The Call of Maha Sakti Mother Divine

Ratna MA Navaratnam, well known educationist and scholar, was born in a pious family noted for Hindu culture, in Jaffna, Ceylon. She was educated in Presidency College, Madras, the Annamali University and the institute of Education, London. She has had a brilliant academic record, obtaining First Class in the English Honours, Degree, M. Litt, Philosophy and M.A. Education, London with distinctions and Gold Medals. She was a delegated at Geneva Conference for International Understanding in 1951, and continues to be an active member in many cultural and women’s organization, a past President of the Royal Asiatic Society, President of the national Education Society and on the Editorial Board of the Tamil Culture, Madras. For over ten years, she was head of Ramanathan College, a premier Hindu Institution in Ceylon and joined the Educational Service in 1944. She has written several books for children, book on poetry and appreciation of Indian Classics and her popular book on New Frontiers in East-West Philosophies of Education has been acclaimed as a bridge builder between East and West in Educational Thought and practice. She has traveled widely in India, Western Europe and the United Kingdom. Her inherited spiritual associations, her personal contacts with great religious mystics, thinkers and writers of East and West and coming under the potential influences of the great Guru, Maha Yogar Swamigal of Columbuturai, enabled her to pursue relentlessly the search into the mystic fountains of the Saiva Siddhanta seers. In this task, she was guided by well known philosopher and scholar like Prof. K. Subramaniam Pillai, Prof. K. Swaminathan, Prof. T.P. Meenakshi Sundaram. Ratna MA Navaratnam passed away in 1993 at the age of 82.