Born in the village of Trikkur, Kerala State, on December 15, 1908, Swami Ranganathananda joined the Ramakrishna Order, the international spiritual and cultural movement founded by Swami Vivekananda, at its branch in Mysore in 1926. He was formally initiated into Sannyasa in 1933 by Swami Shivananda, one of the eminent disciples of Sri Ramakrishna and the second President of the Order.
After spending the first twelve years in the Order's branches in Mysore and Bangalore, the first six years of which as a cook, dishwasher and house-keeper and later as warden of students' hostel, he worked as Secretary and librarian at the Ramakrishna Mission branch at Rangoon, from 1939 to 1942, and thereafter as President of the Ramakrishna Math and Mission, Karachi, from 1942 to 1948.
From 1949 to 1962, Swamiji worked as the Secretary of the New Delhi branch of the Mission, and from 1962 to 1967, he was the Secretary of the Ramakrishna Mission Institue of Culture, Kolkata, Director of its School of Humanistic and Cultural Studies, and Editor of its monthly journal.
From 1973 to 1993 Swamiji was President of Ramakrishna Math, Hyderabad. From 1994 to 1998 he was Vice-President of world-wide Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission and became its President in 1998. He stayed at Belur Math, till his passing away on April 25, 2005.Swamiji had undertaken extensive lecture tours from 1946 to 1972 covering 50 countries. From 1973 to 1986 he visited annually Australia, U.S.A., Holland and Germany.
In 1986 Swamiji was awarded the first Indira Gandhi Award for National Integration.
Swamiji was closely associated with the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan for more than five decades. The Bhavan had the privilege of publishing 29 books penned by Swamiji. All of these books containing Swamiji's teachings published under the Bhavan's Eternal Values Booklets Series have received enthusiastic responses from the readers and many of them have gone into several editions. All of them continue to be in great and increasing demand and those that have gone out of stock are being reprinted on priority basis.
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