Magyar Baráti Közösség

UnitáriusEgyházunk  :: Miklós Cseszneky: Ferenc Balázs and the Brahmo Samaj  ::

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"Unitarians are hands in glove with Brahmos; wrappings are maybe different but we are selling the same wares" Ferenc Balázs

Ferenc Balázs and the Brahmo Samaj Transylvanian Unitarianism meets Indian Monotheism

The connections between Anglo-American Unitarianism and the Brahmo Samaj, a religious reform movement based on the belief in one God, freedom of conscience and tolerance founded in India by Raja Rammohun Roy in the early 19th century, are well-known to religious scholars and to those interested in the world-wide history of Liberal religions. The cooperation of Unitarians - including Hungarian Unitarians in Transylvania - and Brahmo believers within the framework of the International Association for Religious Freedom (IARF) also has a long tradition. Nevertheless, it is scarcely known that apart from this official collaboration, a Hungarian Unitarian minister from Transylvania had a more personal experience and encounter with Brahmoism.

Ferenc (Francis) Balázs (1901-1937) a theologian, writer, poet, essayist, social reformer and peace-warrior was the most idiosyncratic but also the most authentic figure in modern Hungarian Unitarianism. Probably no-one else in the 20th century had such a deep impact on the way of thinking and acting of Hungarian-Transylvanian Unitarians as this short-lived and often misinterpreted young minister.

In 1923 Ferenc Balázs arrived at the first station of his five year long spiritual journey around the world: he was granted a scholarship at the Unitarian Theological Academy of Manchester College in Oxford. In Britain the Hungarian student , as a convinced peace-lover, sought with an open heart the cooperation with other nations and cultures, thus it went without saying that Balázs established friendship with students of the Brahmo Faith. He started to read poems of Rabindranath Tagore and as he wrote in a letter with enthusiasm: none of the classical English poets could develop a liking for the English language in him but absorbing Tagore's verses he woke up to the richness of English idiom.

From the heart of the British Empire Balázs went to the United States, where - notably in Berkeley - he again met students of the Brahmo Samaj. They gave him letters of recommendation and when the young Transylvanian theologian, after visiting Japan, China, Korea, Singapore and Burma got to Calcutta, it was absolutely natural that he paid his first visit to the Brahmo mandir. Ferenc Balázs was deeply impressed by the hospitality of Brahmo followers.

Later in his book (Bejárom a kerek világot) he paid tribute to the efforts of the Brahmo Samaj in the field of struggle against the caste system, the practice of suttee and children's marriage but above all in the field of education. For Balázs the education of the next generation was a key point. He considered himself the sower of the future harvest, so when he returned home and became the pastor of a small mountain village, his most important task was to educate the young villagers not only in a schoolmarmish way but teaching them modern methods of rural developement, exactly as he had seen it in Shantinikentan, Home of the Peace founded by Tagore.

Balázs spent an entire week with the Bengali poet, his admired master. For him Rabindranath Tagore was not only a master of poetry but an inspirer in spiritual and social questions as well. The young globetrotter came from Transylvania, that is, from a historical province of the Kingdom of Hungary wich at the end of the first world war was annexed to Rumania by the imposed peace treaty of Trianon. Ferenc Balázs as a member of the oppressed Hungarian ethnic minority of Rumania observed with sympathy the efforts for self-determination of the colonized nations of the Indian subcontinent. Nevertheless, he agreed with Tagore and considered the cultural and social developement of the people their primordial task.

Even his meeting with Gandhi could not distract him from the example and teaching of Tagore. Balázs never forgot the poet and his Brahmo friends. In 1928 he published an article on Brahmo Samaj in the Unitárius Közlöny, the journal of the Unitarian Church in Transylvania and, as mentioned above, in one of his books (Bejárom a kerek világot) also dedicated six chapters to his adventures in India.

Ferenc Balázs was the first who recognized the spiritual brotherhood between Hungarian Unitarians and the Brahmo Samaj. We can only hope that his memory will become a bridge between the two communities forever.