Women in the Modern Age

About the Author Born in the village of Trikkur, Kerala State, on December 15, 1908, Swami Ranganathananda joined the Ramakrishna Order, the international spiritual and cultural movement founded by Swami Vivekananda, at its branch in Mysore in 1926. He was formally initiated into Sannyasa in 1933 by Swami Shivananda, one of the eminent disciples of Sri Ramakrishna and the second President of the Order. After spending the first twelve years in the Order's branches in Mysore and Bangalore, the first six years of which as cook, dishwasher and house-keeper and later as warden of students' hostel, he worked as Secretary and librarian at the Ramakrishna Mission branch at Rangoon, from 1939 to 1942, and thereafter as President of the Ramakrishna Math and Mission, Karachi, from 1942 to 1948.

From 1949 to 1962, he worked as the Secretary of the New Delhi branch of the Mission, and from 1962 to 1967, he was the Secretary of the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture, Calcutta, Director of its School of Humanistic and Cultural Studies, and Editor of its monthly journal.

From 1973 to 1993 he was President of Ramakrishna Math, Hyderabad and from 1994 to 1998 he was Vice-President of world-wide Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission. Now he is Its President, and stays at Belur Math.

He has undertaken extensive lecture tours from 1946 to 1972 covering 50 countries. From 1973 to 1986 he visited annually Australia, U.S.A., Holland and Germany.

In 1986 he was awarded the first Indira Gandhi Award for National Integration.

He has a versatile and facile pen, and has to his credit a number of publications, chief amongst which are : The Message of the Upanisads, A Pilgrim Looks at the World, Vols. I and II; Four Volumes of Eternal Values for a Changing Society - Vol.1 : Philosophy and Spirituality, Vol.2: Great Spiritual Teachers, Vol.3: Education for Human Excellence and Vol.4: Democracy for Total Human Fulfilment; (Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan's Publications); Human Being in Depth (State University of New York publication), Practical Vedanta and Science of Values (Advaita Ashram publication), 28 video tapes expounding the entire Gita sloka by sloka, 60 titles of audio tapes expounding the ideas of Ramakrishna, Vivekananda and Vedanta.

Introduction I have come to Srinagar after ten years; during my last visit, I spent several days here addressing the university, Women's College, public meetings, and also several army groups in Srinagar and nearby places. This time, it is a brief visit of five days and I return day after tomorrow to Hyderabad. I am very glad and thankful to the Principal of this Women's College for arranging a programme here where I can meet the young women getting education in this institution and also the teachers imparting the same.

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