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This was the background when on February 18, 1836, a son was born to Khsudi Ram Chattopadhya, poor but deeply religious Brahmin at Kamarpukur, a very small village in the Hooghly district in Bengal. Before the son was born, the father ona pilgrimage to Gaya had a dream that the
Lord Vishnu would be born as his son. His wife Chandramoni also had a similar dream. The boy was named Gadadhar.
As a child Gadadhar showed the makings of a religious saint. He lost his father in 1843.
When Gadadhar was invested with the sacred thread in his 9th year, he refused to beg for
his first alms from a Brahmin family in the traditional way but insisted on having it from
Dhani, the blacksmith woman who had confined his mother and who was second mother to him.
The beginnings of a broad-based human religion doing away with caste restrictions and a
true spirit of catholicity were there. His elder brother Ram Kumar who acted as a priest
in some temples and had also set up a Sanskrit school took Gadadhar to Calcutta.
Gadadhar loved performing worship at the houses of some neighbors
but he was allergic to anydeep study and openly pined for spiritual wisdom instead of
earning a bread winning education.Mysterious is the ways of Providence that creates
circums- tances for the birth of saints.RaniRasmani, a pious widow of Calcutta, rolling in
wealth while boating by the river Ganga had a vision that she must build a temple at
Dakshineswar village about 5 miles to the north of Calcutta. The widow immediately started
translating the vision into action. She paid a huge sum to acquire the site and built a
magnificent temple for Kali, the Divine Mother along with other temples in honor of Siva
and Krishna.
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