Baba Premananda Bharati's “Priviledged View” of Christianity: Journal of Vaishnava Studies

Abstract

On June 29, 1911, Baba Premananda Bharati (1857–1914) left New York on the French liner Provence bound for France and England. After thirteen months of teaching and preaching in Los Angeles, he was completing his second journey to the United States. The
first extended from 1902 to1907 and included extensive activities in New York (1902–1904), Boston (1904–1905), and Los Angeles (1905–1907). In New York, he had published his most important work, Sree Krishna—the Lord of Love, in 1904; in Los Angeles, he established the first Krishna temple in the West in 1905 and began publication of the periodical Light of India in 1906. In 1907, he had returned to India with six of his American disciples to carry out a mission of ensuring the spiritual integrity of the Indian independence movement; there he continued publication of Light of India from Calcutta (1908), and established himself as a proponent of moderate Hindu views on Indian nationalism, which attracted considerable support in Madras and scorn in Bengal. The second sojourn in the United States
was weakened by the absence of his talented writer-disciple Rose Reinhardt Anthon, who had remained in India, and by the Baba’s declining health due to chronic diabetes.