Swami Vivekananda, born Narendranath Datta, was an Indian Hindu monk, philosopher, author, religious teacher, and the chief disciple of the Indian mystic Ramakrishna. He was a key figure in the introduction of Vedanta and Yoga to the Western world; and is credited with raising interfaith awareness, and bringing Hinduism to the status of a major world religion. Vivekananda became a popular figure after the 1893 Parliament of Religions in Chicago, where he began his famous speech with the words, "Sisters and brothers of America...," before introducing Hinduism to Americans. He was so impactful at the Parliament that an American newspaper described him as: “an orator by divine right and undoubtedly the greatest figure at the Parliament”. After great success at the Parliament, in the subsequent years, Vivekananda delivered hundreds of lectures across the United States, England and Europe, disseminating the core tenets of Hindu philosophy, and founded the Vedanta Society of New York and the Vedanta Society of San Francisco, both of which became the foundations for Vedanta Societies in the West.
Contemporary groups, collectively termed Hindu reform movements, reform Hinduism, Neo-Hinduism, or Hindu revivalism, strive to introduce regeneration and reform to Hinduism, both in a religious or spiritual and in a societal sense. The movements started appearing during the Bengali Renaissance.
Ramakrishna Paramahansa, also spelled Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, born Gadadhar Chattopadhyaya, was an Indian Hindu mystic and spiritual leader. After adhering to various religious practices from the Hindu traditions of Bhakti yoga, Tantra, and Advaita Vedanta as well as from Islam and Christianity, he proclaimed the world's various religions as "so many paths to reach one and the same goal", thus validating the essential unity of religions. Ramakrishna's followers came to regard him as an avatar, or divine incarnation, as did some of the prominent Hindu scholars of his day.
Bankim Chandra Chatterjee CIE was an Indian novelist, poet, Essayist and journalist. He was the author of the 1882 Bengali language novel Anandamath, which is one of the landmarks of modern Bengali and Indian literature. He was the composer of Vande Mataram, written in highly sanskritized Bengali, personifying Bengal as a mother goddess and inspiring activists during the Indian Independence Movement. Chattopadhayay wrote fourteen novels and many serious, serio-comic, satirical, scientific and critical treatises in Bengali. He is known as Sahitya Samrat in Bengali.
Ramakrishna Mission (RKM) is a Hindu religious and spiritual organisation which forms the core of a worldwide spiritual movement known as the Ramakrishna Movement or the Vedanta Movement. The mission is named after an Indian spiritual Guru Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and founded by Ramakrishna's chief disciple Swami Vivekananda on 1 May 1897. The organisation mainly propagates the Hindu philosophy of Vedanta–Advaita Vedanta and four yogic ideals – Jnana, Bhakti, Karma, and Raja yoga.
Belur Math is the headquarters of the Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission, founded by Swami Vivekananda, the chief disciple of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. It is located on the west bank of Hooghly River, Belur, West Bengal, India. The temple is the heart of the Ramakrishna movement. It is notable for its architecture that fuses Hindu, Islamic, Buddhist, and Christian art and motifs as a symbol of unity of all religions. In 2003, Belur Math railway station was also inaugurated which is dedicated to Belur Math Temple.
Sister Nivedita was an Irish teacher, author, social activist, school founder and disciple of Swami Vivekananda. She spent her childhood and early youth in Ireland. She was engaged to marry a Welsh youth, but he died soon after their engagement.
The Bengal Renaissance, also known as the Bengali Renaissance, was a cultural, social, intellectual, and artistic movement that took place in the Bengal region of the British Raj, from the late 18th century to the early 20th century. Historians have traced the beginnings of the movement to the victory of the British East India Company at the 1757 Battle of Plassey, as well as the works of reformer Raja Rammohan Roy, considered the "Father of the Bengal Renaissance," born in 1772. Nitish Sengupta stated that the movement "can be said to have … ended with Rabindranath Tagore," Asia's first Nobel laureate.
Ramakrishna (1836–1886) is a famous nineteenth-century Indian Bengali Hindu mystic. Born as he was during a social upheaval in Bengal in particular and India in general, Ramakrishna and his movement—Ramakrishna Mission played a leading role in the modern revival of Hinduism in India, and on modern Indian history.
Ramakrishna (1836–1886) was a 19th-century Indian mystic whose teachings form the foundation of the Ramakrishna religious movement, Ramakrishna Order and Ramakrishna Mission.
Ramakrishna (1836–1886) is a famous mystic of nineteenth-century India. Ramakrishna never wrote down the details of his own life. Sources for his life and teachings come from the writings of his disciples and live witnesses. Ramakrishna's recorded sayings mainly come from the last four years of his life.
The reception of Hinduism in the Western world begins in the 19th century, at first at an academic level of religious studies and antiquarian interest in Sanskrit. Only after World War II does Hinduism acquire a presence as a religious minority in western nations, partly due to immigration, and partly due to conversion, the latter especially in the context of the 1960s to 1970s counter-culture, giving rise to a number of Hinduism-inspired new religious movements sometimes also known as "Neo-Hindu" or "export Hinduism".
This is a bibliography of notable works about India.
Swami Vivekananda was a Hindu monk from India. His teachings and philosophy are a reinterpretation and synthesis of various strands of Hindu thought, most notably classical yoga and (Advaita) Vedanta, with western esotericism and Universalism. He blended religion with nationalism, and applied this reinterpretation to various aspect's of education, faith, character building as well as social issues pertaining to India. His influence extended also to the west, and he was instrumental in introducing Yoga to the west.
Neo-Vedanta, also called Hindu modernism, neo-Hinduism, Global Hinduism and Hindu Universalism, are terms to characterize interpretations of Hinduism that developed in the 19th century. The term "Neo-Vedanta" was coined by German Indologist Paul Hacker, in a pejorative way, to distinguish modern developments from "traditional" Advaita Vedanta.
"Kali the Mother" is a poem written by Hindu monk Swami Vivekananda. Vivekananda wrote the poem on 24 September 1898 when he was staying in Kashmir, on a houseboat, on Dal Lake in Srinagar. In this poem he worshipped goddess Kali.
My Master is an English book combined from two lectures delivered by Swami Vivekananda in New York and England, published in 1901.
Basiswar "Boshi" Sen was an Indian agricultural scientist. He was a pioneer of the Green Revolution movement that changed the food landscape of India by growing abundant food grains, thereby reducing the possibility of any famine in the country. His wife was Gertrude Emerson Sen, an American author and specialist on Asia. He founded the Vivekananda Laboratory in the Almora region of the Himalayas. He was a friend of many notable people, such as Indian Prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, poet Rabindranath Tagore, Julian Huxley, and D. H. Lawrence. Sen was also associated with the Ramakrishna Order and the Ramakrishna Vivekananda movement, as well as with Jagadish Chandra Bose, the Indian scientist, and Sister Nivedita, the writer, orator, freedom fighter and direct disciple of Swami Vivekananda. The Government of India awarded him the third-highest civilian honour of Padma Bhushan in 1957.
The East and the West or Prachya o Paschatya is a book written by Swami Vivekananda. In this book Swami Vivekananda made a comparative study of eastern and Western cultures.
Chandranath Basu (1844-1910) was a Bengali-Indian litterateur. A staunch Hindu, Chandranath coined the term Hindutva and has been regarded as a doyen of economic and Indian nationalism in Bengal.
