Amiya Chakravarty

Amiya Chakravarty was one of the greatest critics of the Post Tagorean period, and a well known Poet. He was Rabindranath’s travel companion during his tours to Europe and America in 1930 and to Iran and Iraq in 1932.

The Ramakrishna-Vivekananda tradition… was rooted in India’s perennial philosophy. Truth is One; men call it by different names : this was the Vedic view and it was carried on through the Upanishads, the Gita, and the medieval Indian sages to the nineteenth century saint Ramakrishna. Nearly illiterate but supremely knowledgeable, he not only absorbed the great Indian inheritance but accepted the revelations of other religions, mainly Christianity and Islam. … [He] discarded sectarianism, used imagism in a highly symbolical and personal way, who dramatically moved from dualistic worship to monism and then to a balance of both, and finally and effortlessly emerged as a world teacher. … To many of us, more important than any incident is the miracle of Ramakrishna himself, the miracle that he could be what he was and give us—for all time— his life’s truth….

The Ramakrishna-Vivekananda movement has proved… that the finest social service, concerned action and commitment spring from pure goodness, from the realization of beatitude and the divinity of life…. It must be recognized that a saintly person while not seeming to do anything utilitarian for society is actually fulfilling the highest social responsibility by igniting a moral conscience. Through precept and example he is changing individuals and therefore society. Every act of truth is also an act of service. Sri Ramakrishna transformed the hearts of men ; he gave them an exalted view of life, the fruits of which can be seen in the work done by the Ramakrishna Mission. … Thus we trace a continuous history from the Upanishads to Sri Ramakrishna, from Buddha to Gandhi and Tagore. …