Re-reading The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna in the 21st century.

The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna has an a-historical appeal that cuts across generations, time periods, geo-social spaces and lifestyle choices. The text or the person is not the sole belonging of a particular institution or a group of people.We belong to a generation that is flippant in our habits and our notions of Indian-ness and the world, and we flirt with global cultures. And yet, The Gospel does make sense. One can imagine Sri Ramakrishna, examining us benevolently, and questioning us about our lifestyles; never judging us but engaging with us and having a discussion, so that we ourselves are critically empowered to understand ourselves better.Sri Ramakrishna is obviously enough, not specific to any particular nation or community or religious belief. He embraces all and in this all embracing gesture, reaches out to everyone. His teachings critique the global dominant notion that we have about mainstream Hinduism - where Indian-ness and being Hindu is equated with a repressive concept of moral prudishness.More often than not, Sri Ramakrishna spoke in riddles, and his saying are self contradictory, on the verge of being unsolved conundrums - as if questioning the intelligence of the listener. His guise of an unlettered rustic, poor Brahmin helped him. As a reader, we can be thrown off the track if we fall into that trap.