RAMAKRISHNA-VIVEKANANDA 2

Ramakrishna appeared in the spiritual firmament of the world at a time of great ideological and political ferment. The United States of America had become the world’s first modern democracy in 1776, the French Revolution raging from 1789 to 1799 followed by the Napoleonic wars till Waterloo in 1815 had changed the political landscape of Europe and the Reform Bill of 1832 had established a constitutional monarchy in England. Popular sovereignty was thus on the rise in Europe and America with the Industrial Revolution empowering the rising middle class everywhere. A natural corollary of this development was the necessity of expansion of the domain of Europe’s economic influence beyond her boundaries and this led to the rise of colonialism. In India the English East India Company had established its political stranglehold on the whole of eastern India by 1836. The conquest of India was complete by 1858 when the Queen’s Proclamation officially set the seal on Britain’s acquisition of India as a subject nation. Times were turbulent throughout the world then. The American Civil War for the emancipation of slaves raged in the United States threatening to partition the great country. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were writing their epic treatises on Communism. Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory was driving sledgehammer blows through the citadels of western belief systems. The mechanistic model of Newtonian physics was now being complemented by the Darwinian model of evolutionary biology and this lay sharply in contradiction with the Judeo-Christian theological view of the universe and the world of man. Scientific materialism was undermining the faith of man in an overseeing benevolent Supreme Being as fresh scientific data by the day proved the inadequacies of the fallacious scriptural doctrines. Man was everywhere on the move and the times were pregnant with the possibilities of new ideological affirmations as to the status of man in society and in the world at large. The long-subjugated masses were beginning to assert their freedom as the feudal order, decadent as it was, was beginning to crumble to pave the way for a new world-order, the rise of the common man. Truly were the times polarised between faith and reason, decadent spiritualism and the rising tide of scientific materialism, age-old dogmatism masquerading as spiritual culture and liberal scientific thought struggling to make its way through the hardened mind of the culturally conditioned man, and, worst of all, for all the advances of learning and light, the age was fraught with the inertia of the dead past with all its brutalities and all its profanities bearing down on the forward march of man. Such then was the scenario into which stepped in Ramakrishna, the Christ-soul of the age, the prophet of the hour, the saviour of mankind with his world-mission of unfolding the divinity of man, of upholding the age-old wisdom of the rishis of India and rediscovering the lost tracks of the kingdom that lies within. The fractured consciousness of man had to be restored to its essential wholeness that peace and harmony might prevail on earth for the efflorescence of a golden renaissance of man. And this was the mission of Ramakrishna, the secure establishment of the Sanatana Dharma or the Perennial Philosophy which in trumpet voice declares the godliness of man, his eternal immortal status as the imperishable Self that transcends all duality and stands untainted, unblemished, effulgent beyond the pale of this dark relativistic universe stalked by primeval ignorance. All this, however, in hindsight we aver for in 1836 few could have heard the rumblings of the age that was to unfold, fewer still were by divine dispensation privy to the knowledge of the descent of the Divine in the boy Gadadhar.

To return to the story then. 18 February, 1836, in a remote village of erstwhile Bengal, the boy Gadadhar was born, an event of such epic proportions that none on that hallowed morn would have had any inkling about its world significance save the Power that heralded the babe into the world to accomplish Her Divine Mission. Kamarpukur, a hamlet barely a hundred kilometres from Kolkata, was rejoicing at the birth of the babe in Kshudiram Chattopadhyay’s house. The mother Chandramani, the devout wife of Kshudiram, had borne her third son at dawn. Astrologers predicted a great spiritual future for the babe. But more of that later. We shall follow Gadadhar through his growing years till he reaches maturity and savour every moment of his growth.