Vivekananda's Ramakrsna: an Untold Story of Mythmaking and Propaganda

Abstract

The author argues that the familiar Vedantin and messiah image of Rāmakrsna Paramahamsa was created deliberately by his great disciple Svāmā Vivekananda. The Svāmī's global Hindu evangelical mission called for the master's respectable image. Hence he rejected the sincere rendering of the Paramahamsa's biographies by others and, in place of the rustic ecstatic but authentic Gadadhar, fabricated the awesome figure of a modern messiah-the Vedantin Paramahamsa. This paper documents the history of this purposive distortion.

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) 150 Years on: Critical Studies of an Influential Hindu Guru

“…Just as the portrayal of Vivekananda as Ramakrishna's most faithful disciple and interpreter has been radically undermined by scholarly reconstructions of Ramakrishna's life and worldview, Vivekananda's career in its own right has been reconsidered from a number of perspectives. Vivekananda has emerged strongly as a figure with his own agenda and priorities who re‐shaped, according to Narasingha P. Sil (, p. 39; cf. Sharma ) ‘distorted’, Ramakrishna's teaching and elements of the Hindu tradition that he inherited, and in a calculating manner (for example, Gupta, K. P. ()).…”

“…A number of etic studies have tackled the problems presented by the emic accounts we have of Vivekananda's life and teaching and how these have evolved within the Ramakrishna Math and Mission into a smooth and consistent narrative (for example, Sil (), Chattopadhyaya () and Sen ()). One example of how close attention to the available sources can raise fresh questions is provided by Rajagopal Chattopadhyaya (, p. 100) in his ‘corrective biography’ of Vivekananda.…”

“…Vivekananda dropped names rather than supplied specific references to other thinkers to whom he referred in what were more akin to talks for the public than academic lectures. It is also difficult to assess the nature of his exposure to the works he would have studied as a student and how he absorbed them (see Sil (, p. 40; , pp. 28–33)).…”