"Ramkrishna & Tantrism"

    There was also another group of Shaktas who were more concerned with religious praxis than with the Tantric texts. Many of these were illiterate; of these, mention may be made of Sarvananda in Tripura, Gosain Bhattacharya in Dacca, and the female Shakta saint Jayadurga or Ardhakali in Mymensingh who was believed to be the Divine Mother herself. And then there was the famous Ramakrishna, who fitted in this tradition of popular Bengali Shakta saints; he provided a very broad and simple vision of Hinduism, to meet the ideological needs of the common people in the rapidly changing circumstances.

    Ramakrishna was a powerful figure of the “Hindu Renaissance". He was a part of the popular movement of Shaktism, which had been evolving since the time of Ramprasad in the eighteenth century. He joined the worship of Kali to an eclectic belief in the equivalence of all religions. He became popular among the educated middle-class of Calcutta, from whom most of his disciples came. These disciples, led by Vivekananda, seized upon such simplistic beliefs and powerfully expounded them as the essence of Hinduism.

    On the other hand, Ramakrishna had been very much involved with left-handed Tantric practice at one stage of his life. Thus, though he was often antagonistic to Tantrism later on, he also on occasion made statements that were quite sympathetic. At any rate, Ramakrishna’s Tantric experimentation involved a handsome Bhairavi (i.e. female worshipper of Shakti), in her late thirties. Guided by her, he undertook his Tantric sadhana between 1861 and 1863. According to his prime biographer, his Tantric experience supposedly proved that Tantrism “could be practiced in compete chastity.” Later Ramakrishna did admit that he was “once attacked by lust” (sic).

    The Ramakrishna Mission, quite understandably, downplayed this phase of the great man’s career. For example, they projected the Bhairavi BrahmanVs attitude towards him as putatedly one of “motherly affection”. Apparently, the Divine Mother Herself took care to see him through the dangerous praxis safely, so that he did not “sink into moral degradation” (sic). In short, Ramakrishna is supposed to have introduced “an element of purity into the Tantrika practices”; and this was of course a sign of “the greatness of* his character”, in the eyes of his followers.

    Anyway, Ramakrishna was throughout his life influenced by Shakta ideas. His influence, in this regard, can also be traced on Keshub Chunder Sen and Swami Vivekananda, who were under quite strong Christian influence and “yet remained apologists for the worship of the Goddess. Thus, the presence of Shakta ideas, probably mediated by Ramakrishna, can be seen in Vivekananda’s and Keshub Sen’s references to God as Mother. Taking the case of Sen first, he had been of Vaishnavite bent, and at the same time, as a leader of the Brahmo Samaj, very receptive to Christian ideas. He came under the influence of Ramakrishna, and in October 1879 when Bengal was in the throes of Durga Puja, he issued a proclamation on behalf of the Brahmo Samaj, in which he fervently spoke of the Motherhood of God.

    As for Vivekananda, Ramakrishna’s favorite disciple, he visited the Baishno Devi Shrine in Kashmir in 1898, and thenceforth emphasized the worship of the Mother. He spoke of struggling for six years before finally accepting Her. According to Sister Nivedita, he often said that he worshipped Kali “with her foot on the heart of the worshipper”. Nivedita also records that the songs of the great Shakta poet Ramprasad were often on Vivekananda’s lips.

    The above attitudes of leading religious figures like Keshub Sen and Vivekananda were quite possibly a reaction to the Westernizing influences of the late-nineteenth century. The Mutiny of 1857 had been a revolt against British rule and Christianity, among other things, and the atrocities on both sides left deep scars. In the years following there were also disputes between European indigo planters and the exploited peasants, whose sufferings were depicted in Dina Bandhu Mitra’s Bengali drama of 1860, Nil Darpan.

    It was in this context that orthodox Hinduism began to be revived, and the educated began to clamor for self government. The two phenomena were inter-related. Further, the rise in the cost of living affected the Bengali lower-middle classes (clerks, teachers, etc.), and they were the groups most receptive to ideas such as the revival of the cult of Kali.

    This revival of the cult of Shakti played its part in the growth of Indian nationalism. From the middle of the nineteenth centuiy, the Divine Mother was used as a symbol for India by many of the Bengali intelligentsia, among whom were Michael Madhusudhan Dutta and Aurobindo Ghose. Conversely, the struggle between 1905 and 1911 for the revocation of the partition of Bengal helped in the revival of Shakta ideas. Kali was regarded as the “personification of the province of Bengal”. Resistance to British rule acquired religious sanction.

    Despite his own Vaishnavite convictions, Bankimchandra had in 1860 written his “Bande Mataram” hymn in his novel Ananda Math about the Sannyasi rebellion of the eighteenth centuiy. This song became popular among the nationalists; the above novel moved the youth of Bengal, who were inspired by its story of a group of revolutionaries who dedicate themselves to the motherland, which they identified with the goddess Kali. It is possible, of course, that Bankim was referring only to Kali in that famous song, and not to the country. Nevertheless, in 1906 Rabindranath sang it to his own music at the Calcutta session of the Indian National Congress.

    This revival of Shaktism became so popular that Surendranath Banerjee and other leaders encouraged the linking of Shakti and Kali with meetings in favor of “Swaraj" and “Swadeshi". It is an interesting pointer to the pervasive nature of Shakta ideas in Bengal then that, though the shouting of “Bande Mataram" in the streets had been proscribed in 1906, British officers stood up and sang it with the audience at a recruiting drive during the First World War.

    Aurobindo Ghose also started a monthly called Bande Mataram which he used as a vehicle for his idealistic views of the Mother. Swami Vivekananda, who we have seen derived his Shakta-oriented outlook from his master Ramakrishna, regarded the country as the living image of the Divine Mother. Even Rabindranath Tagore, who was otherwise hostile to the Shakta religious practices, reflected this tendency in his nationalist poems. And, in the Bengal Press, a lot of material linked the great Goddess to the Motherland. Some of this popularity was also used by those of the nationalists who advocated the use of violent means of resistance; after Jallianwala Bagh, such groups used the figure of Kali to justify bloodshed.