Swami Brahmananda

The full-length study of this teacher is still being written. What is below is the complete short life, and it is accurate as far as it goes.

The life

He was born Rakhal Chandra Ghosh on 21 January 1863 in a village near Basirhat, in the 24 Parganas district east of Calcutta, and was brought to the city at twelve for schooling — where, at a gymnasium, he met a boy called Narendra who would become Swami Vivekananda. At Dakṣiṇeśvar from 1881, he was treated by his teacher with a tenderness the other disciples noticed and remembered. After 1886 he joined the makeshift monastery at Baranagore, took sannyāsa there, and then did something the accounts are careful about: he left, and spent years in intensely contemplative life at Varanasi, Omkarnath, Vrindaban and Hardwar — the north Indian pilgrim towns, unattached, unadministered. He was brought back to be the first President of the Ramakrishna Math, and held the post from the Order's registration as a trust until his death. During those two decades the Mission was revived and registered, new centres opened in India and abroad, and a whole generation of young monks was trained. They called him Raja Maharaj. He died on 10 April 1922, at Balaram Bose's house in Calcutta, after a short illness, and was cremated at Belur. The shape of that life is worth marking. He had the solitude first and gave it up for administration when the work required it — the reverse of the usual order, and much the harder direction to travel.

The turn it rests on

He chose the discipline of the monastery over the freedom of wandering, and steadied the Order for two decades.

What was taught

Held the young Order together for two decades while its founder travelled and its message spread.