Women's Order

[Guest guest]

Further to the email from Charles asking about the role of women in the Ramakrishan Order. We received a detailed reply from Sister Gayatriprana. We are sharing part of the response..........jay Vivekananda Centre London

===Response to Charles from Sister Gayatriprana================

Again, by definition, the Ramakrishna Order is a man’s order, started by men for men and administered exclusively by men. It does not make provision for women members.

 

This was as Swami Vivekananda intended. His vision was that an order of women would come into being, started by women for women and administered exclusively by women. This was quite different from the women’s orders in Buddhism and Christianity, where there was no question of the women being independent of the men, with the unfortunate devaluation of women of which Swami Vivekananda speaks in part 167. I believe it is true to say that Swami Vivekananda’s vision of an independent women’s order is a first in the history of humankind, the first time that women’s destiny was to be put into their own hands and theirs alone.

 

It was not possible for such a women’s order to be started in Swami Vivekananda’s lifetime, but he nevertheless launched the idea of such a movement in the name of Sri Sarada Devi, the spiritual counterpart of Sri Ramakrishna. He also trained up and let loose on India the Irishwoman, Sister Nivedita, who began what was to become a premier school for Indian girls and women and attracted some of the Indian pioneers of the later Indian work for women. In the 1940s-50s the school was also the training ground for a group of dedicated women who later formed the Sri Sarada Math, the women’s order run on the lines envisaged by Swami Vivekananda.

 

The Sri Sarada Math, now in existence for nearly fifty years independently of the Ramakrishna Math and Mission, runs its own educational and medical institutions, famine and relief work and cultural and outreach work. The senior nuns, like the senior monks of the Ramakrishna Order, do indeed initiate and attract men as well as women. As members of an independent organization, the Sarada Math nuns are not regularly associated with the swamis and therefore appear in different venues, not featured by the Ramakrishna Order.

 

For more information, please see: www.srisaradamath.org

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