Interpreting Ramakrishna

Interpreting Ramakrishna: Kali's Child Revisited is a scholarly rebuttal to the controversial book Kali's Child by Jeffrey Kripal, which asserted that Sri Ramakrishna's mystical experiences were fueled by homoerotic desires that the saint neither accepted nor understood. A glaring weakness of Kripal is that he could barely read and understand Bengali, the language of the source material. Furthermore, he unfortunately was too eager to prove conclusions that the literature did not support.

These and other points are explained step-by-step.

Included in Interpreting Ramakrishna is a lengthy analysis of scholarship on Sri Ramakrishna over the past century.

According to Harvard professor Francis X. Clooney: "Interpreting Ramakrishna is a substantial and conscientious work of scholarly and religious reflection, the best resource we have for understanding Sri Ramakrishna today."

Professor Gerald James Larson (UC Santa Barbara) says that Interpreting Ramakrishna "is balanced, scrupulously fair, and generous to all sides in the debate."

According to Professor Anantanand Rambachan, Interpreting Ramakrishna "is a patient and elaborate illustration of the possible This is a welcome contribution to Ramakrishna that treads the uncommon middle ground between the extremes of the uncritical insider and the unexamined assumptions of the scholar."