Berg vs. Ramabai
This is really interesting to me because Ramabai according to Berg was not a picture of empowerment of women and protection of children and education for both. That is what Ramabai did and incorporated her faith in accomplishing it.
Berg was opposite of Ramabai with his teachings and "revelations" on child brides, his views on women in letters like "Revolutionary Sex", "The Marry Time Dream", "IRFer's Beware" etc.
Ramabai would have been absolutely appalled by what Berg was teaching and how Berg oppressed women and children. Men too of course, but education was not valued within the Family and neither was advancement of women and certainly not empowerment of children. You don't empower children by teaching them to be little slaves for a sexualized cult that will spit them out if they don't obey.
And now here are some excepts from articles on Pandita. She is so very opposite of BERG.
Salvation a Free Gift
In Calcutta Ramabai first heard about Christ. She discovered that salvation is a free gift from God, not a reward earned by pilgrimages and payments. But Ramabai thought a Christian had to adopt European customs. Since she did not like European food or clothes, she joined a cult that mixed Christian and Hindu ideas. She escaped this only after a missionary explained that Christianity allows great freedom. She could eat and dress in the Hindu tradition. Meanwhile, her brother died. Ramabai married, but her husband died, too, of cholera. She was left with a baby daughter, whom she named Manoramabai, "Heart's joy."
"Hells on Earth"
If women in India ranked low, widows ranked lower. Some were burned alive on their husbands' funeral pyres. Many who were allowed to live were forced to become slaves. Others were sent to temples as prostitutes to make money for priests. Pandita had seen all of this and was indignant.
There are thousands of priests and men learned in sacred lore... They neglect and oppress the widows, and devour widows' houses ... hire them out to wicked men so long as they can get money; and when the poor, miserable slaves are no longer pleasing to their cruel masters, they turn them out in the street to beg their livelihood, to suffer the horrible consequences of sin, to carry the burden of shame, and finally to die the death worse than that of a starved street dog. The so-called sacred places--those veritable hells on earth--have become the graveyards of countless widows and orphans.
A Talent Turned to Teaching
It is all very well to be called "Pandita," but such honors need to be turned to good purposes. Ramabai pioneered an organization to reform the treatment of women.
But she felt that God was nudging her to go to England. Although she had no money, she set out, taking her daughter with her. At St. Mary's Home in Wantage, England, Church of England sisters took her in, taught her about Christ, and baptized her. Later she said God had led her into a strange land just as he led Abraham. From England, Ramabai traveled to the United States, where she studied education and spoke to assemblies about India's needs. She published an influential book, The High Caste Hindu Woman. Interested Americans formed an organization to support her.
The Refuge Called "Mukti"
Ramabai began by opening a school for a few pupils. She promised not to pressure Hindu girls to become Christians. However, she offered the Bible to them. Through reading the Bible and observing Ramabai's godly life, several girls converted to Christianity. Hindus complained that Ramabai was betraying her own culture. Eventually Ramabai saw that she could not walk between two faiths. She declared that her school would be completely Christian.
Other projects followed. Many women came to her--girl brides so abused they were terrified of a touch; older women, snarling like animals from years of cruelty. On farmland inherited from her family and land bought from a liquor dealer, she created a refuge called Mukti, which means "salvation" in many Indian languages. There she developed orchards and taught arts that would support women.
But many widows refused to come to Mukti. Their minds were filled with dread of Christians. ". . They think that some day after they are well fattened they will be hung head downward, and a great fire will be built underneath, and oil will be extracted from them to be sold at a fabulously large price for medical purposes. Others think that they will be put into mills and their bones ground.... They cannot understand that anyone would be kind to them without some selfish purpose."
Holy Burning.
In the history of the church, there are times when the Holy Spirit moves with extraordinary power among God's people. They awaken to their true spiritual condition. Pandita and 550 women prayed for such a movement to come to Mukti. On June 29, 1905, a large group felt the Spirit's presence. Weeping, they confessed their sins. Women testified to a holy burning that was almost unbearable.
Not Lower than Pigs After All
Pandita died in 1922, having done much to raise the status of her Hindu sisters. If ever a life demonstrated that women are not lower than pigs, that life was Ramabai's.
Was Ramabai the Greatest Indian Woman in the Past 1,000 Years?
Vishal Mangalwadi thinks so. He is an internationally renowned scholar and the author of India: The Grand Experiment, Beyond the New Age, The World of Gurus, and many more. He comments, "There are good reasons to nominate Mrs. Indira Gandhi as the Indian Woman of the 20th Century. However, had she been born a century earlier, she would have been married off to a Brahmin as an illiterate girl before she was 12 years old. And had she refused to be burnt alive on her husband's funeral pyre, she would have had to spend her widowhood in seclusion as an inauspicious woman. The woman who began reforming India's attitude towards women was Pandita Ramabai Sarswati--a builder of modem India. Pandita Ramabai is the Indian woman of the Millennium."
Ramabai in her Own Words
Some years ago I was brought to the conviction that mine was only an intellectual belief--a belief in which them was no life. It looked for salvation in the future after death; and consequently my soul had not "Passed from death unto life." God showed me how very dangerous my position was, and what a wretched and lost sinner I was, and how necessary it was to obtain salvation in the present, and not in some future time. I repented long; I became very restless and almost ill and passed many sleepless nights. The Holy Spirit so got hold of me that I could not rest until I found salvation then and there. So I prayed earnestly to God to pardon my sins for the sake of Jesus Christ and let me realize that I had really got salvation through him. I believed God's promise and took Him at His word, and when I had done this, my burden rolled away, and I realized that I was forgiven and freed from the power of sin.
Anatomy of a Hoax
Ramabai and her brother came to a lake in which seven sages supposedly took the form of seven "mountains." For a purified person, the mountains swam forward, but for the evil stood still. The mountains stayed put for Ramabai and her brother. Despite warnings from the priests that crocodiles lived in the water, the brother swam to the islands at night. He found that they were built on rafts which a priest pushed forward at a signal from shore after a pilgrim proved his virtue with a coin.
A Merciful Reprieve
Ramabai's learning was not in vain. In the last 15 years of her life, she mastered Greek and Hebrew to translate the Bible into Marathi. As death neared, she prayed for ten days to finish the proofs and God granted her exactly ten.
Christ's Work Continues at Ramabai Mukti Mission
It plants churches and advances her noble ideals of justice and mercy for the oppressed by providing orphanages, rescue homes for destitute women and unwed mothers, schools, vocational training, village evangelism, and a large hospital. The work at Mukti today remains devoted to Christ and the Scriptures, as Ramabai arranged that the work would be overseen in the future by committed Christians.
> Here's most of what he wrote about her in
> Birthday Warning:
> 112. (LATER IN STRONG FOREIGN
> ACCENT--PROBABLY ABRAHIM:) DO YOU WANT TO
> HEAR ABOUT PANDITA RAMABAI OF INDIA NOW? I
> asked Jesus, "Do I have to live so long
> and wait so long to reach my people?"
> And Jesus said, "If you are willing to
> do like Pandita, you can reach them in half
> the time with twice as much, but then you
> die!" Pandita was a very wise old
> woman. She even told them where they could
> find water to drill for Mukti Mission, when
> there was no water for miles away, and they
> drilled and found gushing water! She found
> the water where there was no water!
> 113. WHEN I ASKED JESUS, "HOW LONG, how
> long, how long?"--He said, "If
> you'll be like her, you can do twice as much
> in half as long!" She was dying of
> something, and asked doctor how long she
> have to live. And he said, "If you be
> careful and take it easy, you may live one
> year!" She said, "Doctor, long
> time you promised me you would go to my
> people beyond the high mountains with love
> of Jesus, but still you don't go! If I take
> the back-pack on my back with all the little
> Gospels for my people, and climb high
> mountains and go myself, how long then I
> live maybe?" And he said, "O
> Pandita, maybe you only live six months,
> half as much!"
> 114. SHE SAID, "DOCTOR, HERE, I'M OLD
> WOMAN. You strap on the pack on my back, and
> I'm going to my people! MANY YEARS YOU TELL
> ME YOU GO, BUT YOU DON'T GO. You strap pack
> on my back, and I am going to my
> people!" And he said, "You wait,
> Pandita!--We'll go some day.--You don't have
> to go!" But she said, "Now I
> go." But he said, "YOU CUT YOUR
> LIFE IN TWO! IT'S HARD CLIMB, 'WAY UP HIGH
> MOUNTAINS IN NORTHERN INDIA." And he
> started to help her get the pack on her
> back, and she cry and weep, and he said,
> "Don't cry!--You don't have to go.
> We'll go for you someday." She said,
> "Foolish man, I don't cry because I
> have to go! I CRY BECAUSE JESUS GIVE ME HIS
> WHOLE LIFE, AND I HAVE HALF A LIFE TO GIVE
> FOR JESUS!" And she went off up the
> trail with the back-pack.
> 115. (Tongues and weeping:) OH, SO FEW HAVE
> SO MUCH LOVE FOR THE CHILDREN OF DAVID to
> take half their life and give for those who
> never hear, like Pandita! Last they saw her,
> she was climbing the mountain trail with the
> heavy backpack. SO FEW CHILDREN OF DAVID
> HAVE LOVE LIKE PANDITA FOR ME, JESUS! She go
> up the trail weeping to her people, and she
> only have half a life to give to her people,
> when He give His whole life for her! Many
> years later many people come from mountains
> saying they're saved because PANDITA COME
> WITH HALF HER LIFE, TO GIVE THEM ALL JESUS'
> LIFE! She give double life and more life to
> her people! She give twice as much life to
> her people, but she only had half of hers
> left. SUCH ARE THE WORDS OF DAVID THAT HE
> GIVES YOU FROM HIS BOSOM that you kiss. She
> gave my people Jesus. In only half her life
> she gave them Jesus, like I'm going to do
> for you. I'M GOING TO BURN UP FAST AND
> BRIGHT FOR JESUS!