Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission are twin organisations which form the core of a worldwide spiritual movement (known as Ramakrishna Movement or Vedanta Movement), which aims at  harmony of religions, harmony of the east and the west, harmony of the ancient and the modern, spiritual fulfilment, all–round development in different faculties, social equality and peace for humanity, without any distinction of creed, caste, race or nationality. 

RAMAKRISHNA MATH is a monastic order of men brought into existence by Sri Ramakrishna (1836-1886), the great 19th century saint, who is regarded as the Prophet of the Modern Age.

RAMAKRISHNA MISSION is a registered society in which monks of the Ramakrishna Math and lay devotees cooperate in conducting various types of social service. It was founded by Sri Ramakrishna’s chief disciple and religious leader, Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902) who is regarded as ‘one of the main moulders of the modern world’, in the words of an eminent Western scholar.  

HISTORY

Born in 1836 in a pious Brahmin family at Kamarpukur, a remote village of West Bengal, Sri Ramakrishna attained an exalted state of spiritual illumination that had never before been achieved by any other religious genius in India or elsewhere. Shortly after the passing away of this prophet of harmony of religions in August 1886, a monastic order bearing his name was organised in pursuance of his own instructions, with a monastery (Math) at Baranagar, a northern suburb of Kolkata, by his Sanyasin disciples headed by Swami Vivekananda. Gradually it set for itself a twofold ideal: to create a band of Sanyasin teachers of Vedanta as propounded by Sri Ramakrishna and practically illustrated by his own life; and to carry on missionary and philanthropic work, in conjunction with the lay disciples, looking upon all, irrespective of caste, creed, or colour, as variable manifestations of the Divine. For some time the latter work was carried on through an association called the Ramakrishna Mission Association, started by Swami Vivekananda in May 1897, shortly after his return from the West. In 1899 he shifted the Math, which had changed places by then, to its present site at Belur, across the river Ganga, about six kilometers north of Howrah Railway Station, where it set itself more vigorously to the task of training a band of monks inspired  with the twin ideals of Self-realisation and service to the World. Soon after this, the Math authorities took upon themselves the work of the Mission Association. 

The Ramakrishna Math was registered as a trust in 1901. To facilitate the work of the Mission Association and for giving it a legal status, a society named the Ramakrishna Mission was registered in 1909. Its management was vested in a Governing Body. Both the Math and Mission gradually expanded their spheres of activity, as a result of which a number of branches in different parts of the country and abroad came into existence.