Swami Bhakti Hriday Bon’s astonishing book, “The Geeta, As A Chaitanyaite Reads It,” published in 1938

Swami B. H. Bon’s remarkable edition of Srimad Bhagavad Gita, published prior to the Second World War, was the first Gaudiya Vaishnava rendering of the Bhagavad Gita in the English language. The book reveals Bon Maharaj’s brilliant understanding of the deeper meanings of the Bhagavad Gita, as taught to Sripad Bon Maharaj by Prabhupad Srila Saraswati Thakur, his divine Sri Gurudev.

Unlike other English renderings of the Gita that appeared later, Swami Bon’s book was written with an entirely different audience in mind. It was penned prior to the outbreak of the Second World War, that greatest of tragedies in which millions upon millions of people were mercilessly annihilated in Poland, Russia, and elsewhere. Countless lives were lost in the terrible destruction that unfolded both on the ground and in the air across France, England, and much of Europe. In 1938, the very real prospect of the imminent destruction of entire nations was looming large in the minds of virtually all of Swami Bon’s potential readers.

But then after the 1960s psychedelic era and the hippy phenomenon, the audience that picked up a Gita to read Krishna’s message had a quite different view of the world around them, one far removed from that of the people Swami Bon had in mind when he was finishing his Gita translation. His book spoke at a time when belief in eugenics was commonplace, and the philosophies of non-white people like Swami Bon were typically judged to be next to worthless. In the United States, the KKK had enormous influence, while in British Commonwealth countries belief in key ideas associated with eugenics, together with a willingness to show obedience to the ruling elites, was extremely powerful. In Australia, both the political left and right supported the “White Australia Policy,” and brutal laws were enacted to enforce that policy.

Everywhere in the West, and in Japan in the far East, taking pride in the nation’s military was considered a virtue. Anybody who did not share that attitude was generally regarded as despicable. In Britain, France, and elsewhere, the obedience of the masses to the military and ruling elites was scarcely any weaker than it had been during the Napoleonic era.

Bon Maharaj expained his personal understanding to the world—his vision of what is right and true—in his remarkable article “Eugenics,” in which he argued against eugenics and explained that “improving the race” should not be the aim of society’s leaders. Bon Maharaj insisted that what is truly needed is for individual people to improve their own nature—their spiritual nature. Racism was a tangible and pervasive force when Bon Maharaj went to Berlin in Germany, prior to the outbreak of World War Two. And we must recognise the difficulties he must have had, trying to present the teachings of Sri Chaitanya to an audience of men who regarded non-Aryans with disgust.

It is noteworthy that when the Grand Mufti, the leading Muslim cleric of Jerusalem, visited Hitler and the two discussed a final solution to “the Jewish problem,” Hitler was sympathetic to the views of that non-white Muslim man, but refused to shake his hand. That world and that time came to an end with the defeat of Nazism, and consequently a new phase of history emerged, dominated in the West by American liberal values. In that new epoch, there was a place for a translation of the Gita that presented a world-view far removed from Bon Maharaj’s reflections in his book “The Geeta, As A Chaitanyaite Reads It”.

This is so because in the pages of Bon Maharaj’s Geeta we find him and Krishna making an appeal to a prince who holds absolute power in his hand, a warrior who lives in a society where the importance of caste and the different duties people are compelled to adhere to in daily life are unavoidable realities. The prince Arjuna was accustomed to killing at will, as was common in Japan in the samurai era. Indeed, when the Kurukshetra battle began, Arjuna’s grandfather Bhishma set about slaughtering masses of unfortunate men who had been unwillingly drafted to fight in the war, and in that slaughter Bhishma went about his task exceedingly violently and cruelly. That world ended; but we find in Bon Maharaj’s Geeta that there is an appeal to the autocrat, a plea asking autocrats to be kind and wise. Bon Maharaj has something to say to the leaders of society, whilst other Gita editions published after the Second World War tend to speak to readers who think of themselves as people with free will who feel free to be “free spirits.”

Readers should be wise enough to see that commentators and commentaries belong to different epochs of history. Readers might note the statement of Thakur Bhaktivinode in his book Sri Krishna Samhita, where he explains that in India, prior to the invention of writing and written documents, many different law-givers appeared amongst the Aryans. Thakur Bhaktivinode directly states that in different regions of India there were different law-givers, and that in later times it was imagined that those law-givers who came to be known as Manus had lived in different epochs.

Thakur Bhaktivinode wrote:
এত অল্পকালের মধ্যে এতগুলি ব্যবস্থাপক হওনের দুইটী কারণ ছিল। একটী এই যে, তখন অক্ষর সৃষ্টি না হওয়ায় ব্যবস্থাগ্রন্থ ছিল না, কেবল শ্রুতি মাত্র থাকিত। ঐ সকল শ্রুতিতে অন্যান্য আবশ্যকীয় শ্রুতি যোগ করিয়া ভিন্ন ভিন্ন মন্বন্তর কল্পিত হইত। দ্বিতীয় কারণ এই যে, প্রজা বৃদ্ধি ক্রমে তখন আর্য্যনিবাসটী বহু খণ্ডে বিভক্ত হইয়া ভিন্ন ভিন্ন রাজার অধীন হইলে ভিন্ন ভিন্ন ব্যবস্থাপক হইয়া উঠিল। সারগ্রাহী মহোদয়গণ মন্বন্তরের এই প্রকার অর্থ করিয়া থাকেন। ভারবাহী জনগণের পক্ষে অলৌকিক বর্ণন অনেক স্থানে উপকারী হয়। পূর্ব্বগত মহাজনদিগের প্রতি দৃঢ়বিশ্বাস জন্মাইবার জন্য অলৌকিক জীবন বর্ণন ও কালবিভাগ অবলম্বিত হইয়াছিল। মহর্ষিগণ কোমলশ্রদ্ধ ব্যক্তিগণের উপকারার্থে এবং দেশান্তরীয় মিথ্যা কালকল্পনা নিরস্ত করণাভিপ্রায়ে মন্বন্তরাদি কল্পনা খণ্ডন করেন নাই। কোমলশ্রদ্ধ পুরুষেরা এতদ্‌গ্রন্থের অধিকারী নহেন, এই জন্যই আমি সাহস পূর্ব্বক এরূপ অর্থ প্রকাশ করিলাম।

“There were two reasons why so many lawgivers appeared within such a short period of time. The first was that, since writing had not yet been developed, there were no written books of laws or regulations; only the teachings preserved as sruti existed. By adding other necessary teachings to these srutis, different manvantaras were conceived. The second reason was that, as the population gradually increased, the Aryan settlements became divided into many regions under different kings, and consequently different lawgivers arose in different places. Those who seek the essential truth (saragrahi) understand the meaning of the manvantaras in this way. For those who merely carry the burden of the external form of tradition (bharavahi), supernatural descriptions are often beneficial. Accounts of extraordinary lifespans and divisions of time were adopted in order to inspire firm faith in the great authorities of former times. The great rishis did not refute conceptions such as the manvantaras, both for the benefit of persons of tender faith and with the intention of counteracting false chronological speculations originating in other countries. Persons of tender faith are not qualified readers of this book. For this reason, I have boldly revealed this interpretation.”

The great teachers who appear in different places and times, Swami Bon included, have shown great love for God. Who can assess the greatness of a man who tries his utmost to struggle against seemingly gargantuan, evil forces? The greatness of a man such as Swami Bon is perhaps inestimable.