‘When I Change, the World Will Change’: Visiting Hindu Monastics Discuss Self-Transformation at HDS Event

Hindu monastics Brahmacharini Durga and Sudarshan Sundar discussed their personal paths into Hindu monasticism at a Harvard Divinity School event Monday, highlighting the spiritually transformative nature of the practice.

Durga and Sundar — who are members of the Ramakrishna and Brahma Kumaris orders, respectively — described Hindu monasticism as a way to affect broad change by starting within the self.

“When I change, the world will change,” Sundar said at the start of the talk.

“You can transform yourself to the point that you can lovingly and kindly deal with things that are not correct,” Durga said.

Durga and Sundar are the eighth and ninth Hindu monastics to visit HDS as part of a one-year-long program, which has been hosting Hindu monastics since 2019 and was inspired by a similar long-running program that hosts Buddhist monastics.

“It’s good for them, out of their monastic backgrounds, to be on a campus, to study religion in the classroom,” said Francis X. Clooney, professor of Comparative Theology and the moderator of Monday’s event. “Also it’s good for students at HDS and faculty to know these monastics. They’re very interesting people with rich backgrounds.”

Sundar began the event by explaining the history of Brahma Kumaris, a spiritual movement founded in pre-partition India in the 1930s, and the current state of the branch.

“Scholars call it either a spiritual organization, Hindu sect, or a new religious movement. It has 5,000 centers in 110 countries,” he said of Brahma Kumaris, adding that the order has had “general consultative status” as a United Nations non-governmental organization.

Sundar also touched on some core ideas of monasticism, such as the tension between one’s “inner world and outer world.”

“Should you focus on external change — bringing positive benefit to the world — or should you monastically focus on the inner world?” Sundar said. “This is a natural tension I’ve noticed. So what I have realized is that it’s actually a balance.”

As a part-time software engineer for Microsoft, Sundar said he has had to find a balance between his private and public lives.

“I found that it was useful for my growth,” he said, referring to his job, “and perhaps was a preparation to be here, in some sense, to be exposed and think more creatively, perhaps, or actually see the world. See the real problems out there. See what office politics is like. See what’s going on.”

Durga is a member of the Ramakrishna order, a spiritual organization founded in the 19th century by Ramakrishna. She said that she was not particularly religious before meeting a monk of the Ramakrishna order, who inspired her to join.

“I was immediately struck with the idea that God was the most important thing,” Durga said.

Both Durga and Sundar said they are gender minorities in their respective orders. The Ramakrishna order is predominantly male, with only 27 nuns compared to 2,000 monks according to Durga, while two-thirds of Brahma Kumaris are women.

Sundar said the Brahma Kumaris order was founded with the intention of promoting female empowerment, adding that the order’s primarily female leadership has “been very beneficial for the organization.”

Speaking to her experience as a member of the Ramakrishna, Durga said that although there were more women-focused organizations she may have been able to join, she was not aware of them at the time that she was getting involved. However, she said she has not faced issues within the organization as a result of its predominantly male membership.

“Everybody is extremely respectful,” she said.

Durga also reflected positively on her experience being hosted at HDS.

“I wasn’t really expecting how sweet and kind and adorable everyone would be,” she said.

“I was sort of like, ‘Okay, I’m going back to school. This is kind of a worldly environment. This might be really hard,’” Durga added. “And then you come and you see that they have so many kind people who are devoted to trying to help people in different ways and thinking about making the world a better place.”

— Staff Writer Sebastian B. Connolly can be reached at sebastian.connolly@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @SebastianC4784.

— Staff Writer Julia A. Karabolli can be reached at julia.karabolli@thecrimson.com.