Friday 13 July 2018

Breakfast with the Sisters: A Meeting of Great Minds -11

Another writer who was seen at The House of the Sisters was Mahendranath Gupta, the recorder of The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. In a letter dated 23 September 1909, Nivedita wrote: 'M. is letting me help him to correct his Gospel. He comes on Saturday mornings and is unexpectedly docile.' For a short time M. was publishing the Gospel in English. This is perhaps what Nivedita was referring to here. But later M. was forced by public demand to concentrate on the Bengali edition. So their collaboration most likely did not last long.

As we said earlier, Nivedita was the dominant personality here, and most likely many of the discussions at The House of the Sisters centred around her. But there was another member of the household—the other Sister, Sister Christine—who also took part. Though Christine did not take such an active part in the freedom struggle as Nivedita did, the movement definitely had her support. Her reluctance to get heavily involved was probably partly due to her monastic association with the Ramakrishna Order.

Shortly after Swami Vivekananda's mahasamadhi, Nivedita was forced to make a decision about her priorities. As she was already by then getting heavily involved in the fledgling freedom movement, Swami Brahmananda asked her to either withdraw from it, or else resign from the Order. As a brahmacharini of the Ramakrishna Order, she was not allowed to take part in politics. Nivedita understood this, and after some thought, she decided to throw her towel in with the freedom movement and resign from the Order. In spite of this, however, Swami Brahmananda and other monks of the Order never withdrew their love and caring attention from her.

From : Pravrajika Shuddhatmaprana :  Pravrajika Shuddhatmaprana is a senior Sanyasini of the Sri Sarada Math and Ramakrishna Sarada Mission...to be continued

                                                                                           

No comments:

Post a Comment