The Research and Resource Centre on “The Women Missionaries of the Ramakrishna Orders” is a unique consortium of published books and periodicals, e-resources and digital copies of archival materials for instance, letters, manuscripts, photographs, paintings and films.
The Centre aims to fill a gap in the history of Indian missionary work by attracting academic attention to the vast field of work carried out by the women missionaries of the Ramakrishna orders in India and abroad. Compared to the critical research work existing in the corresponding fields of women missionaries, for instance for that of the Christian women missionaries or the Brahmo reformation and the women associated with it, critical research on the women missionaries of the Ramakrishna Movement has remained a comparatively less investigated area of study. In this context, and in the context of the ever growing demand of digital archiving in every field of study today, our initiative has a two-fold focus – on building a collaborative resource center that would in turn encourage and generate academic research in the area.
The Resource Centre
The Resource Centre aims to bring together all primary and secondary work relevant to this area under a single umbrella. On this account the Centre plans active collaborations with our mother and sister organizations like Sri Sarada Math, Rasik Bhita and Sister Nivedita Girls’ School. The Research Centre is planned as an inclusive one and is not only limited to the college faculty and students. Outside participants are welcome to be part of the project as collaborators in building the contents and as researchers using its resources for academic purposes. This little-explored domain provides a rich and rewarding field of critical inquiry, that apart from religious, theological and missionary perspectives, it also intersects with fields such as Gender Studies, Studies in travel and travel writing, Socio- economic impact, Rural/Area studies and Visual cultures to name only a few. The future plans of the Centre include large-scale resource gathering, digitizing of archival materials.
Research
The Research Centre will be utilized and enriched by the research initiatives of participants and scholars – both from within and from outside the institution. Currently, a monastic teacher in the Department of Sanskrit, is working on a series of articles that are to be published as part of this initiative. The Centre will also periodically organize and host talks/lectures on its core themes by esteemed and renowned authors and scholars. The inauguration of the Centre was marked by an enriching lecture delivered by Pravrajika Jnanadaprana, revered Assistant General Secretary of Sri Sarada Math. She talked about the historical context and circumstances leading to the formal establishment of Sri Sarada Math as a unique women missionaries’ monastic order under the guiding ideals of Sri Ramakrishna.
The Research and Resource centre runs a you-tube channel – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBh7VjS559rY8C7k0a8pPUw
