Vishnubhuva Bramhachari travelled through the length and breadth of India preaching the superiority and infallibility of the Vedas. According to him, ‘Veda means knowledge. It is a part of God himself’. He believed that the Vedic religion leads man on to the moral and spiritual heights. According to him, the Vedic times were not only far advanced in spiritual insight, but in scientific and technical knowledge as well, including chemistry and physics. He said that in ancient times, people all over the world followed Vedic religion and received their religious instructions through the Sanskrit language. V. B. did not have a good opinion of other religions, as for Christianity, he held its teaching as ‘filth created by the hypocrisy of barbarians’.
V.B. was very conservative in his attitude towards some aspects of Brahmanical Hinduism, such as Vedic ceremonies, vegetarianism, belief in rebirth and so on. For him, the great difference between Hindus on the one hand and the Jews, Christians and Muslims on the other, consisted in the belief of the latter religion that only human beings have the soul, not animals, their rejection of the idea of re-birth and their acceptance of a general judgment at the end of time.
V. B. showed a remarkable sense of independence of mind in rejecting a number of traditional ideas and customs. In his view, caste should be determined by a person’s qualities, and not by his birth. He favored female education and upheld the right of girls to be consulted in the choice of their husbands, though he wanted them married before the age of 12. He also opposed the custom of Sati and favored widow remarriage.
He was a prolific writer. Among V. B.s famous work was Vedokta Dharmaprakasha (the Principle of Hindu Religion), published in 1864. In a very interesting essay on ‘Beneficial Government’ (Marathi) he put forward ideas such as ‘One home and all citizens as one family’. He held the view that it is the duty of the king to ensure the happiness of all his subjects and it was the duty of the subjects to obey the kings laws. Further, since, according to him, all citizens belonged to one family, and all land and its produce should be held in common, every person should work for the community and in exchange the community must meet his needs.
In social matters, he was in favor of civil marriages and favored divvorce. In his view, children should remain with their parents upto the age of 5 and then be handed over to the state. He wanted work to be assigned to each individual according to the person’s capacity, and grouped the end’s into 5 castes, corresponding to their professions. He wanted the state to take care of the old and employ them as heads of each work – department. This body could work as a kind of parliament.
V. B. envisaged a moneyless economy and a society without charitable institutions. He was optimistic that the caste system would disappear and people would live in peace and happiness without enimity. In 1869, he got 10,000 copies of the essay printed and sent to prominent persons in India as well as to members of British Parliament, ministers, Queen Victorial and Prince Edward of England.
It was indeed surprising that a semi-literate and conservative person like V. B. should put forward notions of ‘Utopian Socialism’. Perhaps, as Lederle has pointed out, he may have derived ideas from Vedanta Monoism and the writings of Jnaneshvara, the great thirteenth century commentator of the Bhagvadgita. To quote Leaderle, “In developing this philosophy of society (socialism) based on Vedantic Monoism V. B. thus remained true to a strong trend in the Indian traditions”.
V. B. was a pioneer of the revivalist tendencies toward social and religious movement. He had full faith in the superiority of the Indian culture over the western civilization and therefore he preached that the Indians should look back to the Vedic times for inspiration and guidance. R. C. Majumdar describes him as ‘a utopian socialist who based his social ideas on Vedic religion and may be compared to the Christian socialists of Europe’. According to one writer, ‘he was socially equalitarian religiously Vedantic, politically socialist and mentally liberal and independent, morally bold and confident and humanitarian’.
V. B. though an ardent Hindu, defiantly challenged Brahmin leadership of his time. In so doing he created ‘an undesirable split between the upper classes and the masses which ultimately led to some unfortunate developments in the public life of the Bombay province’. The Bombay journal Induprakash, in an obituary on 20th February 1871 wrote: “It is extremely difficult to find an outstanding man like V. B. He was an outstanding thinker and one who translated his precepts into action. He was courageous enough to say or do what he thought was necessary for the interests and good of the country. Therefore, in the death of this good man, not only Bombay but Maharashtra as a whole, has suffered a great loss’.
