Date:22/01/2004 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2004/01/22/stories/2004012211301200.htm

Other States - West Bengal

Sister Gargi dead

KOLKATA, JAN. 21. Eminent Vivekananda researcher, Marie Louise Burke, popularly known as Sister Gargi, died at the convent of the Vendanta Society in San Francisco, Ramakrishna Mission sources here said.

She was 93 and suffering from cancer. The end came at 10.00 a.m. IST yesterday, the sources said today. Initiated to the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda movement in 1948 by Swami Ashokananda, the then abbot of the Vedanta Society, Burke took her first vows in India from the Ramakrishna Order in 1974 and was given the monastic name "Gargi" after the Vedic scholar in recognition of her brilliant accomplishments as researcher and writer.

Later on, she took her final vows of "sanyas" and was given the name Pravrajika Prajnaprana. Her six-volume classic "Swami Vivekananda in the West: New Discoveries," is highly acclaimed in India as also in the Vendanta circles world-wide. — PTI