Sarada Devi and Sara Bull - Some perspectives 1

The Holy Mother Sri Sarada Devi and Sara Chapman Bull are two very important personalities in the whole history of Ramakrishna Movement. Although Holy Mother Sri Sarada Devi is perhaps the larger figure in comparison being the embodied divine mother Herself, Sara Bull nonetheless had a very important role to play, esp. in the mission of Swami Vivekananda in the West. Sara Bull was probably four or five years older than Sarada, being born in 1850. She was born in a wealthy and influential family in the pre-civil war America, Sara’s father Joseph Thorp being a senator and a businessman while mother Amelia being a noted Socialite. Sarada, on the other hand, was born to a poor village priest Ramchandra Mukherjee and his wife Shyamsundari in the remote hamlet of Jairambati, under British East India Company’s hegemony, just a few years before the mutiny of 1857. Sarada had learnt to respect the Queen Victoria who through a royal proclamation took India under her sovereign crown post 1857. Nevertheless she had her own independent outlook, unlike her contemporary women of an enchained Nation that was struggling to rise above the old prejudices and the enforced slavery. Sara, born as a free citizen of a country that was promising to become the independent thinker and leader of the world, had imbibed the spirit of free thinking probably as a birthright. Sara received the best education possible and also in her later years developed a broad and deep spiritual outlook. Sarada on the other hand, like the rural womenfolk of her time was devoid of any formal education beyond primary letters. She was however self-educated and could read her texts. And yet, she was beyond any comparison in her breadth of understanding, thinking and perception, her wonderful catholicity and her appreciation of the infinitude of the possibilities of human beings. In short, she did not have any boundaries to limit herself. We are therefore going to analyze the many parallels in the lives of two very extra ordinary women who helped shape the future of the Ramakrishna Movement, Sri Sarada Devi of course being the central pivot along with Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda, while Sara Chapman Thorp Bull being a very important cog. This is in no way intended to be comparison between the two as Holy Mother Sri Sarada Devi is beyond comparison with anybody, however spiritually advanced he or she is. But this is meant just to draw some interesting parallels and identify patterns that shaped the early growth of the Ramakrishna Movement in India and abroad and to conclude that the same force that was Holy Mother herself perhaps acted through narrower channels in different contexts within similar constraints to unleash the vital energy that would sustain the movement in the long run.