The Bahá’í and the Ramakrishna Mission

Do you know of the Bahá’í faith? I guess most of you don’t. Well, do you know the famous Lotus Temple in Delhi? I guess you do. That temple is the worshipping place for the Bahá’í in Asia, one among the places they have, each in one continent. I visited the Bahá’í house of worship in Wilmette, Illinois very close to Chicago and was impressed by their thoughts. What was particularly interesting to me was the similarity with the Ramakrishna Mission movement, I am so familiar with.

Both of them started in the nineteenth century, the RK Mission with the teachings of Shri Ramakrishna (1836-1886) and the Bahá’í with those of Bahá’u’lláh (1819-1850). They flourished because of their liberal outlooks and their trend of accepting all sorts of people from varying background. They accept all religions to be true, all spiritual leaders as messengers of God and the humanity as one unique community. Both the religions were introduced to the western world at the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893 and have, since then, gathered large number of followers in all parts of the world. They have well-maintained hierarchical structures and have a democratic style of organization.

However there are differences nonetheless. I think the Bahá’í faith is more concentrated, as it seems, they have an official community with registered members. They accept donations only from registered members (which I consider to be justified enough to keep away political and other agendas out of the realm of religion) and as such that makes a very clear-cut definition of who is a Bahá’í and who is not. They are a more well-defined separate religion. On the other hand, Ramakrishna Mission is not a separate religion. Obviously there are monastic members who are like ‘registered’ members of the order, but you don’t have to be a RKMissionite or something like that to offer your financial help to the society. You can be a Hindu or a Christian or a Muslim and a member of the RKMission at the same time.

For more info check http://www.bahai.org/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramakrishna_Mission

(I am not an expert on either of the religious orders. My comments or opinions are my personal only and not targeted to particularly promote or defile any particular school of thought. I just found it interesting to note the similarities (and dissimilarities) of the two orders in a short span of time.)