Early Life of Pandita Ramabai
Her father, Anant Shastri Dongre, was a Sanskrit scholar with a modern mind and outlook. He father supervised her education and allowed her to remain unmarried. He personally tutored her in Puranic Sanskrit. When her father and mother died, Ramabai was sixteen years old, unmarried, and able to read Sanskrit language. She and her brother travelled throughout India lecturing on female education and social reform. Ramabai`s brother died in Kolkata and she married his close friend, Bipen Behan Das Medhavi (a Shudra by caste). The next year, at age twenty-three, Ramabai gave birth to a daughter. Unfortunately her husband died the following year, and she returned to Pune.
Returning to Pune, Ramabai began to work with reformers to educate women through the Arya Mahila Samaj (Aryan`s Women`s Society). While in Pune she gave evidence before the Hunter Education Commission and stressed the urgent need for women doctors and teachers. Determined to learn English and study medicine, Ramabai sought help from members of the Anglo-Catholic Community of St. Mary the Virgin whose Mother House was at Wantage in Oxfordshire, England. They were able to give her some assistance while the rest of her expenses were met through the sale of Stri Dharma Neeti (Morals for Women), her book urging women to take charge of their own lives. Ramabai, her young daughter, and a travelling companion, Anandibai Bhagat, left for England in 1883. Soon after the three of them had settled at Wantage, Ramabai declared she was unwilling to convert to Christianity. Some months later Anandibai committed suicide leaving Ramabai extremely shaken.
Ramabai was only twenty-five years of age and had already watched her parents, her brother, her husband, and her closest friend die. It was at this time, alone with her small daughter in a strange country that Ramabai decided to accept baptism. She continued her studies until 1886 when she decided to sail for America to attend the graduation ceremonies of her cousin Anandibai Joshi.
To finance this trip and popularize her cause Ramabai wrote `The High Caste Hindu Woman.` Ten thousand copies of this book were sold before Ramabai had left America. In 1887 Boston admirers set up a Ramabai Association to support her work in India. She traveled throughout the United States and Canada studying educational, philanthropic, and charitable institutions and lecturing to various groups. By May of 1888, she had collected over 30,000 dollars in the name of her association.
Pandita Ramabai`s Campaign in India
Sharada Sadan
In India Pandita Ramabai established Sharada Sadan (Home of Wisdom), a school for widows, in Mumbai. This was to be a non-sectarian school where, however, all the caste rules of Brahmins were meticulously observed. It attracted some high-caste Hindu widows, but generally the Hindu community remained suspicious of Ramabai`s motives.
Ramabai tried to prevent criticism by forming an Executive Committee composed of reformers who were known as staunch Hindus. This plan did not work and less than one year later Mumbai newspapers carried articles critical of Ramabai and her school. When financial problems forced her to move the school to Pune, the newspaper Kesari charged her with converting widows to Christianity. Ramabai`s admitted crime was allowing widows to attend her personal prayer meetings. By 1893 twenty-five girls were withdrawn. But there was no dearth of widows in need of shelter and before long Ramabai had other students. By 1900 the Sharada Sadan had trained eighty women who were able to earn their own living through teaching or nursing.
Mukti School
Ramabai`s second school, Mukti, was established thirty miles outside of Pune at Kedgaon following the famine that began in 1897. She began taking women and children who were victims of famine into Sharada Sadan where she fed and clothed them, and enrolled them in her school. Attempting to control the plague, the government placed restrictions on the movement of people; in Pune the city magistrate placed a limit on the number of inmates in Sharada Sadan. Since she could not keep famine victims in Pune, Ramabai took her charges to Kedgaon where she had purchased 100 acres of land. By 1900 this venture had grown into a major institution housing 2,000 women and children attending school and involved in industrial training and production. Financing for Mukti came from an American committee which willingly approved all her schemes.
Ramabai designed a remedial curriculum. Literature which was selected for its emphasis on moral models would bring about a spirit of caring; classes in physiology and botany were included to teach students about their own bodies and the physical world in which they lived. Industrial training was included in printing, carpentry, tailoring, masonry, wood-cutting, weaving and needlework, as well as training in farming and gardening. All students were required to join unions or societies such as the Temperance Union or the Christian Endeavor Society in an effort to break down caste barriers and develop new loyalties based on interest. As members of these societies, the children learned simple parliamentary rules and were encouraged to take charge of their own affairs.
Philosophy of Pandita Ramabai
Ramabai urged the inmates of her home to become Christians and developed a unique educational program to suit their needs. Her own version of Christianity was one comprised of assorted doctrines, and she combined ideas and she combined ideas she had learned from the sisters at Wantage, and from Roman Catholic, Jewish, and Indian Christian friends. Ramabai saw caste as the great flaw in Hindu society. It led to false valuing of the intellect and condemnation of physical work. Caste associations promoted narrow self-interest and prevented the development of a democratic spirit.
The educational work of Ramabai was commendable and had greatly impressed her contemporaries. However, her connection with Christianity subdued the impact of her contribution to women`s education. Her work angered a lot of prominent men in western India as she was an acknowledged Christian as was the ruling power and hatred of the latter was growing daily. Ramabai believed the intensity of their anger was related to the fact that many of her pupils came from the higher castes. She argued that these men would have remained unconcerned if her work were confined to low-caste women.
In 1919, the king of England bestowed on her the Kaiser-i-Hind award, one of the highest awards that an Indian could boast of during the colonial regime. Ramabai is celebrated as a national icon of women`s development movement in India. Ramabai`s greatest legacy was her effort, the first in India, to educate widows and the pupils she left behind to carry on her work.
Sri
Ramakrishna instilled in these young men the spirit of renunciation and
brotherly love for one another. One day he distributed ochre robes
among them and sent them out to beg food. In this way he himself laid
the foundation for a new monastic order. He gave specific instructions
to Narendra about the formation of the new monastic Order. In the small
hours of 16 August 1886 Sri Ramakrishna gave up his mortal body.
of
the followers of Sri Ramakrishna thought of him in relation to their
own personal lives, Vivekananda thought of the Master in relation to
India and the rest of the world. As the prophet of the present age,
what was Sri Ramakrishna’s message to the modern world and to India in
particular? This question and the awareness of his own inherent powers
urged Swamiji to go out alone into the wide world. So in the middle of
1890, after receiving the blessings of Sri Sarada Devi, the divine
consort of Sri Ramakrishna, known to the world as Holy Mother, who was
then staying in Kolkata, Swamiji left Baranagar Math and embarked on a
long journey of exploration and discovery of India.
The
immediate need was to provide food and other bare necessities of life
to the hungry millions. For this they should be taught improved methods
of agriculture, village industries, etc. It was in this context that
Vivekananda grasped the crux of the problem of poverty in India (which
had escaped the attention of social reformers of his days): owing to
centuries of oppression, the downtrodden masses had lost faith in their
capacity to improve their lot. It was first of all necessary to infuse
into their minds faith in themselves. For this they needed a
life-giving, inspiring message. Swamiji found this message in the
principle of the Atman, the doctrine of the potential divinity of the
soul, taught in Vedanta, the ancient system of religious philosophy of
India. He saw that, in spite of poverty, the masses clung to religion,
but they had never been taught the life-giving, ennobling principles of
Vedanta and how to apply them in practical life.
It
was when these ideas were taking shape in his mind in the course of his
wanderings that Swami Vivekananda heard about the World’s Parliament of
Religions to be held in Chicago in 1893. His friends and admirers in
India wanted him to attend the Parliament. He too felt that the
Parliament would provide the right forum to present his Master’s
message to the world, and so he decided to go to America. Another
reason which prompted Swamiji to go to America was to seek financial
help for his project of uplifting the masses.
His
speeches at the World’s Parliament of Religions held in September 1893
made him famous as an ‘orator by divine right’ and as a ‘Messenger of
Indian wisdom to the Western world’. After the Parliament, Swamiji
spent nearly three and a half years spreading Vedanta as lived and
taught by Sri Ramakrishna, mostly in the eastern parts of USA and also
in London.
to rouse the religious consciousness of the people and create in them pride in their cultural heritage;
