IN DEFENCE OF THE RAMAKRISHNA MISSION ... 12
Swami Vivekananda had dissociated the Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission from politics entirely. The organisation was founded in the days of the British Raj with revolution brewing all over India against the tyranny of the imperial colonists. Being a spiritual movement with global consequences and built upon the universal principles of the Vedanta as embodied in the being of Sri Ramakrishna, Swamiji had to make it a mandatory condition for the Order to eschew politics in every possible way to keep the spiritual essence of the organisation intact.
However, Swami Vivekananda himself was such a volcanic personality and with tremendous feeling for the fallen condition of his people that he had to walk a tightrope path all along to serve the best interests of the world, his motherland in bondage and his spiritual mission without compromising any of them. Such balance of forces as was manifest in his temporal being had its roots in a higher order of existence to which he eternally belonged. His French biographer, Romain Rolland, has beautifully described it. But such a balance is not otherwise easily come by and lesser mortals are swayed to one side or the other by the compulsions of work and on account of their inherent tendencies. They are unable to maintain neutrality of perspective and are led into partisan compromises when participating in worldly work. Swamiji well understood this common human failing and distanced the Ramakrishna Mission from political involvement thus.
Amidst the turbulence of the revolutionary movements in India how deftly the Mission conducted its affairs without in any way compromising on its ideals. Vivekananda himself was on the watch list of the British intelligence and ever stayed on the borderline between arrest and freedom. Had it not been the wily British with crafty understanding of political consequences of actions, had India been colonised by the Germans or the Russians instead, Vivekananda would surely be meditating long nights and days in prison. But the British knew the shuffling of political cards better and touched not Vivekananda. Even so when Swamiji died, Holy Mother said that had Naren lived a trifle longer, the British would have locked him up. And Mother's words were inviolable. They would for sure not have failed.
During his lifetime Swamiji tried to rouse the spirit of his countrymen in no uncertain terms. The lectures he delivered from Colombo to Almora were all geared toward one goal, the regeneration of his motherland in every respect. Privately, Swamiji spoke to revolutionaries like Bagha Jatin and Tilak about the necessity of disentangling the colonial octopus from the body politic of the motherland and suggested them ways and means to doing it, taking care to keep his instructions limited to the strengthening of the sinews and the nerves even as his electric personality and blessings fired them up with revolutionary intent. Swamiji exhorted Bagha Jatin to open gymnasiums all over Bengal and instructed him to read Bankimchandra, especially, the Ananda Math. He was, however, more categorical with the seasoned Tilak and emphatically said to him, "What India needs now is a bomb!" Obviously, Swamiji was more sure that the battle-hardened Tilak would not compromise him before the British government in any way. Swamiji could see through a person's mind and knew what to say and to whom.
When Swamiji visited Dhaka on pilgrimage with his mother, Bhuvaneshwari Devi, he met a few young revolutionaries one of whom was Hemchandra Ghosh. The young man was so moved by Swamiji's personality that his life was transformed by that fleeting contact with the fiery monk and he dedicated himself to liberating his motherland from colonial shackles thereafter. In his ripe old age Hemchandra Ghosh was interviewed by Swami Purnatmananda of the Ramakrishna Mission and the old man left behind a graphic verbal account of his meeting with Swamiji in his youth, the monk who had redirected the course of his life and who he had adorned with the epithet now famous, 'the cyclonic monk'.
Of all those who were influenced by Vivekananda into embracing the revolutionary struggle for India's political freedom none was in closer contact with the Swami than Sister Nivedita. Born of Irish lineage, Margaret Elizabeth Noble had inherited his subjugated countrymen's zeal for political freedom from the British. When she came to India inspired by Swamiji to dedicate her life for women's education here, she witnessed at first hand the plight of the colonised Indians suffering unbearable human indignity and material misery consequent on alien occupation of their homeland. Her innate revolutionary fire now broke through and relegating her initial task of educating the Indian girls in the hands of her sister disciple, Sister Christine, Margaret, now Nivedita, plunged into revolutionary politics. Her white skin somehow saved her from being arrested but she was being heavily marked by British Indian intelligence for her activities. Matters came to a head and the Ramakrishna Mission was being compromised on account of her anti-government political activities.
Swamiji had noticed this marked tendency in Nivedita and had advised her to seek Swami Brahmananda's counsel in times of confusion when he himself would be dead and gone. Now when the Ramakrishna Mission was being booked by the British government for allowing a member of theirs to engage in anti-Crown activities which threatened the banning of the Mission itself, the President of the Order stepped in. In a meeting with the Sister, the venerable monk exhorted her to either renounce politics altogether or formally renounce relations with the Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission. Nivedita, now deeply involved in the holy task of liberating her Guru's motherland, argued her case that her political activities were all inspired by her understanding and interpretation of Swamiji's message and teachings but that she would honour the directive of the President of the Order and give a formal declaration of her renunciation of organisational connections with the Belur Math and its institutions. Accordingly, she made her statement public by going to Press with it and, thus, ended her formal connections with the Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission, although, her informal relations with the monks of the Mission remained very cordial right till her death in 1911.
This was a very crucial period in the life of the fledgling fraternity that had gathered in the name of Ramakrishna. The British authorities were actually on the verge of banning the Ramakrishna Mission but for the timely intercession of the influential Miss Josephine MacLeod who with her American connections in the British royal family prevailed upon them to desist from assuming that extreme step. The Ramakrishna Mission was thus saved from being nipped in the bud by the British Crown and having received a new lease of life scrupulously saw to it that their monks and novitiates were devoid of political connections of all sorts once they had been ordained.
However, many of the reputed monks of the Ramakrishna Order were in their pre-monastic days revolutionaries. Swamis Prajnananda (Debabrata Maharaj), Nirvanananda (Surjo Maharaj), Abhayananda (Bharat Maharaj), Nikhilananda (translator of the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna into English and a Ramakrishna and Vivekananda biographer), Lokeshwarananda (Kanai Maharaj who was the founder and architect of Narendrapur Ramakrishna Mission) and many others joined the Mission after engaging in revolutionary politics for a while. Of these Debabrata Maharaj and Surjo Maharaj were front-ranking leaders in their respective revolutionary organisations. Some of the revolutionaries had sought refuge in some of the Mission's centres to avoid arrest before they quietly slipped away and the Mission had under no circumstances betrayed them into the hands of the British police. They sympathised with these brave men who dared the might of the Empire, being inspired by Swamiji's message of death-defying patriotism and sacrifice. Some others from this group of revolutionaries after their initial stint in the freedom struggle either got disillusioned with some of the proceedings in their patriotic circles or evolved further to renounce the worldly life altogether and became monks of the Order with the blessings of the Holy Mother Sri Sarada Devi.
Thus, it is not for the first time that the Ramakrishna Mission has had to wade through troubled waters but it certainly is the latest in a long history of interaction and even collision with the political dispensations of the day. It has triumphed earlier despite occasional reverses faced and it will triumph this time, too, as good sense of monk and minister dawns.
End of Part 12
To be serialised...
Written by Sugata Bose
Swami Vivekananda had dissociated the Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission from politics entirely. The organisation was founded in the days of the British Raj with revolution brewing all over India against the tyranny of the imperial colonists. Being a spiritual movement with global consequences and built upon the universal principles of the Vedanta as embodied in the being of Sri Ramakrishna, Swamiji had to make it a mandatory condition for the Order to eschew politics in every possible way to keep the spiritual essence of the organisation intact.
However, Swami Vivekananda himself was such a volcanic personality and with tremendous feeling for the fallen condition of his people that he had to walk a tightrope path all along to serve the best interests of the world, his motherland in bondage and his spiritual mission without compromising any of them. Such balance of forces as was manifest in his temporal being had its roots in a higher order of existence to which he eternally belonged. His French biographer, Romain Rolland, has beautifully described it. But such a balance is not otherwise easily come by and lesser mortals are swayed to one side or the other by the compulsions of work and on account of their inherent tendencies. They are unable to maintain neutrality of perspective and are led into partisan compromises when participating in worldly work. Swamiji well understood this common human failing and distanced the Ramakrishna Mission from political involvement thus.
Amidst the turbulence of the revolutionary movements in India how deftly the Mission conducted its affairs without in any way compromising on its ideals. Vivekananda himself was on the watch list of the British intelligence and ever stayed on the borderline between arrest and freedom. Had it not been the wily British with crafty understanding of political consequences of actions, had India been colonised by the Germans or the Russians instead, Vivekananda would surely be meditating long nights and days in prison. But the British knew the shuffling of political cards better and touched not Vivekananda. Even so when Swamiji died, Holy Mother said that had Naren lived a trifle longer, the British would have locked him up. And Mother's words were inviolable. They would for sure not have failed.
During his lifetime Swamiji tried to rouse the spirit of his countrymen in no uncertain terms. The lectures he delivered from Colombo to Almora were all geared toward one goal, the regeneration of his motherland in every respect. Privately, Swamiji spoke to revolutionaries like Bagha Jatin and Tilak about the necessity of disentangling the colonial octopus from the body politic of the motherland and suggested them ways and means to doing it, taking care to keep his instructions limited to the strengthening of the sinews and the nerves even as his electric personality and blessings fired them up with revolutionary intent. Swamiji exhorted Bagha Jatin to open gymnasiums all over Bengal and instructed him to read Bankimchandra, especially, the Ananda Math. He was, however, more categorical with the seasoned Tilak and emphatically said to him, "What India needs now is a bomb!" Obviously, Swamiji was more sure that the battle-hardened Tilak would not compromise him before the British government in any way. Swamiji could see through a person's mind and knew what to say and to whom.
When Swamiji visited Dhaka on pilgrimage with his mother, Bhuvaneshwari Devi, he met a few young revolutionaries one of whom was Hemchandra Ghosh. The young man was so moved by Swamiji's personality that his life was transformed by that fleeting contact with the fiery monk and he dedicated himself to liberating his motherland from colonial shackles thereafter. In his ripe old age Hemchandra Ghosh was interviewed by Swami Purnatmananda of the Ramakrishna Mission and the old man left behind a graphic verbal account of his meeting with Swamiji in his youth, the monk who had redirected the course of his life and who he had adorned with the epithet now famous, 'the cyclonic monk'.
Of all those who were influenced by Vivekananda into embracing the revolutionary struggle for India's political freedom none was in closer contact with the Swami than Sister Nivedita. Born of Irish lineage, Margaret Elizabeth Noble had inherited his subjugated countrymen's zeal for political freedom from the British. When she came to India inspired by Swamiji to dedicate her life for women's education here, she witnessed at first hand the plight of the colonised Indians suffering unbearable human indignity and material misery consequent on alien occupation of their homeland. Her innate revolutionary fire now broke through and relegating her initial task of educating the Indian girls in the hands of her sister disciple, Sister Christine, Margaret, now Nivedita, plunged into revolutionary politics. Her white skin somehow saved her from being arrested but she was being heavily marked by British Indian intelligence for her activities. Matters came to a head and the Ramakrishna Mission was being compromised on account of her anti-government political activities.
Swamiji had noticed this marked tendency in Nivedita and had advised her to seek Swami Brahmananda's counsel in times of confusion when he himself would be dead and gone. Now when the Ramakrishna Mission was being booked by the British government for allowing a member of theirs to engage in anti-Crown activities which threatened the banning of the Mission itself, the President of the Order stepped in. In a meeting with the Sister, the venerable monk exhorted her to either renounce politics altogether or formally renounce relations with the Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission. Nivedita, now deeply involved in the holy task of liberating her Guru's motherland, argued her case that her political activities were all inspired by her understanding and interpretation of Swamiji's message and teachings but that she would honour the directive of the President of the Order and give a formal declaration of her renunciation of organisational connections with the Belur Math and its institutions. Accordingly, she made her statement public by going to Press with it and, thus, ended her formal connections with the Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission, although, her informal relations with the monks of the Mission remained very cordial right till her death in 1911.
This was a very crucial period in the life of the fledgling fraternity that had gathered in the name of Ramakrishna. The British authorities were actually on the verge of banning the Ramakrishna Mission but for the timely intercession of the influential Miss Josephine MacLeod who with her American connections in the British royal family prevailed upon them to desist from assuming that extreme step. The Ramakrishna Mission was thus saved from being nipped in the bud by the British Crown and having received a new lease of life scrupulously saw to it that their monks and novitiates were devoid of political connections of all sorts once they had been ordained.
However, many of the reputed monks of the Ramakrishna Order were in their pre-monastic days revolutionaries. Swamis Prajnananda (Debabrata Maharaj), Nirvanananda (Surjo Maharaj), Abhayananda (Bharat Maharaj), Nikhilananda (translator of the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna into English and a Ramakrishna and Vivekananda biographer), Lokeshwarananda (Kanai Maharaj who was the founder and architect of Narendrapur Ramakrishna Mission) and many others joined the Mission after engaging in revolutionary politics for a while. Of these Debabrata Maharaj and Surjo Maharaj were front-ranking leaders in their respective revolutionary organisations. Some of the revolutionaries had sought refuge in some of the Mission's centres to avoid arrest before they quietly slipped away and the Mission had under no circumstances betrayed them into the hands of the British police. They sympathised with these brave men who dared the might of the Empire, being inspired by Swamiji's message of death-defying patriotism and sacrifice. Some others from this group of revolutionaries after their initial stint in the freedom struggle either got disillusioned with some of the proceedings in their patriotic circles or evolved further to renounce the worldly life altogether and became monks of the Order with the blessings of the Holy Mother Sri Sarada Devi.
Thus, it is not for the first time that the Ramakrishna Mission has had to wade through troubled waters but it certainly is the latest in a long history of interaction and even collision with the political dispensations of the day. It has triumphed earlier despite occasional reverses faced and it will triumph this time, too, as good sense of monk and minister dawns.
End of Part 12
To be serialised...
Written by Sugata Bose
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