(on his 117th Death Anniversary, 27th May)
Pratap Chunder Mozoomdar was born in the year 1840 and breathed his last on May 27, 1905. He was involved with the Brahmo Samaj movement and was one of the leaders who became a very ardent follower of Keshub Chandra Sen, especially in the event of his propagating the New Dispensation. He tried to bring about a synthesis between the philosophies and ethics of Hinduism and Christianity. He wrote about this idea in his book, The Oriental Christ.
Kesab Chandra Sen and his co-believers decided to learn more about the four leading world religions of Hinduism, Christianity, Buddhism and Islam in order to find their unity in diversity. They proposed to select four of their fellow believers who were each entrusted to study one of the four religions in depth and report back on their relationship visa-vis the Brahmo ideals. Gour Govinda Ray was entrusted to study the philosophies of Hinduism; Aghore Nath Gupta was deputed to study Buddhism and Girish Chandra Sen was dedicated to the study of Islam. It fell upon Pratap Chunder Mozoomdar to get to the depths of Christianity. His studies resulted in the book The Oriental Christ, which was published by Geo. H. Ellis in Boston in the year 1883 . This book aroused much interest in the Western world and was widely discussed. This eventually led to a series of interesting correspondence Max Müller and Pratap Chumder about the mutual relationship between Hinduism and Christianity. But when this correspondence was later published by Pratap Chunder Mozoomdar it became highly controversial both in his home country India as well as in Britain. Max Müller’s urged Pratap Chunder to declare his faith in Christianity which was denied by the latter. Pratap Chunder Mozoomdar’s argument was that his own positive view of Jesus as a model of self-sacrifice was not the same as his belief in the Christian faith. He tried to interpret the actions and claims of Jesus to divinity from within his own belief in the Brahmo philosophy. According to Max Müller the Christians needed to learn from the Brahmos, abandoning the traditional Christian formulation of Atonement.
Pratap Chunder Mozoomdar wrote several books, including ‘The Life and Teachings of Kesub Chunder Sen’ in 1887, which was a biography of Sen. He also wrote about the spiritual and social ideals of the Brahmo movement. Among his various writings are a biography of Ramakrishna, for whom Pratap Chunder had deep admiration. Pratap Chunder went to the United States of America in the year 1893 as a delegate of the Brahmo Samaj to the Parliament of the World’s Religions in Chicago. He was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in October 1893.
The collected precepts of Protap Chunder Mazoomdar were published in 1919 entitled as ‘Upadesh’. His writings reflect his outlook that never hesitated to acknowledges the value and fundamental affinity of different religions. He was respectful all world religions – including Christianity, Islam, or Judaism – and he regarded all the religious figures associated with their origin and propagation in great esteem.
Reference: Wikipedia