Service as the highest Worship - Part 2

Life changed for three young men of Benares when in 1901, they read a poem of Swami Vivekananda in the Bengali magazine of Ramakrishna Order called Udbodhan. The peom, titled as “Sakhar Prati”, or “To a Friend” is almost a mini life story of Swami himself and mirrors his thoughts and actions. The last few lines of the poem run as follows

From highest Brahman to the yonder worm,
And to the very minutest atom,
Everywhere is the same God, the All-Love;
Friend, offer mind, soul, body, at their feet.

These are His manifold forms before thee,
Rejecting them, where seekest thou for God?
Who loves all beings without distinction;
He indeed is worshipping best his God.

The three friends, Charu Chandra Das, Kedarnath Moulik and Jamini Ranjan Majumdar were greatly inspired and eagerly looked for an opportunity to serve the God in human form. The opportunity came soon. In Benares, many pilgrims who were poor and aged, had to suffer terribly in the hands of unscrupulous Brahmin priests and landlords, who would often leave them in dire straits to die on the streets after taking their money and possessions, esp. if they were sick. One old lady called Nrityakali Dasi, would also have suffered the same fate in the hands of her cruel landlord who drove her out to die on the streets, had it not been for those three friends. Jamini found her, covered in filth, lying on the roadside, barely able to move, cleaned and brought her to a shelter and the three friends took turns to nurse, feed and treat her. Thus began a home of poor and afflicted, in which many poor people would later find shelter. Swami Vivekananda himself came to Benares in 1902 and praised the work of the Sevashrama or Home of Service as it was called. All the three had become his disciples and Kedarnath and Charu Chandra became monks of Ramakrishna Order, called Swami Achalananda and Swami Subhananda resp. Home of Service grew over the years through the selfless and dedicated service of monks and others, who treated their patients as God in disguise, rendering every possible service with great care and devotion to people, irrespective of religion, caste or creed. The Holy Mother Sri Sarada Devi herself praised the dedicated work of the inmates of the Sevashrama and many notable and prominent leaders of India including Nehru, Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, Bipin Chandra Pal, Prof. Meghnad Saha, wife of Viceroy Lord Linlithgow, Dr. R. C Majumdar, J.B Kripalani, Dr. Radhakrishnan, Acharya Vinoba Bhave, Vijayalakshmi Pandit, K.M Munshi, Dr. B.C Roy, among others recognized the selfless service. It is now developed into 226 bed major multi speciality hospital treating millions of poor patients from all spheres of life, and has many projects and programmes catering to thousands, in the area of education, training and healthcare. But Ramakrishna Mission Home of Service and its work hardly find a mention in mainstream media and are not even considered by the major philanthropic organizations for donations. They depend solely on individual devotees.

Dakshina Ranjan Guha was an ordinary young man until he met Vivekananda and his life changed for ever. He renounced world and became a disciple of Swami Vivekananda, under the monastic name of Swami Kalyanananda. He had earned the praise of Swamiji even during his life time through his rigorous and dedicated work in providing famine relief to afflicted people in Kishangarh district of Rajasthan. But his momentous work was in Haridwar where Swamiji had explicitly instructed him to set up a facility for offering healthcare to the local poor, pilgrims and monks, who did not have any such facility and would often left to die unattended. Kalyanananda rented two rooms and devoted his heart and soul to the task. He would himself learn to administer medicines and did everything to the patients, right from treating them to cleaning their beds and garments to cleaning their excreta.

Suraj Rao, a soldier from Mahrashtra had joined the military service, but soon left it when he received a more power call from within. He had met Swami Vivekananda in Madras, after the latter’s triumphant return from America, and subsequently joined him in Belur Math and took initiation from him. He was named as Swami Nischayananda. There are many stories of Nischayananda’s undaunted faith in his Guru and his service to him. After Vivekananda’s passing away, Nischayananda left Belur Math and began wandering. In 1903 he came to Haridwar to attend the Kumbh Mela and there by the design of providence met a young man who was rendering extra ordinary service to the devotees assembled. This young man was none other than Swami Kalyanananda. Nischayananda joined his brother disciple to establish and run the sevashrama. They used to go out early in the morning, walk twenty eight miles uphill, enquire from hut to hut if any person was ill, if necessary carried them all the way to the Sevashrama in Kankhal (another twenty eight miles), treated them, did all the menial work themselves and took every possible care of the patients. The other North Indian monks belonging to orthodox sections used to call them contemptuously as Bhangi Sadhus or scavenger monks, as they did all the work themselves, including cleaning the toilets, because they had very meager resources and almost no donation or contribution from any source. They begged their foods from an alms house as they would not like to spend the hard earned money of the donors for their own creature comforts. Many times they received insults, other monks refused to sit in the same row with them. They had however the blessings of one true saint, the Mahamandleswara of Kailash Ashrama, Dhanraj Giri, who was close to Swami Vivekananda. Seeing the respect that an influential and great monk like Dhanraj Giri gave to them and also his fondness for the two great workers, the other monks gradually changed their behavior, though the bhangi sadhu tag did not go for a long time.