
Chapter Nine

NEDA or NEDA-NEDI (Vaisnava-Buddhist Syncretists)

The word neda indicates a man with a shaven head. Nedi means a shaven-head
woman. The neda-nedi cult is said to be still visible around the Navadvipa
area, where they are indistinguishable from other shaven Vaisnavas wearing
tilak and white cloth. The neda-nedi apasampradaya began at the time of Sri
Virabhadra Gosvami, the son of Lord Nityananda and Jahnava Mata. It is said
that Sri Viracandra converted over a thousand nedas and an equal number of
nedis to Vaisnavism from tantric Buddhism. Under his direction, these
neda-nedis took to the chanting of the Hare Krsna maha-mantra. Most of them
got properly married, thus ending the illicit connections that had been going
on between them in the name of tantric meditation. But after some time, a
number of them again revived their old practices while passing themselves off
as Vaisnavas. Nowadays, the neda-nedi is taken to be a type of Baul.

From Dr. Ramkantha Cakravarti, we get a historical account of a Buddhist monk
of Orissa who became a Vaisnava in Puri during the time of Srila Sanatana
Gosvami's stay there. He was initiated and received the name Acyutananda dasa.
But after mixing with the Vaisnavas for some time, he became dissatisfied by
their adherence to varnasrama-dharma. Buddhists are naturally antagonistic to
varnasrama, so when Acyutananda consulted a Buddhist guru named Mahananda, he
was advised to leave the company of the devotees. Acyutananda established his
own group, preaching: bolanti prabhu bhagavan buddharupa mo sri caitanya tanka
carana seva kara - "I serve the lotus feet of Lord Buddha in the form of Sri
Caitanya."

Though Acyutananda's cult has long faded into irrelevance, this vignette shows
the type of syncretism that, on the fringe of Lord Caitanya's sankirtana
movement, produced new, unauthorized movements like the neda-nedi. The same
tendency was noted by Srila Prabhupada in a 1968 letter to a disciple who had
chosen to follow a wayward ISKCON sannyasi:

"Now it is understood [that he] does not believe in parampara or in the
necessity of scriptural authority. He seems to feel that this is a sort of
tyranny. That means, after taking sannyasa and understanding the philosophy
for more than a year, he has changed the whole view, and I do not understand
how you would like this recent doctrine."

On syncretism as a tactic for preaching to different religious communities,
Srila Prabhupada wrote in 1969:

"Actually we have nothing to do with compromising with Christians or
Buddhists. Our principles should be to preach Krishna Consciousness as it is
spoken in the Bhagavad-gita and Srimad Bhagavatam. As we are now collecting
some fortunate students in our movement, it will be possible to collect more
students in the future. But it is a fact that the unfortunate persons who
stick to the four material misbehaviors, just like illicit sex life, etc.
cannot accept these principles of Krishna Consciousness. But still there is
chance for them simply by giving aural reception to this transcendental sound
of Hare Krishna Mantra. If we turn our attention to fit with the Christian
people, or any other religious sect, I think it will not be very much fruitful
because nobody will change his faith even though he is given scientific or
archeological evidences. And that will not help anybody. We have already
discussed this point in many articles and change in religious faith does not
make one advanced in spiritual understanding. The spiritual understanding as
taught by Lord Caitanya is that all living entities are eternally servants of
God. We have to propagate this philosophy, and for this we have to make
propaganda. Every religion believes in God, and we want that everyone should
actively come to this understanding of accepting one's eternal servitorship to
God."

