Jayatu Ramakrishna Keralam!
This is the story of a phenomenon within phenomenon; this – the story of how God made a land Her Own.
She likes it if I call Her Ramakrishna–Sarada. She is all the more pleased if I just call her Ramakrishna.
So this is what I will try to tell you: how Ramakrishna made Kerala her special abode. And let me use the understandable ‘he’ for Ramakrishna and ‘she’ for Sarada.
Like some readers do with a book, we can start reading this running book spread over time and space at any date. We look back if we want or jump ahead if fancy likes a leap.
We begin with 18th February of the year 1911, a hundred years back from today which is February 18, 2011.
Seventy-five years still earlier, on this date, in a village situated amongst vast, verdant rice fields, at the banks of large tanks, under the coolness of great, shade giving fruit trees, amidst a composite community made of beautifully and symmetrically woven strands of many micro communes, God chose to confine himself into the body of a human baby.
Sri Ramakrishna was born on Thursday, 18th February 1836 some minutes before the Sunrise.
The Sun had a good day on that day. He could glimpse at baby Ramakrishna as he was just opening his red eyes.
18th February 1911 might not be the birthday of Ramakrishna Keralam.
But yes, this is the day when it choose to make its first bright appearance in the middle of ‘rice-field’ (Ari+pad=Haripad) in the hearts of devotees as they saw and heard Swami Nirmalananda of the Ramakrishna Mission.
What did the devotees see in Haripad on 18th February 1911? What did they hear? What filled their ears and emerged as ecstatic tears? What was in the air? What possessed Swami Nirmalananda which went on to catch the lookers and the listeners? What was that pure joy which so palpably hovered over them and at the opportune moment entered into them?
Whose effortless grace, kick started the whole phenomenon within phenomenon?
No, it was not a kick which started it. It was the soft treads of Sarada that silently ignited it.
Mother Sarada reached Madras on Feb. 11, 1911 and stayed for a month.
Swami Nirmalananda came to Ernakulam on 15th February. After a night each in Ernakulam and Alleppey he reached Haripad on the 17th. After a few days there he went south to Quilon and made his return journey.
Holy Mother started for Rameshwaram on March 11, 1911.
She returned to Madras on the 15th and started for Bangalore on the 23rd.
She stayed there for three days. After showering benediction on Swami Ramakrishnananda, Swami Nirmalananda and devotees, she returned to Calcutta on April 11 by way of Madras and Rajamundry.
We suggest, judging from the spread of Ramakrishna Bhava that burst forth then and continued for the next quarter century and even up to half a century, that it was not for nothing that Mother Sarada chose to base herself for this long period in Madras, visit Rameshwaram and Madurai, return and then climb a hillock within the grounds of the `Ramakrishna Kerala Mission’ in Bangalore and cast her graceful glance at Kerala which lay in her south-western horizon.
What do we do with these dates?
We munch them. As we chew upon them we find that these dates have the sweetest of nectars hidden well inside them.
During the course of these days, at times a mere sight of Mother Sarada changed people’s lives. In this period sometimes, casual words from Swami Nirmalananda, even when heard at random, entered into somebody’s heart and lasted till his last breath.
The flow of that river of Ramakrishna Bhava which was set in motion in South has not ceased now. It presents a great picture in AndhraPradesh, Tamil Nadu, and Karnataka and even in Goa.
In Kerala the `out’ flow has been dammed and so seepage happens which has resulted in a large `in’ flow now. The river Sarada has somehow shied away, gone underground and is flowing now as the Saraswati.
Here we are trying to persuade her to come out and flow freely again. We sing her praises, as much as it lies within our modest means.
Sarada sent an innocuous request to her father in Jayarambati that she would like to go to Calcutta for a dip in Ganga on a particular auspicious date. We well know what followed.
So, so, casually Mother Sarada slipped in a word that she would like to go to Rameshwaram as her father in law had done many years earlier. We are trying to find out what followed.
What we do know is that an auspicious `grace laden vessel’ started from Orissa, that as it reached the South the multitude who entered it, received benedictions of palpable bliss and fearlessness.
A veritable Abhaya Kalpataru.
We need to try to understand something of Kerala if we wish to grasp what the Holy Mother and Swami Nirmalananda were doing in 1911.
In Kerala with its ancient mountains on the east and Arabian sea on the west, with their deep and swift rivers merrily dancing their way down into the sea, with pleasant moderate climate most of the time at most of the places, the great sea choosing to come in and getting itself land locked into picturesque back waters, where on the whole ‘every prospect’ did indeed please, one thing was amiss. ‘Man’ though not `vile’ was behaving queerly.
We will be touching upon many curious customs of the ‘natives’ when necessary.
We need to look at only one of them now, viz. the silent, relentless, grinding tyranny of the degenerate caste system.
The absurdities prevalent then could provide interesting snippets for any ‘believe it or not’ section in a popular magazine.
An oft-quote from Swami Vivekananda:
The poor Pariah is not allowed to pass through the same street as the high-caste man, but if he changes his name to a hodge-podge English name, it is all right; or to a Mohammedan name, it is all right. What inference would you draw except that these Malabaris are all lunatics, their homes so many lunatic asylums, and that they are to be treated with derision by every race in India until they mend their ways. Shame upon them that such wicked and diabolical customs are allowed; their own children are allowed to die of starvation, but as soon as they take up some other religion they are well fed.
In 1911 South India had been the main place of action for the Ramakrishna Mission.
In the Mission’s first General Report in 1912, Swami Saradananda informs first that ‘The atmosphere of the country having been grievously disturbed by political complications, we had to give up organising lectures among the public during the last six or seven years’ and again under the heading ‘Occasional Preaching done since 1897’ elaborates:
We may… remark here that owing to the sudden outburst of public enthusiasm in favour of a political nationalism and the consequent perturbed and perverted state of the public atmosphere, preaching in public had practically to be stopped in Northern India … In South India, however, the Madras and Bangalore centres have all along had to do every year some preaching in public. And we have seen before how the preaching tours of the Swamis in charge of those centres of the Mission have largely contributed to keep up the propaganda in many parts of South India’.
And Madras had been held to be headquarters of South India. The (General) Secretary reports under the heading ‘The Ramkrishna Home at Madras’ that `Mission centre was ... established in a building erected with funds raised for the purpose by the public of Madras and made over to the Ramkrishna Mission for its use as the South India head-quarters. According to the present year’s report from this South India Branch of the Mission, the missionary work here mainly consists in religious classes and discourses held in the Math and various other places.’
This unswerving Ramakrishna Bhakti of the devotees in South opened the flood gates of Mother’s grace.
Let us get back to Haripad of 18 Feb. 1911.
Something momentous was astir that day. Let us try to get a general picture.
Swami Nirmalananda spoke on this 75th Birthday celebration of Sri Ramakrishna in a meeting held by the Vedanta Society of Haripad. This was his first visit to Kerala. For the next 25 years he kept coming. Inspired by him, about fifty people became sannyasins of the Ramakrishna Mission. About a thousand became devotees. Some twenty Ashramas were founded. The psyche of the people of Kerala was turned on its head. The most bigoted place in India became the most progressive.
There were four memorable occasions in Ramakrishna Keralam, all of which centered in Haripad, viz. the first visit of Swami Nirmalananda in 1911, the opening of the new ashramas in 1913, visit of Swami Brahmananda in 1916 and first Sannyasa in Ramakrishna Keralam in 1923.
Swami Nirmalananda was always known for his `rare purity of character’, ability for hard working, dynamism, and knowledge of scriptures. He was not known for suffering wanton fools and petty minded people gladly. He resembled his hero Swami Vivekananda in some of his traits. We know they both shared the same Dutta title in their boyhood names.
But these characteristics which helped him play the leader and organizer role for the Mission was not in the fore front on this historic day.
It was his Guru Bhakti which just poured out of him this day.
It was as if he had been freshly given a full charge.
And we propose that exactly was the case.
Let us remember Mother Sarada staying put in Madras.
We know that Holy Mother’s eagerness to accept Swami Ramakrishnananda’s invitation to come south was conveyed to him by the end of January 1911. Swami Ramakrishnananda wrote to devotees giving them this glorious news. And we can be certain that he did not fail to communicate with Swami Nirmalananda who was his Lakshmana during Baranagore Math as well as in Alambazar Math days. He had been Swami Ramakrishnananda’s assistant for some time in Madras too. Swami Nirmalananda used to come very often to Madras for work and also to meet Swami Ramakrishnananda. So we can be equally sanguine that Swami Nirmalananda was called to Madras to help plan Mother’s South India tour.
Sri Padmanabhan Tampi (the future Swami Parananda of the Ramakrishna Mission), the President of the Vedanta Association of Haripad came to invite Swami Ramakrishnananda for the celebration of Sri Ramakrishna’s Birth Anniversary by their Association. We are informed that Swami Ramakrishnananda directed him to Swami Nirmalananda, the President of Ramakrishna Mission, Bangalore, who was in Madras Centre then. We come to know that Swami Nirmalananda’s programme was fixed up in Madras. We may presume that Swami Ramakrishnananda who was not in good health then and who was gathering all his energies for one last great offering at the feet of Holy Mother could not accept the invitation for these reasons.
We can see now that this historic invitation to Haripad was portending the Will of the Divine Mother. We feel this was how both Swami Ramakrishnananda and Swami Nirmalananda took the matter to be.
Where was Swami Nirmalananda between Feb. 11, 1911 and Feb. 14, 1911, when he started for Haripad?
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