Krishna Mohan Banerjee (1813-1885)

Krishna Mohan Banerjee (1813-1885)

Early life

Krishna Mohan Banerjee was born in May 1813 in calcutta, Bengal. He was born to an orthodox Brahmins of the kulin class. At the age of five he was initiated into the life of a student with the traditional rites and invested the Brahminical thread. He studied Sanskrit along with English at Hindu college in1924.  Khrishna mohan Banerjee was a recognized leader of the Indian Christian community in Bengal, who later became the first president of the Bengal Christian association.   During His early life as student Bengal’s cultural renaissance was at the initial stage, and this movement was very much impacted by the western education and Christian missions. Literally the traditional Hinduism was in the process of liberal reforms, led by the Bengal youth. Mr. Banerjee came under the influence of a rationalist professor of Hindu college, Derozio. As so he joined the reform party of agnostics and atheists. And later became the editor of the weekly journal Enquirer, in this journal they attacked the supernatural metaphysical speculation, and attacked on some irrational Hindu practices like idolatrous polytheism. Because of this reason His relationship with the Hindu went bad to worse. Mr. Banerjee and his friends than came across a young educationist of Calcutta, Mr. Alexander Duff who on acknowledging their longing to reform the Hinduism sympathized them, but Mr. Duff urged them to enquire into the truth of Christianity. And this slowly leads them to conversion to Christianity 

Conversion and His later life till death.

Krishna Mohan Banerjee and some of His friend Baptized in 1832 by Mr. Duff as Presbyterian denomination, but later joined the Anglican Communion. Mr. Banerjee was ordained and became the pastor of a new church in Cornwallis square and minister there from 1839-1851. After 12 years of pastoral ministry he was appointed as professor at the bishop’s college. He contributed a lot to the shaping of the Bengal renaissance which was the vanguard of the Indian renaissance.   Mr. Banerjee’s approach towards Hinduism was negative, but after His retirement from the Bishop’s college, he became sympathetic to Hinduism. His books include Dialogues and The Arian Witness. He passed away in May 1885 at the age of 72. 

Thoughts and Contributions:

As said in the above line Mr. Banerjee’s approach to Hinduism was negative, but only after his retirement from the Bishop’s college as professor He sympathized with the Hinduism. He wrote books in which he tried to bring out some striking similarities between Old Testament and the Vedas. So in the pursuit of his work, he finds the parallels between Vedic and Assyrian texts and even Hebrew and the Sanskrit language. For Mr. Banerjee the Hebrews and the Aryans have a common background, and connects Manu and Noah to have the same root. So He says that Christianity is not a foreign religion to Hinduism but the other half which makes the Hinduism complete.

He takes the prayer to varuna from the rig Veda and say that this is truly a Christian prayer, the prayer says like this “o illustrious varuna, do thou quicken our understanding, we that are celebrating this sacrifice, that we may embark on the good navigation vessel by which we may escape all sins.”  And finds a parallels for the biblical lamb that was slain from the foundation of the world in the vedic literature. Even the parallels between the creation, fall and deluge cannot be accidental. But in the process the Hindus have forgotten the implication of the sacrifice through which human became God and attained moksha. 

And when coming to Christ banerjee finds excellent parallels between the self-sacrifice of the prajapati, the lord of the universe for the sake of the creatures and the Lord Jesus Christ to redeem the world and His creatures. And when we look into the history of the religion (Vedic religion) no one had claim to sacrifice oneself for the sake of humanity, but just one person “Jesus Christ of Nazareth” and so claims that Jesus Christ is the true prajapati, the true savior of the world. Thus Boyd call K.M. Banerjee’s theology as “Vedic theology” by which he mean that since the very beginning of the time there was a universal and cosmic religion, which basic principle was ‘no sacrifice no salvation’ salvation was not possible without blood.  

Some of banerjee’s work are as follows, He published a 13-volume English- Bengali adaptation of encyclopedia Britannica from 1846-1851. And also wrote an Indian English drama “the persecuted” in 1837. His some other works are The Arian Witness 1875, Dialogues on The Hindu Philosophy 1861 and The Relation between Christianity and Hinduism 1881.