The Order on the March News & Notes from Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission
March 2019
National Youth Day & Birthday of Swami Vivekananda
The Vedanta Kesari
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The 35th National Youth Day, & 156th birth anniversary celebration of Swamiji (according to Indian calendar) were observed in the Order with youth programmes on 12 January and with special worship, bhajans, and spiritual discourses on 27 January respectively. In the birth anniversary celebration at the headquarters, Belur Math, about 15,000 of the visiting devotees partook cooked prasad. On the occasion of National Youth Day, Chennai Math organised several programmes: Two Youth Conventions on 9 and 12 January attended by 420 students in total; a State-level ‘Swami Vivekananda Youth Football Championship’ in which 45 teams from 4 districts of Tamil Belur Math
Nadu took part; and a procession of Swami Vivekananda Chariot with the traditional Shaivite Kailaya Vathiyam through slums near Vivekanandar Illam. 10,000 people took part in a procession held by Narainpur centre on 12 January. Cultural Competitions were held by the following centres for school and college students: Aurangabad(4459 students), Madurai (8312 students), Nagpur (3618 students) and Rajkot (8500 students).
New Temple at Asansol The region of Asansol, the second largest metropolitan city in West Bengal, is sanctified by the visit of Sri Ramakrishna in 1868 when he changed from railway to road transport at Ranigunj, some 15 km from Asansol, on his way to Vaidyanath Dham at Deoghar. A small ashrama started Chennai Math
in 1926 was affiliated to Belur Math in 1939 and relocated to its current location in 1997. With an orphanage and a school for girls in the early days, the ashrama has now transformed into a huge complex of multifarious service activities with a boy’s secondary school and two junior basic schools for about 1200 students in total, a Vocational Training Centre for about 500 young girls and boys, a free coaching centre with transportation facility for more than 300 underprivileged students from 35 peripheral villages, a student’s home, a library and a charitable dispensary. The ashrama has built a magnificent temple of Sri Ramakrishna with a prayer hall for 800 devotees and a 1100 seater auditorium, which Vivekananda Award
