WORK, A NEW APPROACH -- A TRIBUTE TO KETAKI MAHARAJ

WORK, A NEW APPROACH -- A TRIBUTE TO KETAKI MAHARAJ

Indian society is constricted today. Although the sledgehammer blows of globalisation are breaking through the citadels of caste-ridden constrictions, Indian society remains immured in age-old customs and social accretions that have stifled the life of her people and thwarted their natural growth into a dynamic race as in the days of yore when India rose to the pinnacle of power and glory, culture and civilisation.

Ours is a predominantly rural population subsisting on agriculture within a feudal set-up although politically we are a democratic republic. The mind-set of our people is still feudal and the result is that in vast areas of the country even today the rule of the village elders is the governing principle with its patriarchal feudal mind-set and all its concomitant evils. Education and real democracy are yet to penetrate Indian society in a tangible way and economic inequities are so large that it is a permanent state of depression for millions even today with basic amenities of life an unaffordable luxury and beyond the reach of the vast mass of the population that live in the hundreds of thousands of villages across India. Water, sanitation, toilet facilities, electricity, hospitals, schools and colleges -- well, none of these fundamental requirements for decent human living are available to the masses who have merely the franchise to elect their representatives periodically to facilitate their looting of the coffers of the nation and perpetuate their misery.

Such then is the predicament the Motherland faces, social and cultural incrustation, huge inequities in the living standards of the urban and the rural populations and of the rich and the poor, and the onslaught of western modes and manners of a decadent, immoral type that threaten to widely pollute the culture and character of the urban youth by the millions. Capitalistic inroads are also loosening morals as material necessity is being coupled with the greed for gold. Advertisement of commodities is wreaking havoc on mass psychology and creating artificial desires which is destroying the age-old values of contentment and simplicity of living and making life unduly complex and unhappy. The traditional Indian way of living is being affected for the worse and competition, conflict and corruption in corporate and political life is becoming the order of the day.

It is here that we today need a new philosophy of living, a new culture of work and a totally new approach to the building of our nation. A new work ethic is needed, a dynamic and socially beneficial attitude to work whose mainspring of inspiration is the soul within and the soul-mates without whose service is the pre-eminent objective and not individual profit or pleasure. Such a work-culture may only be built on the adamantine foundation of the Vedanta which declares the oneness of existence and, therefore, the oneness of all of humanity. But for all this the primary pre-requisite is the building up of character what in modern management parlance is called 'the integrated personality'.

Swamiji had in trumpet voice declared, "Men, men these are wanted, everything else will be ready, but strong vigorous, believing young men, sincere to the backbone, are wanted. A hundred such and the world becomes revolutionised." Where are these men, my friends? Why do you not give yourself to Swamiji's cause of nation-building? Your lives will be sanctified and India will rise on your shoulders. What greater joy can there be than in the sacrifice of your blossoming youth for the regeneration of the Motherland? Perfect purity will work wonders and an iron will that will overcome all obstacles. The heart to feel intensely the misery of the masses, the head to comprehend the problems and conceive of solutions, and the hands to set to the task of executing them -- these are the prime necessities today.

Swamiji had worked himself to death, so had many a valiant monk of the Ramakrishna Order in the earlier days when resources were scarce, facilities meagre but commitment to the cause total. One such was Ketaki Maharaj [Swami Prabhananda (senior)] who literally laboured himself to death to build up several Ashramas in the north-east of India at Shella, Cherrapunjee and Shillong. For ten long years he worked among the Khasis in mountainous terrain to set up schools for the education of their children before he was laid to rest with muscular atrophy at the early age of 37. Swamiji had once said to his disciples, "I love you all so much, yet I wish to see you all die..." (labouring for the cause). Ketaki Maharaj did not let Swamiji down. He bled his way to death to awaken the Khasis to self-consciousness, their children to knowledge of the wide world and the Ramakrishna Order to the divine ideal of all-sacrificing service to the visible God that is Man.

Here, my friends, is the new philosophy of work, a way as ancient as the Himalayas, as sacred as the Vedas and as fluid as the life-transfusion of Swamiji and Ketaki Maharaj into the immobile body politic of the motherland. Jai Swamiji ! Jai Ketaki Maharaj ! Jai Ramakrishna Sangha !

Written by Sugata Bose

Photo : Ketaki Maharaj [Swami Prabhananda (senior)]