Udbodhan Patrika

Swami Vivekananda returned from the West to India in January 1897 and founded the Ramakrishna Mission on 1 May that year. He had long felt that the new ideas needed a literature of their own: while still in America he had encouraged Alasinga Perumal to start the Brahmavadin, and when Swami Trigunatitananda (স্বামী ত্রিগুণাতীতানন্দ) wrote of his wish to bring out a Bengali journal, Swamiji kept urging him on by letter.

Towards the end of 1898 a printing press was bought and set up in the house of Girindralal Basak at 14 Ramchandra Maitra Lane, Kambuliatola, Kolkata. It was named the Udbodhan Press, and this rented house was the first Udbodhan Karyalaya. From it, on 14 January 1899 (1 Magh 1305), the first number of Udbodhan appeared as a fortnightly, with Swami Trigunatitananda as editor.

Swamiji gave the journal its name, chose the line from the Upanishads that still stands on its cover, and wrote the prospectus (প্রস্তাবনা) for the first issue. Swami Trigunatitananda was at once editor of the paper and manager of the press and office; Swami Shuddhananda (স্বামী শুদ্ধানন্দ) was his assistant, and began translating Swamiji's English lectures and writings into Bengali for its pages.

In the prospectus Swamiji set out what he called the life-purpose (জীবনোদ্দেশ্য) of Udbodhan. He described two great rivers of human thought: the ancient Indian, given to the deepest reflection and to spiritual ideas that have crossed rivers, mountains and seas into the veins of other nations; and the Greek, given to tireless effort, the mastery of the visible world and the creation of earthly beauty, of which all Europe is today the pupil and heir.

Whenever these two streams have met, he wrote, civilisation has been lifted on a great spiritual wave and the bond between human beings has grown stronger. It happened once in antiquity, again with the rise of the Arabs, and the time for such a meeting had, he believed, come again — "এবার কেন্দ্র ভারতবর্ষ" ("this time the centre is India"). The union of India's spiritual knowledge with the West's knowledge of the world was to be the ideal of the new age, and India was to lead the world to it.

He did not spare his own countrymen: modern Indians, he wrote, were no longer the glory of the ancient Aryan line, and had let the country sink into inertia in the name of religion. The way out was to bring India's own high thought back into living practice and to keep it before the people. "এই দুই শক্তির সম্মিলনের ও মিশ্রণের যথাসাধ্য সহায়তা করা 'উদ্বোধনের' জীবনোদ্দেশ্য" — to help, as far as it can, the meeting and mingling of these two forces: that is the life-purpose of Udbodhan.

Udbodhan began as a fortnightly and became a monthly from its tenth year, and has been published that way ever since. Up to the eighteenth number of the fourth year it was printed on its own press; the press then had to be sold, and the journal has been printed at other presses since.

In 1903 Swami Trigunatitananda left for America, and the journal came close to closing. At Swami Brahmananda's wish and through Swami Saradananda's efforts the crisis passed: Swami Shuddhananda was given charge of editing and publishing, and his devotion and hard work kept Udbodhan going. From this time Swami Saradananda (Sharat Maharaj) was closely tied to the journal; from November 1908 he took full charge of the Karyalaya.

The office had moved from Girindralal Basak's house to 30 Bosepara Lane in November 1906, after his death. In November 1908 it moved into its own newly built house at 12–13 Gopal Chandra Neogi Lane, which, because it also fronted Mukherjee Lane, took the address 1 Mukherjee Lane — later renamed Udbodhan Lane. This is the house that became the Holy Mother's Kolkata home, Mayer Bari (শ্রীশ্রীমায়ের বাড়ী).

As the readership and the work grew, a plot about 200 feet from Mayer Bari was bought while Swami Jnanatmananda was head, and a four-storey Karyalaya building was raised on it in stages: begun under Swami Nityaswarupananda, carried up to three floors under Swami Vishwashrayananda, and completed with the fourth under Swami Hiranmayananda. The ground floor holds the office, the head's office, the sales room, the book store and accounts; the first floor the subscription and collection department, advertising, proof-reading and the Swami Saradananda Hall where readings and lectures are held; the second floor the editor's office and residence and a public library; the top floor is the monks' quarters.

Swamiji's writings reached Bengali readers through the Patrika first and then as books. Rajyoga (রাজযোগ), published in Baishakh 1306 (1899), was the Karyalaya's first book; Bhaktiyoga followed in Ashadh 1307 and Karmayoga in Bhadra 1307 (1900), all three translated from Swamiji's English originals. Once the Bengali translations were out, the Karyalaya began publishing the English texts too, and by 1308 (1902) it had brought out Rajyoga, Karmayoga, Jnanayoga, Bhaktiyoga and the Chicago lectures in Bengali, and the same titles with the Letters and Conversations in English. Swamiji's own Bengali work Prachya o Paschatya (প্রাচ্য ও পাশ্চাত্য), serialised in the Patrika, appeared as a book soon after.

The first volume of Sri Sri Ramakrishna Kathamrita (শ্রীশ্রীরামকৃষ্ণকথামৃত), by Sri M., was published in 1902. In 1910 Sister Nivedita's The Master as I Saw Him came out from Udbodhan and in England at the same time. Much of this rests on Swami Shuddhananda, who from the beginning helped with the Patrika and translated almost the whole of Swamiji's English writings into Bengali single-handed — faithful to the original, and in his own fluent prose.

Swami Saradananda's Sri Sri Ramakrishna Lilaprasanga (শ্রীশ্রীরামকৃষ্ণলীলাপ্রসঙ্গ), the authoritative life of Sri Ramakrishna in five parts, was written in his small ground-floor room at Mayer Bari and is the Karyalaya's best-known work. Later came Yuganayak Vivekananda, Sri Ma Sarada Devi, Sri Ramakrishna Bhaktamalika, a day-by-day edition of the Kathamrita with indexes, and the four-volume Vedanta Darshan. By 2014 the Karyalaya had published and printed about three hundred books.