12-12-2016 Monday
Holy Mother By Swami Nikhilananda: 286

Chapter 13 – In the Role of Teacher : 005

Here we shall make a slight digression to narrate a few incidents about Holy Mother’s attitude towards some religious-minded political suspects and also towards the oppressive measures of the British rule in India. Many revolutionaries were inspired by the patriotic fervor of Swami Vivekananda and read his books and The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna for inspiration.1 (1 The head of the Criminal Investigation Department of the Government of Bengal, who was in charge of the political prisoners and detenus, once visited the present writer in his internment camp. The office saw a set of The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna in the original Bengali on his desk and said: ‘I find that almost every detenu keeps these books. I learnt the Bengali language to read them in the original but I did not find a single statement against the British rule.’ The writer told the police officer that the patriotism of th revolutionaries was inspired by religion.

A commission appointed by the Government of India to investigate the activities of the Indian revolutionaries remarked in course of its report that revolutionaries carried in one pocket the Bhagavad Gita and in te other a bomb. To the fighters for Indian freedom India was a spiritual entity, the birthplace of the eternal truths of the Hindu religion and philosophy. During the thousand years of foreign domination the spiritual ideals declines. In order to revive those ideals, the country had to be politically free. Therefore one found a strong spiritual element in the struggle for India’s political freedom.) Some of them later joined the Ramakrishna Order. For a long time the police kept a close watch on the Ramakrishna Mission.

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Holy Mother - Being the Life of Sri Sarada Devi Wife of Sri Ramakrishna And Helpmate in his Mission By Swami Nikhilananda p: 179 – 180

Location: Bangalore