Vivekananda has been a highly influential but contentious figure in the history of recent Hindu tradition. These lectures will explore aspects of Vivekananda’s legacy with particular reference to the Ramakrishna Math and Mission, the movement Vivekananda founded in his guru’s name, and the Vivekananda Kendra, also inspired by Vivekananda, which came into existence in 1972. The Kendra, however, promotes in Vivekananda’s name an ideology strongly influenced by Hindu nationalism. Through an examination of these two movements, the lecture will illustrate the diffuse and durable nature of Vivekananda’s influence, and in the process explain why Vivekananda has been judged by some to have been a contradictory and controversial figure.
Session 1 – Introducing Vivekananda and his guru Ramakrishna
Session 2 – Vivekananda in the USA and London
Session 3 – Establishing the Ramakrishna Math and Mission in India: Vivekananda and the spiritual discipline of service
Session 4 – Continuity, discontinuity, and innovation in Vivekananda’s ideas
Session 5 – Vivekananda and his Hindu nationalist admirers
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Gwilym Beckerlegge studied religions at the Universities of Oxford and Lancaster where he became interested in the religions of South Asia and Japan from the nineteenth century to the present. His doctoral thesis examined continuity within the Ramakrishna Math and Mission with reference to the practice of seva, service to humanity, which was promoted by Swami Vivekananda. Much of this appeared in The Ramakrishna Mission: The Making of a Modern Hindu Movement (2000) and Swami Vivekananda’s Legacy of Service: A Study of the Ramakrishna Math and Mission (2006). He has written extensively about Vivekananda in subsequent book chapters and articles. (For more details, see Gwilym’s web page http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/
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