
) and instead focus on comparative method
Comparative method
In linguistics, the comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages by performing a feature-by-feature comparison of two or more languages with common descent from a shared ancestor, as opposed to the method of internal reconstruction, which analyzes the internal...
ology, that would be largely immune to any possible colonialist bias. In this, Seal was motivated not merely as a recipient of orientalist
Oriental studies
Oriental studies is the academic field of study that embraces Near Eastern and Far Eastern societies and cultures, languages, peoples, history and archaeology; in recent years the subject has often been turned into the newer terms of Asian studies and Middle Eastern studies...
hegemony in the academia, or as a counter cultural or for that matter, as a cultural nationalist response to imperialist
Imperialism
Imperialism, as defined by Dictionary of Human Geography, is "the creation and/or maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationships, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination." The imperialism of the last 500 years,...
discourse
Discourse
Discourse generally refers to "written or spoken communication". The following are three more specific definitions:...
, as he was due so a more profound love for rationalist
Rationality
In philosophy, rationality is the exercise of reason. It is the manner in which people derive conclusions when considering things deliberately. It also refers to the conformity of one's beliefs with one's reasons for belief, or with one's actions with one's reasons for action...
spirit of enquiry, albeit in a colonial context. For he was a rational humanist first, and a cultural nationalist much later.
After his resignation from Victoria College, he was offered the most prestigious chair of philosophy in India, the King George V
George V of the United Kingdom
George V was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India, from 6 May 1910 through the First World War until his death in 1936....
professorship of philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
at the University of Calcutta
University of Calcutta
The University of Calcutta is a public university located in the city of Kolkata , India, founded on 24 January 1857...
(other holders of this chair include Professor Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan
Sir Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan , OM, FBA was an Indian philosopher and statesman. He was the first Vice President of India and subsequently the second President of India ....
among others). He used this period (1913-1921) to travel extensively, give lectures, publish books and philosophical tracts and support the efforts of Vice Chancellor Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee
Ashutosh Mukherjee
Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee, CIE was a prolific Bengali educator and the first Indian Vice Chancellor of the University of Calcutta from 1906 to 1924. Perhaps the most emphatic figure of Indian education, he was a man of great personality, high self-respect, courage and towering administrative ability...
to make the University of Calcutta one of the best known seats of learning to the east of Suez
Suez
Suez is a seaport city in north-eastern Egypt, located on the north coast of the Gulf of Suez , near the southern terminus of the Suez Canal, having the same boundaries as Suez governorate. It has three harbors, Adabya, Ain Sokhna and Port Tawfiq, and extensive port facilities...
. His scholarly contribution was recognized again with the award of an Honorary doctorate (Doctor of Science
Doctor of Science
Doctor of Science , usually abbreviated Sc.D., D.Sc., S.D. or Dr.Sc., is an academic research degree awarded in a number of countries throughout the world. In some countries Doctor of Science is the name used for the standard doctorate in the sciences, elsewhere the Sc.D...
) from the University of Calcutta, on Dec 17, 1921.
He helped Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore , sobriquet Gurudev, was a Bengali polymath who reshaped his region's literature and music. Author of Gitanjali and its "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse", he became the first non-European Nobel laureate by earning the 1913 Prize in Literature...
in founding the Visva-Bharati University
Visva-Bharati University
Visva Bharati University is a Central University for research and teaching in India, located in the twin towns of Santiniketan and Sriniketan in the Indian state of West Bengal. It was founded by Rabindranath Tagore who called it Visva Bharati, which means the communion of the world with India...
on December 22, 1921. By virtue of being India's leading scholar on philosophy and comparative-historical studies and its first Western visiting scholar, Seal was honored as the first Chancellor of that university. During the same time, he was also appointed the Vice Chancellor of the University of Mysore
University of Mysore
The University of Mysore , is a public university in India. The University founded during the reign of Krishnaraja Wodeyar IV, the Maharaja of Mysore, and was conceptualized on the basis of a report on educational progress in the United States and Australia, submitted by Messrs Thomas Denham and...
, a position he held till 1930, when ill health forced him to retire. In 1926, the government of British India knighted him. During his stay in Mysore, he authored a textbook of Indian philosophy and a biography of Raja Rammohun Roy.
After retirement, and notwithstanding his general physical deterioration and failing eyesight, he achieved the grand finale of his long philosophical journey. In 1936, when he was bedridden and blind , he finished his magnum opus called Quest Eternal, which is one of the few modern Indian epics on the theme of the Faust
Faust
Faust is the protagonist of a classic German legend; a highly successful scholar, but also dissatisfied with his life, and so makes a deal with the devil, exchanging his soul for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures. Faust's tale is the basis for many literary, artistic, cinematic, and musical...
ian man in search of the reason
Reason
Reason is a term that refers to the capacity human beings have to make sense of things, to establish and verify facts, and to change or justify practices, institutions, and beliefs. It is closely associated with such characteristically human activities as philosophy, science, language, ...
for human existence. The conditions in which he wrote parallels that of the English poet John Milton
John Milton
John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...
when he wrote his Paradise Lost
Paradise Lost
Paradise Lost is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton. It was originally published in 1667 in ten books, with a total of over ten thousand individual lines of verse...
. The Faustian urge of this brilliant mind to find the meaning of life is at once an existential
Existentialism
Existentialism is a term applied to a school of 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual...
quest as a Modernist one. Although Seal was writing as a subject of the imperialist enterprise, and not as a party to it, it could be argued that he was a Modernist and an existentialist without his knowing it.
Seal's philosophy
Although he was initially inspired by the Hegelian philosophy of the unilinearlity of history, one that resonated well with the official Sadharan Brahmo Samaj doctrine, Seal eventually rejected the Hegelian thesis of the linear flow of historical progress from EastEast
East is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating direction or geography.East is one of the four cardinal directions or compass points. It is the opposite of west and is perpendicular to north and south.By convention, the right side of a map is east....
to West
West
West is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating direction or geography.West is one of the four cardinal directions or compass points. It is the opposite of east and is perpendicular to north and south.By convention, the left side of a map is west....
as being too narrow and parochial. The logical culmination of the Hegelian idea envisioned all human races as being surrogates and appendages to the dominant Greco-Roman-Gothic type, which in its wake resonated perfectly well with the Orientalist
Oriental studies
Oriental studies is the academic field of study that embraces Near Eastern and Far Eastern societies and cultures, languages, peoples, history and archaeology; in recent years the subject has often been turned into the newer terms of Asian studies and Middle Eastern studies...
doctrine. Seal saw this discourse as being dangerously Eurocentric that in effect precluded the possibility of an equitable cultural dialogue. As he saw it, the philosophy of the subaltern societies or those relegated to the periphery would be seen as being in a state of primitivism when compared to the philosophy of the dominant societies. As he saw it, the Orientalist bias espoused by Hegelianism:
Seal drew close to what is today called postcolonialism. As contrary to colonial discourse, he argued that in any proper comparative-historical analysis, all societies should be seen as being in similar stages in the development of culture. All cultural traditions could be relatively seen as they evolved parallel patterns wherein
As distinct from the Hegelian world view, Seal espoused that the idea of Western civilization as being the focal point or the culmination of world civilization was fundamentally erroneous, that failed to take into account the myriad richness and complex mosaic of cultural continuum that manifested themselves in Hindu, Islamic, and Chinese civilizations. Human civilization, far from being a centripetal order where the West was to be considered as the center around which other (non Western) cultures revolved was for Seal,
Thus, as he saw it (in Comparative Studies in Vaishnavism and Christianity), Vaishnavism
Vaishnavism
Vaishnavism is a tradition of Hinduism, distinguished from other schools by its worship of Vishnu, or his associated Avatars such as Rama and Krishna, as the original and supreme God....
and Christianity
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
were two distinct religious traditions, each with its own uniquely rich tradition of historical exegesis that spanned two millennia and could in no way be seen as being phases in the development of (a Eurocentric) human civilization, as one leading to another in a pattern of cause and effect
Causality
Causality is the relationship between an event and a second event , where the second event is understood as a consequence of the first....
. Seal's philosophical insights were to be developed by his latter day successor from his college A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada of the ISKCON movement.
His poetry
His epic poem Quest Eternal is rich in the application of symbolism of Eastern and Western spiritual traditions. It stands out as a very sophisticated cross-cultural analysis of the dilemma of the modern EverymanEveryman
In literature and drama, the term everyman has come to mean an ordinary individual, with whom the audience or reader is supposed to be able to identify easily, and who is often placed in extraordinary circumstances...
in search of meaning in life. For Seal, this search for meaning has two dimensions: firstly, the historical dimension that explores how a world view
World view
A comprehensive world view is the fundamental cognitive orientation of an individual or society encompassing the entirety of the individual or society's knowledge and point-of-view, including natural philosophy; fundamental, existential, and normative postulates; or themes, values, emotions, and...
or a zeitgeist
Zeitgeist
Zeitgeist is "the spirit of the times" or "the spirit of the age."Zeitgeist is the general cultural, intellectual, ethical, spiritual or political climate within a nation or even specific groups, along with the general ambiance, morals, sociocultural direction, and mood associated with an era.The...
is shaped by the continuum of the ancient, medieval and the modern, and secondly the cultural dimension which spells out how specific patterns of human configurations shape a world view in the mode of causality
Causality
Causality is the relationship between an event and a second event , where the second event is understood as a consequence of the first....
. Seal's hero is on an adventure on a scale far more grandiose, magnificent, world-encompassing and demanding than Goethe's Faust
Faust
Faust is the protagonist of a classic German legend; a highly successful scholar, but also dissatisfied with his life, and so makes a deal with the devil, exchanging his soul for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures. Faust's tale is the basis for many literary, artistic, cinematic, and musical...
. The hero is the prototype of the modern cosmopolitan man in search of an ever elusive unity in the pluralistic universe:
It is interesting to note here that Seal's hero (in the initial stages) is not merely the man who is trapped within the confines of ancient social order where he is merely a hapless victim of circumstances beyond his control but the hero who undergoes a spiritual transformation to a medieval wizard knight (who closely resembles the modern scientific man) who seeks out scientific rationalism in nature. He seeks the truth in the "Magician Commonwealth of Reason" and eventually wins the ever elusive trophy of the "Zodiac shield of the Sun for his victories over Untruth". However like all well intended adventures, his quest is ultimately Promethean
Prometheus
In Greek mythology, Prometheus is a Titan, the son of Iapetus and Themis, and brother to Atlas, Epimetheus and Menoetius. He was a champion of mankind, known for his wily intelligence, who stole fire from Zeus and gave it to mortals...
and Sisyphean and must end in failure:
The modern man of science, much like Dr. Faustus
Faust
Faust is the protagonist of a classic German legend; a highly successful scholar, but also dissatisfied with his life, and so makes a deal with the devil, exchanging his soul for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures. Faust's tale is the basis for many literary, artistic, cinematic, and musical...
, (and not unlike Christian
The Pilgrim's Progress
The Pilgrim's Progress from This World to That Which Is to Come is a Christian allegory written by John Bunyan and published in February, 1678. It is regarded as one of the most significant works of religious English literature, has been translated into more than 200 languages, and has never been...
, an Everyman
Everyman
In literature and drama, the term everyman has come to mean an ordinary individual, with whom the audience or reader is supposed to be able to identify easily, and who is often placed in extraordinary circumstances...
character) is an eternally homeless wanderer, "... in search of a Wisdom that is able to master Death". Death is not merely physical, but a metaphor for "the dark power in life who frustrates our goals and strivings" who assists the victory of "brute Matter and blind Sense" over "realms of Soul, of Nature, and of Man in History". In despair, the hero expostulates:
Seal's hero is not proletarian, and does not take recourse to rationalism
Rationalism
In epistemology and in its modern sense, rationalism is "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification" . In more technical terms, it is a method or a theory "in which the criterion of the truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive"...
, scientism
Scientism
Scientism refers to a belief in the universal applicability of the systematic methods and approach of science, especially the view that empirical science constitutes the most authoritative worldview or most valuable part of human learning to the exclusion of other viewpoints...
, Marxism
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
or any salvation
Salvation
Within religion salvation is the phenomenon of being saved from the undesirable condition of bondage or suffering experienced by the psyche or soul that has arisen as a result of unskillful or immoral actions generically referred to as sins. Salvation may also be called "deliverance" or...
theology, but a universal redeemer whose task, like Prometheus, is to "redeem humanity from the bondage of the Gods":
Seal's epic redeems collective suffering as a means to redeem humanity . His belief in the religion of universal humanity found parallel reflection in Rabindranath Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore , sobriquet Gurudev, was a Bengali polymath who reshaped his region's literature and music. Author of Gitanjali and its "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse", he became the first non-European Nobel laureate by earning the 1913 Prize in Literature...
's concept of the Vishwa Manav of the Universal Man
Universal Man
In 1987 it was moved from its site during the construction of SkyDome, and was not replaced reportedly due to lack of space in the area. This, and the damage inflicted on the statue during moving, infuriated Gladstone...
, who would rise from the ashes like a phoenix to redeem the depravities of humanity. And yet like Prometheus, he would be eternally trapped by the vicissitudes of existence.
Books
- Acharya Brajendra Nath Seal - A Tribute - by Sri Haripada Mondal
- Our Education and its Reforms - Edited by Haripada Mondal - available at Mallik Pustakalaya, Midnapore
- A Memoir on the Co-efficient of Numbers: A Chapter on the Theory of Numbers (1891)
- Neo-Romantic Movement in Bengali Literature (1890-91)
- A Comparative Study of Christianity and Vaishnavism (1899)
- New Essays in Criticism (1903)
- Introduction to Hindu Chemistry (1911)
- Positive Sciences of the Ancient Hindus (1915)
- Race-Origin (1911)
- Syllabus of Indian Philosophy (1924)
- Rammohan Roy: The Universal Man (1933)
- The Quest Eternal (1936).
Journals in which his articles were published
- Calcutta ReviewCalcutta ReviewThe Calcutta Review is a bi-annual periodical, now published by the Calcutta University press, featuring scholarly articles from a variety of disciplines.-History:...
- Modern Review (Calcutta)Modern Review (Calcutta)Modern Review was the name of a monthly magazine published in Calcutta since 1907.Founded by Ramananda Chatterjee, the Modern Review soon emerged as an important forum for the Indian Nationalist intelligentsia. It carried essays on politics, economics, sociology, as well as poems, stories,...
- New India
- Dawn
- Bulletin of Mathematical Society
- Indian Culture
- Hindustan Standard
- British Medical JournalBritish Medical JournalBMJ is a partially open-access peer-reviewed medical journal. Originally called the British Medical Journal, the title was officially shortened to BMJ in 1988. The journal is published by the BMJ Group, a wholly owned subsidiary of the British Medical Association...
- Prabasi
- Sabujpatra
- Viswa-Bharati.