Gour Govinda Ray - Krishna and Christ

Krishna and Christ

David Kopf says, “Gour Govinda was a confirmed cultural nationalist. Though from the early days a Brahmo rationalist and reformer, he did not find sympathy with vague universalist sentiments. Once on a discussion on the Great Prophets, led by Keshub, Jesus was referred to (possibly by Majumdar) as the king of prophets. Gour Govinda promptly rejected the arguments and proceeded to show that the message of Christ was an ‘old conception’ found in ‘our Hindu Shastras’. David Kopf points out that most revealing was Ray’s attempts to compare Krishna with Christ. For Ray, Christ and Krishna were similar as religious and ethical reformers who sought the same end of sanctifying earthly conditions. The original Buddha could also be placed in this category. “The fact is,” wrote Ray, “that essentially all reformers respond to the same conditions with identical ideas that transcend the particular time and country of birth.” One must understand the pattern of evolution from the Vedas to the Bhagavad Gita, as against the pattern in West Asia from the Old to the New Testament. Ray also reasoned that both Krishna and Christ were providentially designed for man’s salvation. However, Christ’s death on the cross to save mankind was a unique resolution of the problem of evil, “which had no parallel in the Krishna of Gita.”