'Sri Sri Ramkrishna Kathamrita'

Mahendranath Gupta (1854-1932), who wrote under the pen name M, was the author of Kathamrita. He was a devotee of Sri Ramkrishna and also the headmaster of Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar's school. He was called 'Master Mahashay' in school and ‘Master in Ramkrishna's circle. He was a frequent visitor to Dakshineshwar. When Vidyasagar complained that he was 'visiting Ramkrishna too much' and was neglecting his school duties he immediately put in his papers, a decision Ramkrishna endorsed.

Like many other devotees of Ramkrishna, Mahendranath was associated with the Brahmo Samaj. In 1882 he was introduced to Ramkrishna during an extremely difficult period in his family life (though he claims that he may have first met Ramkrishna when he was four). He paid regular visits to the Dakshineswar Kali Temple until Ramkrishna's death in 1886. Returning home, he would note down in his personal diary the day's events everyday, including conversations and Ramkrishna's sayings, in detail. These notes were compiled into 'Sri Sri Ramkrishna Kathamrita' ('The Gospels of Sri Ramkrishna'). It is an exceptionally important book in spiritual literature because it records everything about Ramkrishna, his daily life and his actual conversation with his devotees and visitors which ranged from casual talk to spiritual discourse. Mahendranath's contemporaries, including Ramkrishna's wife and his principal disciple, Swami Vivekananda, have authenticated his account.

Kathamrita, as Sumit Sarkar points out in 'Writing Social History', crosses social frontiers when the rustic semi-literate pujari-cum-mystic at Rani Rashmoni's (herself a low caste Koiborto) temple becomes the guru of upper caste English educated city 'bhadralok'. Incidentally, Ramkrishna is said to have disliked the crowds of villagers that came to see him when he occasionally visited Kamarpukur, his birthplace (see 'Life of Sri Ramkrishna: Compiled from Various Authentic Sources' pp. 290-1). There are, however, ample evidence in Kathamrita that he was more than happy (even flattered) to welcome the urban intelligentsia, both Hindu and Brahmo, to his fold. This attraction for opposites was mutual. The English educated middle class youth, trapped between Hindu and Brahmo orthodoxy and confronting Western cultural domination, found the simple rustic charm of Ramkrishna seductive. He fell under spell of his ‘otherness’ which was expressed in an idiom, values and personalities different from his own.

Structurally and stylistically Kathamrita is a very interesting text. Each day's entry meticulously records the date, time and place and has a title indicating its content, followed by a description of the physical surroundings - the trees, the river and the sky - in a highly formal, literary and poetic language (reminiscent of Bankimchandra's prose). Then the author closes up to Ramkrishna in his room in conversation with his devotees and the idiom suddenly changes to colloquial rusticity. These two radically different linguistic idioms are juxtaposed through the entire text. This rusticity, representing the oral culture of peasants, Partha Chatterjee points out in 'A Religion of Urban Domesticity' (Subaltern Studies, Volume VII, pp 44), shows 'great conceptual richness, metaphoric power and dialectical skill'. Ramkrishna contextualizes his themes though parables and similes drawn from everyday rural and bhadralok life. But the chronological arrangement of the different sections of the Kathamrita produces a repetitiveness, the same stories, the same jokes are repeated over and over again.

In a sense Kathamrita is also a bilingual text in its repeated employment of English terms, phrases and quotations. It is interesting that Mahendranath introduces many of his entries with a heading in English, especially in sections in which Ramkrishna discusses questions of a philosophical nature. He also repeatedly translates various philosophical concepts used by Ramkrishna in English. He obviously seeks to place Ramkrishna's spiritual discourse within the larger framework of Western philosophical ideas. For example, in a section entitled 'Perception of the Infinite' he adds a footnote saying, 'Compare discussion about the order of perception of the Infinite and of the Finite in Max Muller's Hibbert Lectures and Gifford Lectures'. He is trying here to assert that the common philosophy of a rustic Indian preacher is no less sophisticated, no less classical in its intellectual heritage, than the speculations of learned modern European philosophers.

Ramkrishna in Kathamrita appears refreshingly secular when he points out that different religions lead to the same god (yata mat, tato path). This is reassuring especially in the light of the rise of Hindu fundamentalism today when even many ardent followers of the Ramkrishna order show signs of intolerance and narrow mindedness.

It is interesting that despite our attempt at bracketing Ramkrishna and Vivekananda together how their views on charity and reform differ. The primary stated objective of the Ramkrishna Mission, founded by Vivekananda, is organised philanthropy. However, Ramkrishna says to Keshab Sen and his other Brahmo admirers, 'You people speak of doing good to the world. Is the world such a small thing? And who are you, pray, to do good to the world?...Sambhu Mallik once talked about establishing hospitals, dispensaries, and schools, making roads, digging public reservoirs and so forths...I said to him...it is not good to become involved in too many activities. That makes one forget God.' Incidentally, though there are many references to Sambhu Mallik, this conversation with him had been excised totally from the canonical biography ('Sri Sri Ramkrishna-Lilaprasanga' by Swami Saradananda) of Sri Ramkrishna published by the Ramkrishna Mission.

Sumit Sarkar points out that unlike Ramkrishna Vivekananda became the patriot-prophet and patron saint for a whole generation of Swadheshi activists, revolutionary terrorists, and nationalists in general. He still has the image of the Swami as 'one of the founders of twentieth century Hindutva, of an unified and chauvinistic Hinduism'.

For Ramkrishna the female body is a representation of the prison of worldly interests, in which man is trapped, which only leads to a daily existence of subordination, anxiety, pain and humiliation and whose culmination is decay and destruction. 'Just see the bewitching power of women', he says, 'they fool men, they reduce their men into stupid useless creatures...Haru, such a nice boy is possessed by a witch (petni).' Again, "You see, you should keep far away from women; then you may realize God. It is extremely harmful to have anything to do with women who have bad motives, or to eat food from their hands. They rob a man of his true being..' The female body repulsed Ramkrishna (his marriage with Sarada was never consummated). He tells his devotees, 'What is there in the body of a woman? Blood, flesh, fat, gut, worms, urine, shit, all this. Why do you feel attracted to a body like this?' This has led some to speculate on Ramkrishna's own sexual orientation.

Ramkrishna worshiped his wife Sarada Debi as embodiment of Divine Mother. The figure of woman as temptress, with a threatening sexuality, is turned into the safe, comforting figure of the mother, erased of sexuality. However, Sarada was kept very much in the background during his lifetime. She lived in a tiny room, cooking and taking care of her husband and his devotees all day. After Ramkrishna's death she became a major cult figure of the movement in her own right and was revered as Holy Mother.

Ramkrishna teaches that the stragegy of survival, in a world that is dominated by worldly temptations, is withdrawal. Do not intervene, do not engage in conflicts and do not try to reform the world. 'The I that makes one a worldly person and attaches one to woman and gold (kamini-kanchan) is the wicked I. There is a separation between jiva and atman because this I stands in between..'

It is a paradox that a saint with such misogynist traits had (and still has) many enthusiastic women followers. This was happening at a time when we begin to hear of women's empowerment in renaissance Kolkata, not far from where Ramkrishna preached. Krishnabhabini Das left for England in the same year Mahendranath met Ramkrishna. A modern marriage law was passed in 1872. Sumit Sarkar speculates that perhaps for many women, who were married in early childhood to much older husbands and were traumatised by their experience of sex, welcomed Ramkrishna preaching sexual abstinence to their husbands.

This may remind some of us of the contrasts between Ramkrishna's spiritualism and that of bauls. The female body disgusts Ramkrishna, but it is the site for bauls' spiritual quest, they celebrate the female body. The body is at the centre of bauls' spiritual journey, Ramkrishna's spiritualism begins with the rejection of the body and its needs. The body liberates the bauls, it is a trap for Ramkrishna. However, he does make contradictory statements in Kathamrita trying to negotiate between the material world with its inevitable needs and the spiritual journey of the soul. Lalon was a contemporary of Ramkrishna, though he lived longer. Lalon never had the kind of urban following that Ramkrishna had. While Ramkrishna migrated to the city to seek livelihood, he stayed back in rural Bengal where he had a large following. Ramkrishna used the rustic idiom of a peasant to talk to an educated urban audience while Lalon sang to an illiterate rural audience in a highly sophisticated idiom. The spiritualism of Lalon and Ramkrishna is, perhaps, an interesting subject to explore.

By all accounts Ramkrishna was an exceptional person. He mesmerised a whole generation of educated middle class Bengali youth, many of whom, like Vivekananda, were atheists. He also had many Brahmo followers. The history of Ramkrishna is an important counterpoint to the history of modernism in late nineteenth century colonial Bengal.