and expressive quality of his poems. As
with many of the devotional (bhakti)
figures, little is definitely known about
his life. According to tradition, he
worked for a short time as a clerk before
his indulgent employer, finding him
spending his days composing poetry to
Kali, became his literary patron to allow
him to write full time. Ramprasad’s
poetry invokes the Goddess in many of
her different personae—as the goddesses
Uma, Durga, and Bhairavi—but the
majority of his poems are addressed to
Kali. Despite Kali’s fearsome qualities,
Ramprasad persistently addresses her as
“mother,” and, like a child, clings to her
despite all her attempts to discourage
him. The end result is that his unflinch-
ing and unquestioning devotion to Kali
removes all fear and brings him libera-
tion. For further reading, see David R.
Kinsley, The Sword and the Flute, 1975;
and Clinton Seely and Leonard Nathan
(trans.), Grace and Mercy in Her Wild
Hair, 1999.
Ram Rajya Parishad
(“Organization for Ram’s Reign”)
Northern Indian political party formed
immediately after Indian independence
in 1947. It was founded by Swami
Karpatri, an influential modern Hindu
ascetic. The term Ram Rajya carries
mythical significance, referring to the
period of righteous rule by the god-king
Rama, the protagonist of the epic
Ramayana, after his return from four-
teen years of exile in the forest.
According to popular belief, Rama’s
reign was marked by perfect peace, jus-
tice, and social harmony.
The Ram Rajya Parishad sought to
reshape India according to the vision of
this mythical time, and the party’s polit-
ical platform was solidly rooted in con-
servative Hindu religious ideas. The
party strongly supported the castesys-
tem, with its traditional division of
social status and labor, and believed that
it was essential for a smoothly function-
ing society. This position would have
condemned most low-caste people to a
life of servitude, although the party did
leave them a few meager windows for
advancement. One of these was manag-
ing shoe factories, since leatheris con-
sidered religiously impure by the higher
castes, and thus working with leather is
the traditional occupation of certain low
status groups. Aside from their views on
the validity of the caste system, the Ram
Rajya Parishad also supported other
conservative Hindu causes, particularly
a total ban on cow slaughterand a com-
plete ban on the production and con-
sumption of liquor. The Ram Rajya
Parishad’s constituency came mainly
from conservative, upper-class Hindus,
particularly those in the GangesRiver
basin. Its conservatism gave those out-
side this group no incentive to support
it. Although it had limited electoral suc-
cess in years immediately after indepen-
dence, within a dozen years the party
had been reduced to a completely mar-
ginal presence.Ram Rasik Sampraday
Religious lineage among the Ramanandis,
a community of renunciant ascetics. All
Ramanandis are devotees (bhakta) of
the god Rama, but members of the
Ram Rasik Sampraday stress the wor-
shipof Rama and his wife Sitaas the
divine couple. They focus their wor-
ship on the time of domestic bliss
when the newly married couple lived in
Ayodhya, before Rama’s unjust banish-
ment from that city. Rasik (“aesthete”)
devotion involves complex forms of
visualization, in which devotees imag-
ine themselves to be servants and com-
panions of Rama and Sita, and spend
their days in service to the divine cou-
ple. Rasik devotees also draw up exact-
ing “schedules” of the deities’daily
routines—in some cases, down to the
quarter-hour—so that through this
imaginative exaltation they can savor
the bliss of being God’s companions.
(This form of dedication is clearly influ-
enced by devotional patterns to the god
Krishna, particularly the divine rever-
ence found in the Gaudiya VaishnavaRam Rasik Sampraday