Radhakamal Mukerjee

Professor Radhakumud Mukerjee had a very distinguished academic career. He passed the BA Honours in two subjects in 1901 and he completed even his post graduation in history in the same year. This was indeed a record in the annals of Calcutta University. In 1902 he again passed the MA examination in English. In 1905, he was a recipient of the Premchand Roychand Scholarship. In 1905 he obtained his PhD degree too. He received several honours from different organizations for his indefatigable endeavour to the cause of Indian History and her civilization. The Government of India conferred the Padmabhusana Award upon him in 1957. His remarkable publications include A History of Indian Shipping, Local Government in Ancient India, Nationalism in Hindu Culture, Chandragupta Maurya & His Times etc.

The strangest paradox was that this unsophisticated and unostentatious man of God, around whom gathered the nineteenth-century intellectuals of Calcutta, worshipped Christ and Mohammed.

Sri Ramakrishna’s religion was beatific vision, his worship the perennial realization of the immanence of the Divine in every object and relation, his whole nature the image of God in all its

purity, love and beauty. When he affirmed that he followed the paths of the different sects and creeds and practised all religions, Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity, there were a strange passion and certitude from which there could be no escape even of a scoffer and an iconoclast.

India needed a tolerant and universal religion like that of Sri Ramakrishna that might found a new social ethics for our evolving welfare State on the spiritual intuition of the indwelling God in the common man, absolutely every common man, and foster infinite charity and compassion for all. Such an ethics, equalitarian, buoyant, and dynamic, emerged from every parable, every imagery, and every song of this God-intoxicated man who was as powerful in his gentle persuasions as in his unfathomable silence.