Sir Brajendra Nath Seal

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BORN TO BE REMEMBER AFTER 150 YEARS...SIR BRAJENDRA NATH SEAL .... WATERCOLOUR...A4 ...2014 .... Sir Brajendra Nath Seal (Bengali: ????????????? ???) (1864–1938) was a renowned Bengali Indian humanist philosopher. He was one of the greatest original thinkers of the Brahmo Samaj and did work in comparative religion and on the philosophy of science. He systematized the humanism of the Brahmo philosophical thought. In his work, he underscored the tectonic shift in Brahmo theology in the late eighteenth century from liberal theism to secular humanism. Like his better known ideological precursor Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, Seal was an educator, a firm believer in the cause of rationalism and scientific enquiry, a polymath in his own right and yet at the same time a preacher of humanism as a religious doctrine (as opposed to organized religion). He was born in Calcutta in 1864. His father Mohendranath Seal was one of the earliest followers of Comtean positivism in Bengal. As a student of philosophy at the General Assembly's Institution (now Scottish Church College, Calcutta), he became attracted to Brahmo theology. And along with his better known classmate and friend Narendranath Dutta, the future Swami Vivekananda, he regularly attended meetings of the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj. Later they would part ways with Dutta aligning himself with Keshub Chunder Sen's New Dispensation (and later on to found his own religious movement, the Ramakrishna Mission) and Seal staying on as an initiated member. During this time spent together, both Seal and Dutta sought to understand the intricacies of faith, progress and spiritual insight into the works of John Stuart Mill, Auguste Comte, Herbert Spencer and G.W.F. Hegel. Seal had a natural aptitude for mathematics and logic. He earned his M.A. degree in philosophy from the University of Calcutta in 1884 and started out as a lecturer at the City College, Calcutta. He helped Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore in founding the Visva-Bharati Un