Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda Educational and Research Institute

It is well known that Swami Vivekananda (Swamiji) had long considered character to be the hallmark of an educated person. He emphasized times without number that education is not the “amount of information that is put into your brain” but the “life-building, man-making, character-making assimilation of ideas.” In 1939, the Governing Body of the Ramakrishna Mission took a small step towards actualizing this vision of education by starting an institution of higher education near Belur Math called Ramakrishna Mission Vidyamandira. The name ‘Vidyamandira’ is Swamiji’s own christening of the educational institution he wanted near Belur Math. A couple of decades later, during Swami Vivekananda’s birth centenary year (1963), the authorities of the Ramakrishna Mission submitted a proposal to the Government for the starting of the Vivekananda University. For various reasons, however, the university did not materialize at that time. Efforts in this direction were made off and on in subsequent years until finally, a deemed university under University Grants Commission (UGC) was established under Ramakrishna Mission’s auspices in 2005. The Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), Government of India, declared the Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda Educational and Research Institute (RKMVERI) under the aegis of Ramakrishna Mission, as an Institution deemed-to-be university under Section 3 of UGC Act, 1956. The Institute was subsequently renamed ‘Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda University’ with the approval of UGC, but reverted to its initial name RKMVERI in 2017 upon a directive from the UGC.