By Gwilym Beckerlegge
The early days of the Ramakrishna Math and Mission (henceforth, movement) at the close of the 19th century are not so remote from our own era. There has been considerable debate, however, about the nature of the historical process that turned the ad hoc discourses of Sri Ramakrishna (c. 1836–86) into the warrant for the foundation of a worldwide movement. It has been claimed that the direction taken by the Ramakrishna movement’s instigator, Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902), reveals significant differences, if not actual discontinuities, between Vivekananda’s priorities and those of Ramakrishna, exemplifying ‘dilemmas of institutionalisation’ that have confronted many nascent traditions following the removal of their charismatic focus (O’Dea, 1961).
Vivekananda has been identified as one of the architects, if not the architect, of the 19th century construction of ‘Neo-Hinduism’ and the concept of ‘Hinduism’ as a ‘world religion’. While maintaining that its roots lie deep within Hindu tradition, the movement, which he did so much to shape, has presented itself as the conduit of an emergent universal religion. It has gathered sympathisers and members of its Math and Mission in India, the US and Europe since the 1890s, and subsequently in other parts of the world. It has arguably exercised an influence in India out of proportion to its size (see Beckerlegge, 2000: 110; Beckerlegge, 2006: 64–65). Yet, in spite of Vivekananda’s early efforts to secure a following in India, the US and London, the Ramakrishna movement has experienced a relatively modest institutional expansion, appealing seemingly to limited segments in these societies (see Beckerlegge, 2004: 306).
What is particularly striking about the Ramakrishna movement is not merely its standing in relation to its size, since its late 19th century formation, but as a rather different kind of Hindu movement. Quite distinctively at that time, Vivekananda’s message was targeted almost simultaneously at two audiences, in India and an incipient global following then scattered across the US with a secondary concentration in London. Consequently, the framing of his ‘message’ had to be central to Vivekananda’s project, including the representation of the religion called ‘Hinduism’, which various media would relay to his different, intended audiences. Crucial phases in the institutionalisation of the movement and, thus, the legacy of Ramakrishna, moreover, were completed relatively rapidly and with an international membership already in mind.
The distinctive history of the Ramakrishna movement’s expansion points strongly to the importance of its reliance upon the emergent global network created by modern media. In this chapter, I shall focus accordingly on ways in which the Ramakrishna movement, from Vivekananda to the present day, has utilised various media to represent itself and ‘a religion called Hinduism’ in two public spaces. The first of these is located in Indian civil society from the colonial era of the late 19th century to the present day. The second is a more remote and dispersed constituency, in a globalising, overarching public space (which also contains India) created by evolving forms of the media, including since the late 20th century the Internet.
The scattered following and institutional legacy created by Vivekananda’s extensive travels through India, the US, Britain and Western Europe in the 1890s has justifiably led him to be described (independently of claims made within the Ramakrishna movement’s literature) as the ‘first Hindu missionary’ (Brekke, 2002: 46). He anticipated the global gurus of the 1960s and not simply because of the geographical extent of his influence. Although Vivekananda did not use the term ‘globalising’, he perceived many of the hallmarks that are commonly associated today with ‘globalisation’; for example, increasingly complex interrelationships between regions and political, economic, technological and cultural systems, and increasingly rapid and far-reaching exchanges of information (Beckerlegge, 2004: 297f.).
The World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893 has been described by James Beckford (2003: 109, 115) as an occasion when representatives of different religions began to make common cause in the light of their shared experience of global scientific and other socioeconomic forces. Vivekananda’s emphasis upon serving India’s poor and oppressed was consistent with the ways in which Beckford has argued that the idea of globality has pressured representatives of religions to ‘identify and clarify their particular place in the world’, not at a high level of abstraction but by dealing with practical challenges, including humanitarian problems.
Vivekananda clearly recognised the power of the media in a global setting, including, for example, the pivotal role Britain played at that time in the dissemination of ideas (Vivekananda, 1989, 6: 365f; 3: 223), as he sought to influence his followers in a coordinated manner in the US, London and India. He relied heavily on new technologies in visual media that had been transplanted to Kolkata by the last quarter of the 19th century, including photography.
The Ramakrishna movement’s early utilisation of photographic portraits has provided a definitive way of representing Ramakrishna and Vivekananda down to the present day. Both subjects and devotees have played important parts in the construction of very specific and enduring visual images, which offer powerful representations of the nature of the respective missions of Ramakrishna and Vivekananda and, thus, of the religion called ‘Hinduism’. The most popular photographic image of Ramakrishna, the ‘Worshipped Pose’, depicts him in a state of apparent samadhi with his face turned towards the viewer and clothed in a manner more suggestive of a samnyasi than a married householder. The earliest members of the Math carried it when on pilgrimage; it has been installed for worship in the movement’s centres and transformed into a marble murti at Belur Math, the Ramakrishna movement’s headquarters (see Beckerlegge, 2000: 113–42). A photograph, possibly taken in 1891, of Vivekananda as the ‘Wandering Monk’ has acted powerfully on Hindus in India (although less so elsewhere). By 1892, Vivekananda had begun to request copies of this image for sending to interested parties. It was in Chicago in 1893 that Vivekananda’s defining image was created in the so-called Chicago Pose, in which his appearance as the heroic defender of ‘Hinduism’ in America was far-removed from that of the ‘Wandering Monk’ in India (Beckerlegge, 2000: 113–42; 2008). Vivekananda ordered more than a hundred copies of the ‘Chicago Pose’ photograph for distribution, indicative of the keen interest he took in the outcomes of photographic sessions. These, and other, iconographic representations have been effective in communicating distinct, although overlapping, meanings to admirers in India and more widely. In India, this has extended to civic memorials and to commercial advertising, which contributes to the Ramakrishna movement’s ‘brand recognition’.
The symbolic, photo-iconographic encapsulations of the meanings attached to Ramakrishna and Vivekananda are understood by devotees to embody and articulate the movement’s ‘message’, its representations of ‘Hinduism’ or more strictly ‘Hinduisms’ and, thus, are parts of that ‘message’. In this respect, it is significant, particularly when thinking about how this message was projected beyond India, that both Ramakrishna and Vivekananda were identified in these visual depictions with the renunciative strand in the Hindu tradition. At the World’s Parliament of Religions, Vivekananda (1989, 1: 3) spoke in the ‘name of the most ancient order of monks in the world’. The fuller elaboration of the ‘message’, however, owed much to the distinctive path that Vivekananda’s career took in the US, and thus to the nature of his immediate audience.
Vivekananda’s technique in promoting himself and his cause in the US during 1894 has been described as ‘simple, if not quite saintly’ (Gupta, 1974: 31). Vivekananda’s complex reliance upon a range of contemporary media was evidently anything but ‘simple’, revealing a deliberate management of the outcomes, whether in photographs (as noted above) or other media. When subjected to criticism and personal attacks in the US, Vivekananda directed his disciples in Madras to hold public meetings and pass resolutions of support for his mission and standing as a representative of Hindus. Once reported in the India press, these were to be sent as evidence of spontaneous support to Vivekananda’s influential contacts in the US who were to be asked in turn to ensure their publication in American newspapers (Vivekananda, 1989, 5: 31f., 36, 40; 6: 308; 7: 462; 8: 316, 321f.). Significantly, in relation to the concerns of this volume, Vivekananda instructed his supporters in Madras to pass a resolution at their public meeting, expressing their ‘entire satisfaction at my representation of Hinduism here [Chicago]’ (Vivekananda, 1989, 5: 31; emphasis added).1
The organisation of a Parliament of Religions with delegates is itself revealing of the way in which the concepts of ‘religion/religions’ had come to be used by the 1890s, and not just in the English-speaking regions of North America and the British Empire. The overwhelming majority of participants were American, but India and Japan produced the next largest bodies of delegates (18 and 17, respectively). The aims and agenda of the Parliament provided a terminology for its participants. As the official report of the Parliament illustrates, what was under discussion was the importance of ‘religion’ and the distinctive character of the ‘religions’ that comprised this category (for example, Barrows, 1893: 200–02).
In his representation of a ‘religion called Hinduism’ at Chicago, Vivekananda referred to being a ‘Hindu’ and to speaking on behalf of ‘Hindu people’ and ‘the religion of Hindus’. Strikingly, he made no mention of Ramakrishna in his addresses to the Parliament of Religions. In 1894, Vivekananda (1989, 6: 274) instructed his gurubhais ‘Spread only what he [Ramakrishna] came to teach. Never mind his name—it will spread itself’, arguing that to do otherwise would risk creating a new sect. It could be argued that this was in accord with the advaitin emphasis that dominated certain periods of Vivekananda’s career. Certainly, Vivekananda was anxious to emphasise only universal qualities in the public presentation and promotion of Ramakrishna’s teaching and to soften elements in Ramakrishna’s life and teaching that a more distant audience might find hard to comprehend or actually distasteful. This is evident in Vivekananda’s management of the release of information about Ramakrishna’s life and teaching to F. Max Müller (Vivekananda, 1989, 6: 364). Müller’s article ‘A Real Mahatman’ (1896) and fuller study Ramakrishna: His Life and Sayings (1975[1899]) first brought Ramakrishna, and tangentially his Indian followers, to the attention of a wider readership in Western Europe and the US.
Müller’s studies played a major role in embedding two elements in the popular but erudite portrayal of Ramakrishna, which was further embroidered by later sympathisers such as Romain Rolland and Christopher Isherwood. The first of these was that Ramakrishna was a Vedantin, which chimed well with romantic interests in Indian thought then shared by certain prominent European intellectuals, including orientalists (although Müller questioned whether Ramakrishna was an advaitin). The second was that Ramakrishna was very much a ‘mahatma’ with the right message for a new age about to dawn in India. C. H. Tawney, who published a short article on Ramakrishna just in advance of Müller in 1896, had also referred to Ramakrishna as a ‘modern’ Hindu saint, to his catholicity and influence on educated Indians (Beckerlegge, 2000: 8–11).2 Although later scholarly studies have substantially challenged these judgements, Müller’s account of Ramakrishna, written strongly, although not uncritically, under Vivekananda’s influence, has undoubtedly contributed to the positioning of the Ramakrishna movement in the vanguard of modern Hinduism as a force for change.
The Ramakrishna movement has continued to emphasise the ‘modern’ nature of its representation of Hinduism. The value placed upon modernity, for example, in the website maintained by Belur Math, the Ramakrishna movement’s headquarters, is inescapable. Ramakrishna is proclaimed to be ‘The Prophet of the Modern Age’, while Vivekananda is described in words attributed to A. L. Basham as ‘one of the main moulders of the modern world’ (www.belurmath.org/home.htm, accessed 18 May 2009). This is further reinforced in the statement of the three characteristics of the Ramakrishna movement’s ideology; namely, that it is modern, universal and practical (www.belurmath.org/Ideology.htm, accessed 18 May 2009).
The most commonly recognised, institutionalised expression of the modernising tendency within the Ramakrishna movement is the practice of seva. As Sheth and Sethi (1991: 51) have noted, the British monitored voluntary philanthropic activity carefully during the colonial era, because of its link to social reform and thus anti-colonial resistance, and the 1860 Registration of Societies Act was introduced for that purpose. Insofar as social and political conditions in colonial India allowed the growth of civil society (see, for example, Kaviraj, 1990), its parameters marked out a public sphere within which participants could debate social and religious reform.3 These included Hindu and other voluntary, indigenous organisations, sometimes responding directly to the interventions of the British administration and Christian missions. The Ramakrishna Mission was registered in accordance with the Societies Act in 1909 as a charitable organisation. The ‘Hinduism’, which the Ramakrishna movement represented under colonial rule, was a ‘Hinduism’ shaped by its ‘modern mahatma’, as heralded by Max Müller among others. Its efforts at that time were typically channelled into famine-relief, care of orphans and education (not issue-based campaigning). As Greenough (1982: 57–61) observes, acceptable forms of philanthropic intervention were rewarded under British rule.
Vivekananda represented Hinduism at the World’s Parliament of Religions as ‘the mother of religions’ and as one of three ‘religions’ that have ‘come down to us from time prehistoric’ (Vivekananda, 1989, 1: 3, 6). In so doing, he was instrumental, although he was not alone in this, in shaping what has come to be regarded as the modern categorisation of Hindu tradition, under the designation of ‘Hinduism’, as one among many ‘world religions’. He did not explore the category of ‘religion/s’ systematically, and many of his statements about ‘religion/religions’ were normative rather than descriptive in an intentionally comprehensive and analytical sense. In summary, he tended to characterise ‘religion/s’ as ‘so many attempts by the human soul to grasp and realise the infinite’ (Vivekananda, 1989, 1: 332), indicative of the idealism and transcendentalism of his underlying world view. Vivekananda’s references to the different starting points, stages and approaches that he discerned in the ‘religion’, from ‘the lowest fetishisms to the highest absolutism’ (Vivekananda, 1989, 1: 332; cf. 2: 57–69), are suggestive of his familiarity with currently popular, social Darwinist theories about the origins and evolution of ‘religions’.
An emphasis upon universalism and tolerance as characteristics of ‘Hinduism’, often in contrast to the exclusivism of missionary Christianity, has been identified by Indira Chowdhury-Sengupta (1998) as Vivekananda’s contribution to the ‘reconstruction’ of Hinduism on the international platform provided by the World’s Parliament of Religions. The representation of ‘Hinduism’ as universalistic, tolerant and non-sectarian has been put to use in India’s political arena, both during the campaign for independence and more latterly in Hindutva rhetoric. But it should not be forgotten that religious universalism would not have been an unfamiliar ideal to many of Vivekananda’s earliest and most influential followers in the US and London, thoroughly acquainted as many of these were with the tenets of New England Transcendentalism and Theosophy.
There was undoubtedly an ecumenical appearance to Vivekananda’s construction of ‘religion’ and ‘Hinduism’ to which partners in this enterprise, such as Müller, wholeheartedly responded (cf. Fitzgerald, 2005: 176–78). When Vivekananda came to develop his representation of ‘Hinduism’ through his theory of Practical Vedanta, he retained an emphasis on universalism, claiming that Vedanta was in accord with reason, consistent with modern scientific knowledge and thus in tune with the modern age. By 1897 he had declared that ‘what we really mean by the word Hindu is really the same as Vedantist’ (Vivekananda, 1989, 3: 396). In 1898, Vivekananda asserted:
Whether we call it Vedantism or any ism, the truth is that Advaitism is the last word of religion and thought ... I believe it is the religion of the future enlightened humanity. The Hindus may get the credit of arriving at it earlier than other races, they being an older race. (Vivekananda, 1989, 6: 415)
It is beyond question that, in the process of reaching his conclusions about the nature of a modern, Practical Vedanta, Vivekananda had considerably modified earlier and more traditional understandings of advaita.4 But Vivekananda was also able to incorporate an existing degree of elasticity in the usage of the terms ‘Vedanta’ and ‘Advaita’ in 19th century Bengal, where Dermot Killingley (1976: 131; cf. 134) has noted that the term Vedanta was often used to mean Advaita ‘as if the other versions of Vedanta did not exist’. Although when Vivekananda referred to Vedantism he invariably meant Advaita Vedanta, his flexible use of Advaita, Vedanta, the ‘religion’ of the Hindus and ‘Hinduism’ created a designation for a universal religion (Vedanta) embedded in a Hindu vocabulary. The promotion of Vedanta in this sense would continue to rely on the blurred distinctions inherent in Vivekananda’s terminology, while being unable to cast off many of their culturally specific connotations. Richard King (1999: 43) argues:
He [Vivekananda] more than any other figure, was probably most responsible for promoting the idea that Advaita Vedanta was the ‘essence of Hinduism’ and the culmination of Indian philosophical development. Such a view is highly misleading and homogenises the rich diversity of Indian culture under a single Neo-Vedanta banner.
The impact of Vivekananda’s presence at the Parliament of Religions on his subsequent career was considerable. It brought him into contact with an expanding network of wealthy American and British sponsors. Reports of his triumphs in Chicago, some considerably exaggerated, ensured widespread coverage in India of his reception when he returned in 1897. These achievements would not have been possible had Vivekananda not been highly media savvy.
The shape of Vivekananda’s historical career is reflected in a complex movement, legally separated into two distinct but coordinated wings (the Math and Mission) in India. It has clusters of adherents beyond India, but many of these have no personal association with, or connection to, the subcontinent. The movement operates in different ways in different regions. In the US and Western Europe, its branches are commonly called Vedanta Centres rather than centres of the Ramakrishna Math and/or Mission. The former’s offering of seva is typically restricted to teaching through publications, public lectures and the guidance given by the members of the Math attached to centres. For the most part, the Ramakrishna movement’s outreach across India is dependent on a comprehensive range of seva activities in the areas of education (including publishing), health and rural development.
Yet, in spite of the potential of the mature movement’s outreach, attachment to the principle of avoiding the appearance of sectarianism has had a direct impact on the methods it employs to disseminate its message. Students in the movement’s schools and colleges undoubtedly are exposed systematically to the movement’s values and teaching, but this could not be said of the large numbers of casual users of seva provision, such as outdoor dispensaries. The Swami then in charge of the Ramakrishna Mission Home of Service in Varanasi, a major hospital, observed to me that the role of the movement was to offer seva but not conditionally as a strategy designed to proselytise. The ‘Spiritual and Cultural Work’ section in the movement’s annual General Report, in effect, defines the aims and values that the movement seeks to disseminate through its activities and the media it employs as part of the ‘Mass Contact’ that draws people to its centres; namely, ‘the dissemination of the spiritual and cultural ideals of India and through various types of activity … to give a practical shape to the teaching of Sri Ramakrishna that all religions are true’ (Anon., 2002: 12). This invitatory quality has been a consistent hallmark of the Ramakrishna movement’s outreach, which has toned its use of the media. As Whitworth and Shiels (1982: 163) noted in their study of Vedanta in the US over a quarter of a century ago, ‘they evangelize only in the mildest way by advertising their meetings discretely and routinely’.
The relationship between the aim of disseminating Indian spiritual and cultural ideals and making manifest the ‘truth’ of all religions has characterised the ‘message’ that the Ramakrishna movement has sought to represent through the media. For example, the website of Britain’s Ramakrishna Vedanta Centre declares that Vedanta includes the teachings of all of India’s religious and spiritual teachers, and ‘the various truths found in all the religions of the world … A Vedantist is a seeker of truth who accepts and respects all religions as paths to the same goal’ (‘What Is Vedanta?’ www.vedantauk.com, accessed 14 May 2009). The simultaneous emphases placed upon the ancient Hindu roots of Vedanta and, thus, the authenticity of the Ramakrishna movement’s place within recent Hindu tradition, and the universal nature of Vedanta is echoed and spelled out on the website of the Vedanta Society of Southern California: ‘Vedanta is the philosophical foundation of Hinduism; but while Hinduism includes aspects of Indian culture, Vedanta is universal in its application and is equally relevant to all countries, all cultures, and all religious backgrounds’ (‘Overview’, www.vedanta.org, accessed 15 May 2009).
There are grounds for arguing, however, that the universalist dimension of the Ramakrishna movement’s message has coexisted in unresolved tension with its affirmation of its Hindu roots. The extent to which the movement has been successful, through its cultic activity and generation of a coherent philosophy, in focusing on the ‘universals’, which Vedanta celebrates in all religions, has long been debated by both the movement’s adherents and external commentators (see, for example, Beckerlegge, 2000, Part 3 and 2004; French, 1974, particularly Chapters 9 and 11). In India, a dramatic illustration of this was the lengthy (1980–95) but unsuccessful court case brought to establish the separateness under the Indian Constitution of ‘Ramakrishnaism’ from Hinduism. In the US, increasing ‘Indianization’ of activities, following the rise in the number of Indian Vedantists who migrated to the US after 1965, has proved divisive in some Vedanta Centres.5
Like the websites of Britain’s Ramakrishna Vedanta Centre and the Vedanta Society of Southern California, Belur Math’s website, which is designated the ‘official website of the Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission’, gives prominence to the promotion of the harmony of religions. This, however, is connected far more immediately to the movement’s history in India and the roles of Ramakrishna and Vivekananda as modernisers of the Hindu tradition. While Ramakrishna ‘did not identify himself with any sect of Hinduism but accepted Hinduism as a whole’ (www.belurmath.org/Ideology.htm), Vivekananda gave to Hinduism, previously ‘a loose confederation of many different sects’, ‘a clear-cut identity, a distinct profile’ (www.belurmath.org/swamivivekananda.htm). Thus, Vivekananda is also said to have ‘refurbished’ Hindu philosophy, revealed the ‘true foundations’ of India’s culture, defining and strengthening ‘the sense of unity as a nation’ (www.belurmath.org/swamivivekananda.htm).
It is perhaps hardly surprising that the Ramakrishna movement’s websites, which are not uniform in style, carry different emphases in their initial, overview statements of the concerns of the movement, given the history of the movement and the major concentrations to date of its following. Without overemphasising such differences, our examples would appear to indicate that these correlate loosely to the site’s likely, primary concern with the interests of followers and inquirers either in India or elsewhere, predominantly the US or Europe. Thus, while the British and American websites feel compelled to begin with an explanation of what is meant by Vedanta, Belur Math’s website proceeds under its listed goals to include reference to jnana, bhakti, Yoga and karma, which it assumes its audience will understand as these Hindu concepts are not explained. Unlike the other two examples, the Belur Math’s website devotes considerable time to its presentation of Vivekananda’s role in the development of ‘modern’ Hinduism and the growth of the Indian nation.
In creating a movement with a complex structure and facing, in its terms, both East and West, the twin thrusts of Vivekananda’s mission bequeathed to the contemporary Ramakrishna movement the challenge of how to reconcile a universalist message with the affirmation of Ramakrishna and, particularly, Vivekananda as modernisers of Hinduism. It would be very difficult for the movement to abandon this presentation of its message, which contains a particular representation of the ‘religion called Hinduism’, without abandoning its past. It is, however, the coexistence of its ‘ideal of religious harmony and universalism’ and ‘its cultural tradition [Hinduism]’ (Carey, 1987: 141ff) that have periodically brought to the surface the kinds of internal disagreements noted above, leading Carl Jackson (1994: 74) to speak of the movement’s swamis appearing to ‘work as missionaries of Hinduism in the West’.6
In the final part of this section, I shall restrict myself to examining two relatively recent developments, namely, the Ramakrishna Math and Mission’s move onto the Internet and its entry into celebrating its heritage, and that of India, through the creation of museums and similar institutions.
Gary Bunt (2001: 57) has noted that there is a considerable amount of ‘high-tech’ Hindu-related material on the Internet, reflecting India’s thriving software industry. Yet, as is the case with many religious organisations, much of the use made of the Internet to date by the Ramakrishna movement (although this is constantly developing) has been at the level of exploiting it as little more than an elaborate notice board, announcing activities and publications and providing portals to a repository of information concerning its history and philosophy, with increasing online access to some of its core publications (cf. Beckerlegge, 2001: 225). This is, as Anastasia Karaflogka (2002: 284f.) has observed an example of religion being on cyberspace as distinct from the more radical transformation of the practice of religion in cyberspace, or cyber-religion in a fuller sense (see, for example, Scheifinger, 2009). The websites of the Ramakrishna Vedanta Centre in Britain and the Vedanta Society of Southern California, cited above, take this form. The site maintained by Belur Math provides considerably more detail about the movement’s history in India and biographies of major personalities. In addition, it contains a lot more information about current seva projects, which is linked to the need to encourage donations. Some Indian centres, but far from all, have their own websites. The structure of these websites tends to resemble a scaled-down version of the Belur Math site. A centre with a particular historic attachment to one of Ramakrishna’s first disciples will be likely to use its site to celebrate this connection. See, for example, the website of the Ramakrishna Ashrama at Sargachhi, founded by Swami Akhandananda (http://www.rkmsargachi.org).
While not lagging behind in the digital age, the Ramakrishna movement has arguably been slower than some other movements to establish an elaborate presence on the Internet, possibly because of the highly devolved nature of its organisation in which so much depends upon individual branch centres. In moving onto the Web, the movement’s long-established, ‘mild’ form of outreach has remained unchanged, although more multimedia in style. This must raise questions about how effective the movement will prove to be as a presenter of its ‘message’, including its representation of ‘Hinduism’, when competing for attention in the global, often strident, multimedia environment. What we do not find in the movement’s websites whether in India or the US, as far as I have been able to determine, is any systematic attempt to foster the level of interactivity comparable to that generated by, for example, Islamic ‘cyber-imam’ sites, sites offering cyber-participation in devotional rituals (for example, Christian cyber-churches), or the sophistication and degree of interactivity that characterises the e-journal Hinduism Today, founded in 1979 by Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami. The advent of the Internet to date, therefore, has left the relationship between the Ramakrishna movement’s swamis, institutions, sympathisers and enquirers fundamentally unchanged.
Heritage celebration, particularly in the form of museums and heritage centres, has become an increasingly significant medium through which a movement may promote its ‘message’. Heritage preservation in India, however, is complicated not just by the financial implications but also by the climate, as is particularly evident in Kolkata. The relatively recent origins of the Ramakrishna movement and the degree of certainty possible about locations associated with its earliest days is reflected in the preservation of samadhis, some artefacts associated with Ramakrishna, Vivekananda and other prominent early disciples, and commemoration of locations, both in the villages where Ramakrishna and Sarada Devi were born and in Kolkata. Over approximately the last decade, the movement has created the Sri Ramakrishna Museum at Belur Math,7 and in 2004 opened a Memorial and Cultural Complex on the site of Vivekananda’s ancestral home, which was in such a state of decay that it needed almost total restoration.8 The renovation of Vivekananda’s house had been actively pursued within the Ramakrishna movement since the 1960s (the centenary of Vivekananda’s birth), but the project was not brought to fruition sooner because of unresolved problems relating to acquiring the land and the dilapidation of the original building.9
Vivekananda’s house provides a new way of underlining two persistent themes in the movement’s representation of both Vivekananda and the ‘religion called Hinduism’—their significance to the nation and their modern character. The completion of the Vivekananda house project has been described within the movement as ‘the nation’s homage’ to Vivekananda (Anon., 2004). In paying its homage to Vivekananda, the nation is acknowledging ‘one of the first of the earliest leaders to give to the nation a vision of a new India’ (Anon., 2004, no page numbers).10 The impetus that Vivekananda gave to India’s modernisation is delineated through reported judgements by Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose, which refer to his ‘modern’ approach to life’s problems and his harmonisation of science and religion (Anon., 2004, no page numbers; see p. 1 above). Modern Hinduism is ‘the creation of Swami Vivekananda. Swamiji brought about a grand unification of Hinduism by reconciling its various sects and schools of thought. He interpreted ancient scriptures and concepts in terms of modern thought’ (Anon., 2004, no page numbers). His work was one of ‘renewal’, ‘rejuvenation’ and ‘modernisation’ (Anon., 2004, no page numbers), which not only contributed to the unity of the nation but also created an organised and unified, modern Hinduism. It was a religion that could stand confidently among other religions, if not slightly above them, at the World’s Parliament of Religions, not just as one of the world’s most ancient religions, but as the ‘mother of religions’.
The Sri Ramakrishna Museum and the Vivekananda House Memorial and Cultural Complex have blended the movement’s now well-established practice of treasuring personal artefacts, as in Ramakrishna’s room at Dakshineshwar, Vivekananda’s room at Belur Math and Swami Akhandananda’s room at Sargachhi, with reinforcing commemoration and evoking national recognition in a manner comparable to the Vivekananda Rock Memorial at Kanyakumari. In an era when Hindu ‘heroes’ have taken on new meanings within the context of Indian politics, some Indian visitors to these museums may well attach meanings to the historical significance of the lives of Ramakrishna and, particularly, Vivekananda, which, while overlapping in parts, will differ significantly from those picked up by a Vedantist visiting from the US or Europe.
The distinctive formation of the Ramakrishna Math and Mission bears the stamp of its origins in an era in which we see the accelerating growth of mass, global media and transport networks. Just as Vivekananda could not have created the international following that sustained the early growth of the Ramakrishna movement without this infrastructure, so too the shape and substance of his ‘message’ reflected something of the experience and outlook of an individual living at a time when international travel and more rapid communication were widening experience and knowledge of the world.
Commenting on the impact of diversification, pluralism and increasing exposure to rapid and interactive mass media on contemporary societies, Alf Linderman (2004: 308) has observed:
Where stories and meta-stories [traditionally provided by religious traditions] used to be shared stories in the local context, such stories can still in a sense be shared but now in a much more complex fashion … all elements do not necessarily have to be shared by the same group of people. Individuals can compose their own stories by combining elements from different contexts.
The meta-story that Vivekananda presented at Chicago was not centred on Ramakrishna as the source of a new sampradaya. Rather, his story spoke of ‘Hinduism’ as one of the world’s most ancient religions, which, because of its very maturity, had now arrived at the ‘last word of religion’, the universal religion embodied in Advaita Vedanta, in advance of other traditions (see Vivekananda, 1989, 6: 415). At the heart of Vivekananda’s story, as we noted earlier, lies his elision of the meanings attached to Vedanta and Advaita, which he fused with his notion of ‘Hinduism’, represented at Chicago and subsequently as a ‘world religion’. Mindful of the expectations of his American and British audience, this expression of ‘Hinduism’, synonymous with the universal religion, is characterised as rational, in accord with current scientific thinking and thus a modernising force within Hindu society. Yet, if Vivekananda may be said to have composed his own story in the light of his experience, of which his relationship with Ramakrishna was one element, it is no less true that his followers in the US and London have done much the same, both at the time and subsequently. This is most apparent in the various ways in which they responded to Vivekananda and the different values they placed on the connection between the universal religion of Vedanta and India’s Hindu tradition (see Beckerlegge, 2000 Part 3; 2004).
Vivekananda has been hailed within the Ramakrishna movement for giving Hinduism ‘a clear-cut identity, a distinct profile’, and reproached by some scholars for greatly contributing to the formation of what they regard as the artificial and misleading category of ‘Hinduism’. As Brian Smith (2005: 114) has pointed out, however, those who question the authority of neo-Hindu positions are themselves operating on the basis of an ‘essentialised’ notion of an ‘authentic’ or ‘genuine’ Hindu tradition against which all else should be judged. It is indeed difficult to envisage how the structure of Indian religious movements could have remained unchanged under the influence of British law relating to the registration of organisations and the ownership of land and property. Similarly, the shape and emphasis of the culture and belief shared by those who felt most directly the British presence could hardly be expected to have remained unaffected by this encounter. Vivekananda’s accounts of the Hindu tradition were conformed to the expectations of his audience at the World’s Parliament of Religions. The need to define one’s world view becomes more self-conscious when called upon to explain it to an audience that does not share it and generally has little knowledge of it. Vivekananda’s hierarchical ranking of religious insights, culminating in non-dualist thinking in a manner quite distinct from Ramakrishna’s teaching, strengthens the impression that Vivekananda was determined to impose a structure upon the religion he called ‘Hinduism’ in relation to other ‘religions’. It was, of course, in no small part a riposte to the claimed superiority of Christianity. Smith (2005: 115) notes that, to present ‘Hinduism’ as ‘religion’ itself (in its universal form), is to represent ‘Hinduism’ as the ‘summary and supersession of all “religions”’.
The fuzziness in Vivekananda’s fusing of Vedanta and universal religion—no less the product of his distinctive mission—has been part of his legacy to the Ramakrishna movement. If we are to offer possible reasons for the pattern of the movement’s expansion, as well as attempting to understand the nature of its message, it may well be that the coexistence of two different, subtly nuanced presentations of its message in India and its other strongholds of the US and Britain have inhibited its ability to project itself as effectively as some other Hindu movements. This may be particularly the case when one of these emphases, that relating to Vedanta as the universal religion, has encouraged only the ‘mildest’ forms of self-promotion by the Math and Mission.
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1 On Vivekananda’s exposure to, and use of, the newsprint media, see Vivekananda (1989, Vols 2, 3; 1997), Basu and Ghosh (1969), Burke (1983–87).
2 Originally published in The Imperial and Asiatic Quarterly Review and Oriental and Colonial Record (January–April, 1896), Tawney’s article has been republished in Mookerjee (1976: 37–42).
3 Smita Sabhlok (2009: 503) notes the argument that religious, caste and communal groups fall outside the domain of civil society because of their exclusive membership, but concludes it would be difficult to deny the impact of religious organisation on the public sphere.
4 In my extended analysis of Vivekananda’s theory of Practical Vedanta (Beckerlegge, 2006: 206–51), I argue that this evolved as a response to the needs of his followers in the US and London and was not, as is often assumed, the outcome of an attempt to provide a philosophical rationale for a sadhana centred on the offering of seva.
5 See McDermott (2003) on tension between Indian and ‘Western’ expressions, and expectations of Vedanta.
6 The movement continues to insist upon having only Indian-born samnyasis as heads of its centres, which has limited its capacity for expansion.
7 This has no independent presence on the Internet but is described with photographs under ‘Places to see at Belur Math’ at www.belurmath.org/home.htm.
8 The Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda’s Ancestral House and Cultural Centre has only a limited website presence in the Belur Math website.
9 Somewhat ironically, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) orchestrated the campaign that led to the most dramatic commemoration of the centenary of Vivekananda’s birth, the Rock Memorial erected at Kanyakumari, which is now managed by Vivekananda Kendra. The project was supported by the Ramakrishna movement, and the memorial was dedicated by the then president of the Ramakrishna Math and Mission.
10 In simply reporting this claim by the movement, we should note that assertions of Vivekananda’s status as a ‘national’ figure have proved contentious in the arena of Indian communalist politics. For example, Christian groups in Tamil Nadu opposed the RSS’s campaign to establish the Rock Memorial on the grounds that the RSS was promoting Vivekananda as a Hindu, rather than a truly national, hero.