Founding the order
After Ramakrishna's death in 1886, a group of his young disciples took monastic vows and lived together in a rented house at Baranagar, near Calcutta. Narendranath Datta, who took the name Vivekananda, travelled across India as a wandering monk and in 1893 spoke at the World's Parliament of Religions in Chicago, where his speeches made him famous. He spent several years teaching in the United States and Britain and returned to India in 1897 a celebrated figure.
In May 1897 Vivekananda founded the Ramakrishna Mission in Calcutta, an association of monks and lay people for service and the spreading of Vedanta. He bought land on the west bank of the Hooghly at Belur in 1898, and on 9 December 1898 the monastery was consecrated with the installation of Ramakrishna's relics. The monastic order, the Ramakrishna Math, and the Mission, its service organisation, are legally distinct bodies with a shared leadership.
Vivekananda's ideal
Vivekananda gave the order a motto, "for one's own liberation and for the welfare of the world", and insisted that service of the poor and the sick was worship of God. The Mission developed schools, hospitals, relief work during famines and disasters, and publishing, which it continues across India and abroad. Vivekananda spent his last years at Belur Math and died there on 4 July 1902, at the age of thirty-nine. A small temple marks the place of his cremation by the river, and temples to Sarada Devi and to Brahmananda, the first president of the order, stand nearby.
The temple
The main temple, dedicated to Ramakrishna, was opened in 1938. Its design is attributed to Vivekananda's ideas, worked out by his brother disciple Swami Vijnanananda, who had trained as an engineer. It was meant to express the harmony of religions that Ramakrishna taught. The gateway recalls Buddhist architecture, the windows and balconies Rajput and Mughal forms, the plan the cruciform shape of a church, and the dome a combination of Hindu and Islamic elements. Inside, a marble image of Ramakrishna is seated over his relics.
Today
Belur Math receives large numbers of visitors and pilgrims, especially on the birthdays of Ramakrishna, Sarada Devi and Vivekananda. The order has branches in India and in many countries abroad. Vivekananda's birthday, 12 January, is observed in India as National Youth Day.
Further reading
- Flood, Gavin. An Introduction to Hinduism. Cambridge University Press, 1996
- Klostermaier, Klaus K. A Survey of Hinduism. State University of New York Press, 2007
- Lipner, Julius. Hindus: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices. Routledge, 2010
See also
- Dakshineswar Kali Temple — The Dakshineswar Kali temple is a temple of the goddess Kali on the east bank of the Hooghly north of Calcutta, built by Rani Rashmoni and consecrated in 1855, where the mystic Ramakrishna served as priest and lived for some thirty years.
- Calcutta — Calcutta, renamed Kolkata in 2001, is the city on the Hooghly in Bengal that grew from the East India Company's trading settlement of the 1690s into the capital of British India until 1911 and the centre of the Bengal Renaissance.
This entry was last revised on 12 November 2026.