The soul in devotion

Mir Mahmud

A devoted soul in search of the platonic in faith, poet Monomohon Dutta has gone beyond the frontiers of time. A hundred years have elapsed since his passing in 2009. He works cover only thirteen years (1896 to 1909), but his deeds have outlived his corporeal existence. A remarkable number of admirers remember him with great respect. They feel a strong attachment with the soul of Monomohon Dutta.

Monomohon Dutta was moved by the supernatural. So he came in close contact with Ananda Swami, a saint who was famous for his supernatural deeds. At the age of nineteen he was educated in supernatural activities by Swamiji. This education was rounded off through having seven postulates reach fruition. The first postulate related to establishing a platonic religion.

Ananda Swami was moved by the new term, platonic religion. We have never been able to find out his explanation of the term, but we do have Dutta's reaction. Swami advised Monomohon Dutta 'to write all which comes to his mind'. Again his careful phrase “..the path of religion is as sharp as a sharpened razor.”

Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists and Christians, rich and poor, everybody approached Monomohon Dutta and identified with his thoughts. They found simplicity, nobility, honesty and amiability in Monomohon Dutta.

Monomohon Dutta believed in a supreme power which controls us and so man has no freedom. It was his fourth postulate. We then get the background to his first poem:

The sun was setting in the west. The sky was decorated with different colours. Monomohon Dutta was leaning against a bamboo and gazed towards the sky. He was lost in himself. It was a day in Shrabon in the Bangla year 1303 (first week of August 1896). Suddenly his heart began to dance with an unknown wonder. A huge poetical composition began to develop in his brain. His first verses came out fluently:

Nath! without you this heavenly earth which containing everything turns to nothing; You're the main source the real worth of all worth that is you everywhere in the universe …

When the poem was fully composed, it was dark and the sky was full of stars and the moon. Dutta had turned into a poet who believed in God but with belief unlike that of not others. He believed in religion but not in its limitations.

Monomohon Dutta was not a follower of any particular religion. He studied and assimilated the Sankskrit couplets, syntax, and the Bangla translation of the Gita. He studied the verses of the Chandi. He minutely read the Vaishnava. He read Shankaracharya's works. He studied religious works. He has written of a vacant mood sometimes taking over his faculties. He was sometimes weak, sometimes apathetic; sometimes he was drawn to Shiva, sometimes to Kali. Spiritual and supernatural waves flooded in upon him in succession.

Secularism was in his soul. He asked himself:

"Say to me, my mind

Are you Hindu or Muslim?"

Mir Mahmud is a freelance journalist and writer.