CASTE SYSTEM: The Ramakrishna Mission and Swami Vivekananda

 

CASTE SYSTEM: The Ramakrishna Mission and Swami Vivekananda

Named after Ramakrishna Paramhansa, Swami Vivekananda’s guru, the Ramakrishna Mission stressed the ideal of salvation through social service and selfless action.

Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902), whose original name was Narendra Nath Dutta, combined the simple teachings of Sri Ramakrishna with his well founded modern outlook and spread them all over the world. After hearing him in the World Parliament of Religions at Chicago in 1893, the New York Herald reported, “We feel how foolish it is to send missionaries to this learned nation”. 

Swami Vivekananda

Indeed, Swami Vivekananda was the first Indian in modern times, who re-established the spiritual pre-eminence of the Vedanta philosophy on a global scale. But his mission was not simply to talk of religion. He was extremely pained at the poverty and the misery of his country men. He firmly believed that any reform could become successful only by uplifting the condition of the masses. Therefore, his clarion call to the people of India was to rise above the narrow confines of their ‘religion of the kitchen’ and come together in the service of the nation. By sending out this call, he made a signal contribution to the nascent nationalism of India. His sense of nationalism was, however, not narrow in its conception.

 He was convinced that many of the problems facing the mankind could only be overcome if the nations of the world come together on an equal footing. Therefore, his exhortation to the youth was to unite on the basis of a common spiritual heritage. In this exhortation, he became truly ‘the symbol of a new spirit and a source of strength for the future’.