The Dispute Over Swami Vivekananda's Legacy: A Warning and an Opportunity by Rajni Bakshi Other India Press, (1994)
Authors' Preface
This series began with a gathering at Bapu Kuti, Sewagram A Ashram, in January 1993. Veteran Gandhians and young admirers of M.K. Gandhi had come to commemorate J.C. Kumarappa's birth centenary and share notes on struggling for non-violent and sustainable socio-economic structures.
Over six or seven days, some of us were blessed with those rare flights of imagination and hope which occur by a seemingly magical conjunction of people, place and spirit. The base for these winged journeys was Gandhiji's home and the dreams it houses. Yet the flight path also took us close to Swami Vivekananda's ideas about work in rural India.
This idyllic week of energising camaraderie and plans for future work, came to a jolting close as news of unprecedented communal violence in Bombay broke through the ensconcing comfort of Sewagram. When I returned to Bombay, another ten days later, the killing was still going on and fires were smouldering. The full extent of the horror began to unfold only as it became clear that otherwise responsible citizens were justifying the violence. Systematic attacks against innocent unarmed people were rationalised as a pre-emptive 'defence'. Some even argued that the Bombay killings of Muslims were a necessary retribution for killings of Hindus in the Kashmir valley.
The double trauma of finding friends and relatives turn blood-thirsty, caused some people to plunge even more determinedly into relief work among victims of the violence. Others, like me, struggled just to break out of a shell-shocked state and the stupefying despair it threatened to induce.
It was then that a tiny booklet, of Swami Vivekananda's thoughts on meditation, suddenly appeared in the form of a rescue. He seemed to mark a pathway to being fearless, that first prerequisite for true non-violence. And the practical, moral imperative of non-violence had never seemed more real. The recent discussions at Sewagram now took on new meaning. How could a century which began with a Vivekananda and led to a Gandhi bring us to this present? Surely such energies do not just evaporate from society? Or, am I romanticizing their lives on the basis of one-dimensional images?
This meant journeying into the life and times of Swami Vivekananda. By coincidence, 1993 was the centenary year of Swami Vivekananda's Chicago address and this offered the impetus for the journalistic series.
This exercise in turn led to the title-essay of this booklet. These articles are by way of preliminary despatches in what I hope will be an on-going journey. There is nothing new here for those who know Swami Vivekananda's life and work. But perhaps this booklet will interest those who know him only through the odd quotation or that famous picture where he stands proud, arms firmly folded across his chest. And I hope that it may form a small part of many friends' efforts to open and maintain dialogue1 in an atmosphere of polarisation, where people are finding it difficult even to laugh together.
The series was possible because of the encouragement and patience of seniors and friends, among them — Prof. M.I Rege, Prof. Ram Bapat, Anand Bapat, Vijay Pratap, Ravi Chopra, and particularly John D'Souza, Avinash Jha and other friends at the the Centre for Education and Documentation. Most of all, I would like to thank the monks of the Ramakrishna Mission, in Bombay and at Belur Math, who not only made available books and facilities but stressed the importance of critical, open enquiry.
Bombay: March 1994
The Dispute Over Swami Vivekananda's Legacy: A Warning and an Opportunity
Part I
On a hot humid day, 100 years ago, a handsome young man dressed in bright ochre silk sailed out of Bombay on a unique mission. Naren stood on the deck of the Peninsular while the steamer slipped out of harbour. As he gazed at the shrinking coastline, there were tears in his eyes.
Naren's mind was crowded with memories of the people and the purpose that had put him on that ship. He thought of India and her culture, of her greatness and her suffering, of the rishis and of the Sanatana Dharma. His being was steeped in love of this land where he had wandered alone in a determined quest.
Soon the last glimpse of Indian soil vanished over the horizon. As the blue grey waters of the Arabian sea surrounded him, the young sanyasi murmured under his breath, "Yes, from the land of Renunciation, I go to the Land of Enjoyment."
Who was this sannyasi and what was he going to do in the distant land of America?
From tiny village huts to grandiose palaces all over India, different people knew him by different names. Once upon a time, he had been just Narendranath Datta, son of a successful Calcutta lawyer. As a wandering monk, he had sometimes been Vividishananda — one who is trying to know many things. Elsewhere, others had known him as Sachidananda and glimpsed within him shades of its meaning — existence, knowledge, bliss absolute.
Now on the ship's log he was known as Swami Vivekananda, the name by which time and history would remember him.
To his disciples he was both revered 'guru' and a "full of fun Swami," who enjoyed pan-supari and tobacco. He was a brooding scholar and also a merry zesty singer. Just days before the departure for America, Swami Vivekananda had described himself as a "frolicsome, mischievous innocent." To a guru-bhai, wishing him bon voyage, it seemed that Naren's "heart was a huge cauldron in which the sufferings of mankind were being made into a healing balm."
The core of this man's being, at the age of 30, was driven by the relentless zeal of a divine mission. Over a 1,000 years ago, Swami Vivekananda felt, Shankaracharya had "caught the rhythm of the Vedas, the national cadence." Now that same ancient music reverberated through Vivekananda's soul. But it was not enough to simply sing the beauty of the Vedanta. So he set out on an endeavour that transcended national boundaries and sought to actively include all humanity.
This took him to a sparkling new city beside an ocean-like lake in the heart of North America. Chicago was hosting an International fair to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Columbus' accidental discovery of the 'new world'. This 'Exposition' and the World Parliament of Religions were also celebrating the dawn of the 'American Century' with its spiralling dream of limitless prosperity and ever-expanding power.
Into this world sailed that unusual monk of athletic build and luminous eyes in the shape of lotus petals. He went uninvited, driven by the conviction that a special role awaited him there. Amid the glittering affluence of a civilisation exulting in its sense of superiority, he spoke of renunciation.
India, he said, has a special message of love to share with the world. The applause that followed his words stunned Vivekananda himself and echoed for decades.
But now, across a 100 years of non-violent striving followed by brutal turmoil, history is asking us if Vivekananda's claim had any validity. In a society rapidly turning into a battle field, conflicting sides are simultaneously drawing upon Swami Vivekananda. The bigoted and intolerant claim him as much as those who oppose such forces of darkness.
What was it about the Swami's personality, life and work, that makes him today both a hero for chauvinistic Hindus and also a guiding light for people of all faiths who wish for peace on earth through a universal brotherhood of religions? The answers lie partly in the life experience of the man who could say with unabashed confidence that "I shall inspire men everywhere, until the world shall know that it is one with God."
As Narendranath Datta, the law student, this man had once thought that the ancient sages who saw all beings as one with God "must have been insane." He had read western and Indian schools of philosophy and felt that agnosticism was the only way for a thinking man.
These were days of rollicking about, singing merrily on the streets of Calcutta. Brilliantly witty, Naren was the life of any party. "His senses were keen and acute, his natural cravings and passions strong and imperious...he was no sour or cross-grained puritan," one of his friends Brajendranath Seal later recalled. But a terrible restlessness racked Naren's being. He had practised meditation since childhood but it wasn't enough. He wanted certainty, a glimpse of the Ultimate Truth. A feeling of emptiness and sadness began to obsess him. He longed for a "Guru or master who, by embodying perfection in the flesh, would still the commotion in his soul."
So he sought out holy men and asked them: "Have you seen God?" He went to Maharshi Devendranath Tagore, leader of the Brahmo Samaj, of which Naren and his family were also members. Even the Maharshi could not give a positive answer saying only: "My boy, you have the Yogi's eyes."
The answer finally came from a man who lived in a temple garden on the banks of the Ganga just outside Calcutta. "Yes, I see Him (God) just as I see you here, only in a much more intense -sense," Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa told Naren "God can be realised, one can see and talk to Him as I am seeing and talking to you. But who cares?"
Naren cared enough not to take anyone else's word for it. He doubted, reasoned and questioned all the way, till he felt the 'living God' within. Three decades later French philosopher Romain Rolland saw him as "one of the first to sign a treaty of peace between the two forces eternally warring within us, the forces of reason and faith."
These strides took Vivekananda to a cross-road. One tempting path led to the contemplative quiet of Himalayan caves. He chose the other path which merged into the bustle of everyday human striving and suffering. For he believed that "man is the highest symbol of God and his worship is the highest form of worship on earth."
Thus the multi-dimensional journey of Vivekananda's life is a tale of stupendous human will, adventure and lyrical beauty. There are clues here for understanding the ground we stand on today and perhaps signposts for helping one step across the minefield of contemporary strife.
'Reason and Faith'
"He who is in you and outside you,
Who works through all hands,
Who walks on all feet,
Whose body are all ye,
Him worship, and break all other idols!
"Ye fools! Who neglect the living God,
And his infinite reflections with which the world is full,
While ye run after imaginary shadows,
That lead alone to fights and quarrels,
Him worship, the only visible!
Break all other idols!"
This realisation did not come easily to the merry young man who was once Narendranath Datta. But it was the essence of the journey that transformed him into Swami Vivekananda and inspired this poem.
Naren was a restless teenager. He was haunted by that eternally irksome question: "Does God really exist?" For, if God does exist, he thought, "then why is there no response to my passionate appeals? Why is there so much woe in his benign kingdom?"
So he floundered about, "like a child in the wildest forest lost/'
But slowly he emerged from the thicket of doubt and uncertainty to worship "the only God in whom I believe...my God the miserable; my God the poor of all races." How did this happen?
The tortuous path to this realisation was lit by a frail-looking ascetic who worshipped the Goddess Kali at the garden temple of Dakshineshwar on the banks of the Ganga. This man, Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, was able to say that he had indeed 'seen' God. Naren was not instantly convinced but the sincerity and confidence of Sri Ramakrishna's claim was moving.
Others already believed that Sri Ramakrishna was a Paramahamsa — one who has attained the highest spiritual state. But to Naren, at first, Ramakrishna seemed like a "brain-sick baby, always seeing visions and the rest. I hated it." He was not the first to say so. Ramakrishna's family had though him insane, till a conference of pundits declared him a Divine Incarnation.
The pundit's verdict did not impress Naren either. Likewise it seemed absurd when Ramakrishna insisted that Naren was himself the incarnation of a great sage come to fulfill a divine mission. He also refused to automatically accept the worship of Goddess Kali. "How I used to hate Kali and all her ways!" Naren was to say later. He was convinced that God had to be formless.
When Ramakrishna spoke of the divine revelations he experienced, Naren said: "Who knows whether these are revelations from the (Divine) Mother or mere fancies of your brain! If I were in your position I should attribute them to imagination pure and simple."
Yet Ramakrishna's self-evident piety, his "wonderful love" and "marvelous purity' drew Naren. This kept him locked in an intense tussle with the man he eventually accepted as his Guru. Naren was deeply moved by Ramakrishna's insistence to "be spiritual and realise the truth for yourself."
So Naren continued to search and question. He ridiculed the ideas of Advaita Vedanta saying: "I am God, you are God, these created things are God — what can be more absurd than this!" When Naren's insistence on his own view sometimes bordered on the fanatical, Ramakrishna would urge him to "try and see the Truth from all angles and in every perspective."
Meanwhile, the premature death of Naren's father had plunged his family into a dire financial crisis. Once accustomed to plenty, the Datta household now had barely enough to eat. Unable to find a job and provide for the family, Naren was driven to desperation.
So one day, like millions of others have done for ages, he set out to ask a favour from Goddess Kali.
As he entered the Kali temple at Dakshineswar late at night he was "caught in a surging wave of devotion and love" I Forgetting what he had come to ask for, he prayed Instead for knowledge, devotion and uninterrupted vision of the Divine Mother. That night, he went two more times into the temple to ask for the material well-being of his family. But each time only the plea for devotion and divine benediction arose from within him.
An ineffable joy and serene peace overwhelmed Naren, and his life was never the same again. The change that came over him is to remain a mystery. Years later, as Swami Vivekananda, he said "The thing that made me do it (accept Kali) is a secret that will die with me."
Perhaps he felt the Super Conscious opening to him. For, later, he would say with supreme confidence that till this happened "religion is mere talk, it is nothing but preparation." This did not contradict or alter his commitment to reason. It only convinced him that "all religion is going beyond reason, but reason is the only guide to get there/'
In Ramakrishna, he found a living teacher and in the Buddha a timeless inspiration. "I have more veneration for that character (Buddha) than any other — that boldness, that fearlessness and that tremendous love."
Over 2500 years ago the Buddha had said what Naren now felt himself:
"...do not believe merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Have deliberation and analyse, and when the result agrees with reason and conduces to the good of all, accept it and live up to it."
Thus later, even when Swami Vivekananda preached the message of Advaita Vedanta and extolled the Vedic civilisation, he also said: "I take as much of the Vedas as agrees with reason...the greatest gift God has given us." He therefore respected people whose reason led them to be atheists, and had contempt for the blindly religious.
The person who was willing to die for God particularly worried Vivekananda. Such a person, he felt, was equally capable of turning around and killing his own brother. For anyone who wanted to start a sectarian dispute, Vivekananda had this question: "Have you seen God? Have you seen the Atman: If you have not, what right have you to preach his name—you walking in darkness trying to lead me into the same darkness.
This certitude came from the conviction that God is not someone sitting in the clouds issuing instructions to mere mortals. God is love and within all. "Never forget the glory of human nature," Swami Vivekananda said. "Be still and know that you are God."
This realisation was earned through relentless concentration and meditation that took Naren deep inwards. Often, while meditating he would lose all bodily sensation. He thus came, by his own labours, to share Sri Ramakrishna's conviction that the various religions are not contradictory but instead several phases of one eternal religion.
Swami Vivekananda's life journey encompassed many of these phases and extended far beyond. He was simultaneously a devout worshiper of Kali, the unseen life force of the universe, and an untiring admirer of the Buddha. The greatness of Buddha, above all human beings in history, was sealed by his dying words: "Let there be no false bondage, no dependence on me...The Buddha is not a person, he is a realisation. Work out your own salvation."
But then personal salvation alone cannot be the goal of one who truly finds an ideal in the Buddha. Seeking the salvation of others is even more important. And salvation, Swami Vivekananda decided, did not need the grace of God for "freedom always is." But even this pursuit of spiritual ecstasy is not enough. 'To serve Naryana, you must serve the Daridra Naryanas — the starving millions of India."
This was also the ambitious task that Sri Ramakrishna had set for his disciples. In his last years, while he battled painfully with cancer, Sri Ramakrishna identified a select group of disciples, many of them westernised middle-class Bengali boys, to carry on this work. Naren was the spiritual inheritor of the 'Master', as they called Sri Ramakrishna, and natural leader of the band of sannyasi disciples.
These disciples aimed to demonstrate the special ideal of unity among religions by having the spirituality of Hindus, the mercifulness of Buddhists, the activity of Christians and the brotherhood of Mohammedans.
Over the next decade and a half, following Sri Ramkrishna's
death in 1886, Naren's life was a struggle to simultaneously realise this universal ideal and also to fulfill a mission within the Hindu fold. These were not automatically complimentary tasks. Swami Vivekananda struggled to make them so, just as he had forged his own path across the apparent contradictions between faith and reason.
One kind of restlessness had taken Naren to Sri Ramakrishna's doorstep. Now anchored to mysterious strengths he gave way to a new restlessness, a wandering urge that dominated the rest of his short life.
Indian Odyssey
By stretching the imagination one could still picture the peaceful Ayodhya of a hundred years ago. Perhaps it was there, meditating on the banks of the river Sarayu, that Swami Vivekananda was inspired to see Sita as the ideal of India. For, he said, "Sita knows no bitterness...she never returned injury."
In reality, however, the itinerant sannyasi found that India often did not live up to this ideal. But meandering across the country, puzzling over its history, he realised that India's life as a civilisation depended on her people—on their striving to truly be Sita's children. And he insisted that every Indian had it in him to try.
This confidence was wrought in the course of a legendary journey across time and space. Its guides were eternal ideals like Sita and human embodiments like Buddha and Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. The path was illuminated by the Buddha's conviction that "when a man hurts you and you turn back to hurt him, that would not cure the first injury: it would only create in the world more wickedness."
But do we focus on this while commemorating Swami Vivekananda's 'Bharat Yatra' a century later? Or are we content to celebrate his life as a declaration of Indian greatness and not look at the motivating force which propelled it?
Why in this land of high spiritual achievements, is there so much injustice, indignity and poverty? This question haunted Naren long before he embarked on the Indian odyssey and emerged
from it to become famous as Swami Vivekananda. The answers came to him gradually from a close study of the homeland and self-awareness of his own responses.
Once, weary after a long trek, Naren was cheered to see a man by the roadside contentedly smoking a pipe. With all the ease and camaraderie of a fellow smoker he went up to the stranger and asked for a puff from the chillum. The villager looked up at the imposing figure in ochre clothes and shrank back shaking his head. 'It would defile you, sir" he said, "I am a bhangi (sweeper)."
Naren too instinctively pulled back. Continuing down the road he felt uneasy and disturbed. As a sannyasi he aspired to be above notions of caste and prestige, "Yet I fell back into caste ideas when the man told me that he was a sweeper...That was due to ages of habit."
Suddenly, he turned around, went back to the villager and said "Brother do light me a chillum." The mystified man agreed to share his chillum only after much persuasion. Centuries of conditioning had convinced him that he was an outcaste', duty-bound to protect the "purity of the upper castes by staying out of their way.
On hearing about this incident the sannyasi's friends teased him saying that it only showed his addiction to smoking. The young aspirant to renunciation probably laughed along. But he knew it wasn't that simple.
People like that wayside stranger made Naren feel, within himself, the tenacious grip of old social customs that divide people. His diligent struggle for "sameness of vision" could not be just a quest for spiritual ecstasy. It was also a tussle to liberate himself from false duality in practical life. This effort, in which he did not always succeed, went on till the end of his 39 years. As he once wrote to a friend: "If I ever get true renunciation, I shall let you know."
But all of his life was not a sombre struggle. From Calcutta to Porbundar and Almora to Kanyakumari, the learning was accompanied by a sheer enjoyment of adventure and affection of strangers who became friends.
Naren reached Agra in the monsoon of 1888 and was enthralled and overpowered by the Taj Mahal. For days, he just stared at it from every possible angle because "every square inch of this wondrous edifice is worth a whole day's patient observation and it requires at least six months to make a real study of it'
In Lucknow, he was 'lost in admiration of the splendours bequeathed by the Nawabs of Oudh, and of the city's gardens and mosques." The imperial grandeur of Delhi left him physically and spiritually elated. According to his disciple biographers, the Swami "found in Delhi the symbol of the immortal glory of the Indian people, with its grand, composite culture."
But the collective memory of the same people was also filled with the pain inflicted rulers who lived on the blood of their subjects. Swami Vivekananda sensed this and was preoccupied with problems which persisted "even if the kings be of as god-like nature as that of Yudhishtra, Ramachandra, Dharmashoka or Akbar, under whose benign rule the people enjoyed safety and prosperity." For such paternal care provided "no occasion for understanding the principles of self-government." This perpetual dependency on kings for everything gradually drained people of their inherent energy and strength.
Were Puranic tales about near perfect kingdoms mere fantasy then? Swami Vivekananda decided that it was in most cases impossible to decipher historical facts out of myth and legend. But studying the ancient scriptures convinced him that there had been an age of brilliant Vedic seers and valorous noble kings to match.
Yet even then, the same society had also been busy inventing its own hurdles. "Liberty is the first condition of growth," the Swami wrote to Alasinga Perumal, one of his closest disciples. "Your ancestors gave every liberty to the soul, and religion grew. They put the body under every bondage, and society did not grow."
Thus Hinduism accumulated the loftiest teachings on the dignity of humanity but "no religion on earth treads upon the necks of the poor and low in such a fashion as Hinduism." Once, in a moment of blazing anger, he wrote: "The whole world looks down with contempt upon the 300 millions of earthworms crawling upon the fair soil of India and trying to oppress each other."
But his mission was to improve, not worsen, the already low Indian self-confidence. Swami Vivekananda lived at a time when many kinds of bitterness were rife. A certain class of Indians had begun to see themselves as losers' in the race of nations and some were eager to shift the blame for all their ills to foreign invaders, beginning with the Muslims over a thousand years ago.
For Swami Vivekananda this approach amounted to self-evasion. Even he saw India as an enslaved nation, but primarily because of its own failings and missed opportunities. "The Lord once more came to you as Buddha and taught you how to feel, how to sympathise with the poor, the miserable, the sinner but you heard Him not" he wrote. "Your priests invented the horrible story that the Lord was here for deluding demons with false doctrines!...So you are bond slaves to any nation that thinks it worthwhile to rule over you."
But even Buddhism had internally decayed and weakened before it could be driven away by the old priestly class. There emerged then an alliance of mutual self-interest between the priests and the royal class — both now sans their former moral values. This union, being "inherently steeped in vice," led to the "sucking of the blood of the masses, taking revenge on the enemy, spoliation of others' property..." Such rulers were thus "cheap and easy prey to the Mohammedan invaders from the West."
Inspite of his sage-like equanimity, Vivekananda had a deep contempt for all those who used force to spread their religion. He vehemently denounced the violence of Islam and Christianity in certain phases of their history. But he also knew that coercion alone could not keep people converted. Islam won adherents with its message of equality. Christianity with its message of love.
As he roamed across India, the Swami had lengthy discussions with several Muslim maulvis on both Islamic and Hindu philosophy. He concluded that the differences between the Hindu and Muslim worlds were more apparent than real. The national ideal, for Swami Vivekananda, was drawn from the teachings of the ancient sages and thus essentially Hindu. But he saw no inherent conflict between this and the distinct stream of Indian Islam. "Shah Jehan would have turned in his grave to hear himself called a 'foreigner'," the Swami once told a disciple who had erred in so describing the Mogul emperor.
By the time he reached that last bit of Indian rock off the coast at Kanyakumari, Swami Vivekananda had acquired a lucid clarity about his mission. Without abandoning his internal critique of Hinduism, Vivekananda decided that there had been enough fault-finding in the 19th century. The time had come for reconstructing and building strength.
For Swami Vivekananda this meant that "the epithet 'mild Hindu', instead of being a word of reproach, ought really to point to our glory...how much development of qualities of love and compassion have to be acquired before one can get rid of the brutish force of one's nature, which actuates the ruining and slaughter of one's brother-men for self-aggrandisement."
The regeneration of Hinduism required Hindus to have renewed confidence in these ideals and themselves. Non-injury can be a living faith only for those whose confidence and sense of self-worth is deeply rooted. What then, does the violation of these ideals in Ayodhya itself tell us about ourselves today?
Following Swami Vivekananda more closely, as he leaps into the sea at Kanyakumari and later heads West, may help to understand what we are today and offer renewed hope in being able to rise to finer levels of realisation and being.
A Plan for India
"At Cape Camorin sitting in Mother Kumari's temple, sitting on the last bit of Indian rock— I hit upon a plan: We are so many sannyasis wandering about, and teaching the people metaphysics—it is all madness. Did not our Gurudeva use to say, "An empty stomach is no good for religion?'" -
Swami Vivekananda
The athletic young sannyasi sat perfectly still on an off-shore rock at Kanyakumari. Steeped in deep meditation he seemed to have reached a realm beyond time, space and the tingling salt spray of crashing ocean waves. This image, of Swami Vivekananda at the rock that now bears his name, is one of modern India's most enduring legends.
The glare of adulation has tended to obscure the tumultuous human struggles of that legendary persona. And these struggles are the clue to why a century later Swami Vivekananda, and his plans for India, inspire people across the ideological spectrum.
Let us journey back a hundred years to see what bothered Vivekananda and served as an impetus for his sense of mission.
Wandering as a pilgrim, from the Himalayas to India's southern most tip, Swami Vivekananda saw: "A country where a million or two sadhus and a hundred million or so of Brahmins suck the blood out of these poor people, without even the least effort for their amelioration — is that a country or a hell? Is that a religion or a devil's dance?"
So he resolved to undo these injustices and revitalise India by saving religion from those who made it a "devil's dance". But this ambitious aspiration had to contend with global forces that were beyond any single man's influence.
Looming large over the threshold of the 20th century, Swami Vivekananda saw "modern western science dazzling the eyes with the brilliancy of myriad suns and driving in the chariot of hard and fast facts." By the late 19th century western materialism and colonialism had come to dominate the world. By comparison the Indian civilisational endeavour seemed to have atrophied. The colonial encounter had shaken the self-confidence of Indian society as never before.
In addition the efforts of Christian missionaries to convert "heathens" had triggered anxieties within sections of Hindu society. Swami Vivekananda's self-defined task was to simultaneously eliminate the evils in Hindu practice and also reaffirm the value of the tradition. Thus he felt compelled to assert that "Hinduism is not a mistake." Herein lay one of his most intense struggles.
As a disciple of Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and a diligent spiritual aspirant Swami Vivekananda sought the essentials of Hinduism in pure spirituality. As an activist entangled in the throes of history, he sought the common bases of Hinduism in order to unify its diverse strains. The insights of Vedanta provided these common bases and gave the Swami a means of synthesising his inner quest and his worldly mission.
The essence of this mission was to demystify spiritual truths —bringing them out of the monasteries and the hold of priest-craft. Since the objective was to retrieve the highest ideals of the existing religion, Swami Vivekananda placed the greatest onus for this revitalisation on orthodox Hindus. He held them responsible for the fact that essential principles had languished over the centuries and decayed internally. What were these essentials?
Religion, Vivekananda said over and over again, is realisation. Rituals, colours, 'mantras' and idols may help, but these were not the essentials of a spiritual life. For, he believed, "if your heart has not opened, if you have not realised God, it is all in vain." And purification of the heart requires "worship of the Virat — of all those around us."
Religion and spirituality, so defined, was in Vivekananda's view the common ground for the amalgam of cultures in India. And restoring health to these essentials of religion was, for the Swami, a necessary prerequisite for the rejuvenation of India.
All these convictions added up not to one but many 'plans'. There had to be a "man-making" education, both spiritual and scientific, that would give strength to the people. Additionally, the making of a great future India required "organisation, accumulation of power, coordination of wills."
But when he arose from his meditation on the rock at Kanyakumari the high tide of ideas was also accompanied by a dogged restlessness. He was not sure exactly how all this would add up to both, filling empty stomachs and saving religion. Besides, all plans demanded selfless dedicated workers and funds. The wandering mendicant had a few followers but no funds. So he decided to go to America to spread the message of Indian spirituality and to earn money.
Behind the glitter of western affluence Swami Vivekananda sensed another kind of decay and crisis. So he saw himself as a missionary who must seek a mutually enriching synthesis of eastern and western thought. But would preaching "the incomparable glory of the Vedas and the Vedanta" necessarily be compatible with his goal of fostering universal religion? For Vivekananda, the two were one and the same. His notion of "conquering" the world with spirituality was based on the faith that "love must conquer hatred, hatred cannot conquer itself."
Thus bursting with a "tremendous power and energy" Vivekananda set forth on the solitary voyage to America and the Parliament of Religions where history waited to test his faith.
Children of Immortal Bliss
As the different streams having their sources in different places - all mingle their water in the sea, so O Lord, the different paths which men take through different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee."
The Catholic cardinal sat at centre-stage in crimson robes. On both sides of him were other devout followers of 'different paths', gathered for an unprecedented Parliament of Religions. There were Buddhists in flowing white robes and the Greek Orthodox Christians in sombre black, leaning on ivory sticks.
At one end of this platform of diverse faiths in their distinct colours sat Swami Vivekananda in gorgeous red robes and a bright yellow turban. The characteristically confident exterior veiled his anxiety. He had neither a prepared speech nor much experience in public speaking.
"My heart was fluttering and my tongue nearly dried up," he was to write later. "I was so nervous and could not venture to speak in the morning."
Just when it seemed doubtful whether the Hindu monk would speak at all, Swami Vivekananda arose to share the above prayer with that unique gathering. Bowing to Devi Saraswati, he began—"Sisters and Brothers of America..." Suddenly to his utter amazement, hundreds of people in the audience were on their feet, applauding.
"Here was a soul greeting thousands of other souls in sweet and loving terms—"Sisters and Brothers'," one eye-witness later recalled. "...Or was it the Divine power behind him that seized the audience by a whirlpool of spiritual ecstasy?"
This event took place on September 11, 1893, at the Art Institute of Chicago. Today, a hundred years later, while the legend of Swami Vivekananda's success at the Parliament of Religions lives on, few know exactly what he said. It is generally believed that he did Hindus proud. But was Swami Vivekananda's action a claim of Hindu greatness? Or, was it a call for mutually respectful give and take between different religions — an expression of the hopeful potential of all humanity?
The time had come, Vivekananda said in his opening speech, to root out the "horrible demons" of sectarianism, bigotry and fanaticism which had destroyed entire civilisations. The bell that tolled at the start of the Parliament, he hoped, would be "the death-knell of all fanaticism, of all persecutions with the sword or with the pen, and of all uncharitable feelings between persons wending their way to the same goal."
This sentiment had already been expressed by others at the Parliament. What sealed Swami Vivekananda's place of prominence in history was the enfranchising declaration that all human beings were inherently "Children of Immortal Bliss/'
"Allow me to call you brethren, by that sweet name — heirs of immortal bliss—yea, the Hindu refuses to call you sinners!" said Vivekananda in his main speech called 'Paper on Hinduism'. "...Come up, O lions, and shake off the delusion that you are sheep; you are souls immortal, spirits free, blest and eternal; ye are not matter; ye are not bodies; matter is your servant, not you the servant of matter."
God — "the pure and formless one, the Almighty and the All merciful" he said, was to be worshipped not out of fear but through love. Far superior to loving God for hope of reward, in this or the next world, was "to love God for love's sake."
Worship in this sense needs no specific or exclusive formula. Therefore, in Vivekananda's interpretation, "the Hindu religion does not consist in struggles and attempts to believe a certain doctrine or dogma, but in realising—not in believing but in being and becoming."
"
The Hindu may have failed to carry out all his plans," he went on to add. Yet, the concepts of spirituality that evolved in India, Swami Vivekananda argued, had a special contribution to make in building a future universal religion and a true brotherhood of all humanity.
The Parliament of Religions signalled both this striving for a 'universal religion' and the difficulties in making it a reality. Swami Vivekananda himself was attempting to simultaneously affirm universal brotherhood and yet to take a firm stand, as a Hindu, against Western cultural imperialism.
The Parliament of Religions was part of a larger Exposition which was a self-conscious display by the United State sof America as an emerging super-power. Underlying the liberalism implicit in a 'parliament* of religions, was an unquestioned confidence in the primacy and superiority of Christianity.
Just as Swami Vivekananda's decision to go to America had been stiffly opposed by Hindu orthodoxy, the organisers of the Parliament were also under considerable pressure. The Archbishop of Canterbury had refused to send a representative because, he said, "Christianity is the one religion." Attending the Parliament would mean conceding "the equality of other included members and the purity of their position and claims."
Such views hovered in the background of the Parliament and later dogged Swami Vivekananda's efforts in the West. Some American critics ridiculed Vivekananda as "a man who came out of a land that had been dead and buried for 5,000 years and talked of renunciation."
So while Swami Vivekananda was the star of the Parliament he did not quite conquer the West. Yet in certain circles he did make a deep and lasting impact. This was partly due to the transparent authenticity of his convictions. Even while he denounced the methods of Christian missionaries his deep reverence for Christ's message was self-evident. Thus, the Boston Evening Transcript wrote in April 1894: "There is infinite humiliation in this spectacle of a pagan priest reading lessons of conduct and of life to the men who have assumed the spiritual supervision of Greenland's icy mountains and India's central strand but the sense of humiliation is the sine qua non of most reforms in this world."
This was the context in which Swami Vivekananda's success at Chicago became a matter of pride for Indians. This was particularly so among Hindus, some of whom hailed the Swami as the first Hindu 'missionary'. The Swami's success boosted the emerging struggle against the smugness of the colonial culture. But it did so with an appeal for enhancing human civilisation as a whole on terms of mutual respect, eschewing aggression and conflict. This is what makes Swami Vivekananda a 'live' historical personality a century later.
But his legacy is now ironically caught in bitter controversy. One set of claimants to the legacy are preoccupied with asserting Hindu "pride" in vengeful and aggressive terms vis-a-vis other religions. And then there are those inheritors who strive to realise the ideal of universal brotherhood of all religions.
To understand the nature of this striving we need to look closely at what Swami Vivekananda meant by 'Universal Religion' and how it can be realised. This may also help us to see why these closing words of the Chicago address could mark the dividing line between genuine religiosity and bigoted fanaticism:
"...upon the banner of every religion will soon be written, in spite of resistance: 'Help and not Fight' 'Assimilation and not Destruction', 'Harmony and Peace and not Dissension'. "
Quest for Universal Religion
"They are very sincere people, these fanatics, but they are quite as irresponsible as other lunatics in the world. This disease of fanaticism is one of the most dangerous diseases. All the wickedness of human nature is roused by it. Anger is stirred up, nerves are strung high, and human beings become like tigers" - Swami Vivekananda
The cyclonic sannyasi knew he would not live to be 40. So the remaining nine years, following his instant fame at the Parliament of Religions, were spent in a whirlwind of activity. Travelling widely across America and Europe he taught, learnt and pursued his spiritual quest with intense vigour.
These encounters with diverse cultures confirmed Swami Vivekananda's view that religion had given humanity both "the intensest love" and "the most diabolical hatred." So he set out to explore if a universal religion, a brotherhood of different faiths, was at all possible.
Let us begin, Vivekananda suggested, by recognising that there cannot be, and ought not to be, a universal philosophy, mythology and symbols.
"For I know that this world must go on working, wheel within wheel this intricate mass of machinery, most complex, most wonderful. What can we do then?" asked the Swami. "We can make it run smoothly, we can lessen the friction...By recognising the natural necessity of variation."
This requires us to "learn that truth may be expressed in a hundred thousand ways, and that each of these ways is true as far as it goes." The vision of God may vary in every case, "yet he is one...this is the only recognition of universality that we can get."
Countless saints and seers have reiterated this elementary truth for centuries. Yet, most efforts for a brotherhood of religions failed for want of a practical plan which would show people the point of union with all other faiths without destroying the individuality of tiny religion.
Over the years Swami Vivekananda worked out the rudiments of such a plan and anchored it with this maxim: "Do not destroy." He urged people to build instead of pulling anything down. "Help if you can; if you cannot, fold your hands and stand by and see things go on. Do not injure, if you cannot render help."
Secondly, the Swami suggested, "take a man where he stands, and from there give him a lift. If it be true that God is the centre of all religions, and that each of us is moving towards him along one of these radii, then it is certain that all of us must reach that centre. And at the centre, where all the radii meet, all our differences will cease." And, he insisted, we can all teach ourselves to get there. "None can make a spiritual man out of you...your growth must come from inside."
Such growth is, according to Swami Vivekananda, the only way to check the latent "tiger" in us. This is vital for human civilisation because the fanatic uses not merely swords but contempt, social hatred and social ostracism against all those who do not agree with him.
On the other hand, the rational man is glad that others do not think exactly as he does. Since thinking beings must differ, "variation is the sign of life, and it must be there."
A celebration of this variation would be universal religion. The ideal may seem elusive but Vivekananda believed it to be inherent to human striving. "If the priests and other people what have taken upon themselves the task of preaching different religions simply cease preaching for a few moments, we shall see it is there."
These were the elements that Swami Vivekananda challenged within his own faith. And the central mission of the Swami's life was within the Hindu fold. As he often said, the Hindu might believe that unity in variety was the plan of Nature. But, in practice, bitter sectarian disputes and layers of superstition had obscured these universalist and humane principles. Vivekananda struggled to retrieve them.
It was in this context that he called Buddhism "the fulfillment of Hinduism." He urged that the Brahmin intellect must join "with the heart, the noble soul, the wonderful humanising power of the Great Master (Buddha)."
Swami Vivekananda's mission to galvanise Hindus and make Hindu society dynamic was a multi-dimensional endeavour. But at its core was the exhortation for this "fulfillment' to become a part of living practice.
Then it might be possible for Hinduism to actually embody the ideal of universal religion as Vivekananda had defined it in the Chicago address:
"It will be a religion which will have no place for persecution or intolerance in its polity, which will recognise the divinity in every man and woman, and whose whole scope, whose whole force, will be created in aiding humanity to realise its own true divine nature."
Since the Swami was a man of action, and not just ideas, his energies were severely over-taxed in this last decade of his life.
The magnitude of his spiritual, social and organisational mission drove him at a pace which made fatigue inevitable. But the Swami's disciples believe that exhaustion alone could not overcome that superhuman will. They recall his guru Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa's prediction that Naren would leave his body the day he realised his true self. Perhaps it was that realisation which allowed the Swami to slip away one evening in 1902. He had often visualised his own departure from the body, murmuring, "Hara, Hara (The free, the free)."
Yet, the words which resound through his life journey, and perhaps make a fitting epithet are these:
"Love never fails, my son; today or tomorrow or ages after, truth will conquer...Believe in the omnipotent power of love."
( Part I of this essay, first appeared as a series of six articles in the Sunday Review, Times of India; May 30, 1993; June 27,1993; July 25,1993; September 11,1993; September 19,1993.; September 26,1993.)
The Dispute Over Swami Vivekananda's Legacy: A Warning and an Opportunity
Part II
The present dispute over the legacy of Swami Vivekananda brings to mind the pre-battle skirmishes of the Mahabharata. As their armies prepared to take position at Kurukshetra, the warring cousins vied bitterly for the allegiance of their many common relatives. Once the polarisation was complete the stage was set for a war from which there could be no victors, only heart broken survivors.
The quarrel over Swami Vivekananda should be a warning signal for a society with the epic consciousness of the Mahabharata. This futile dispute cautions us about degenerating into a fratricidal conflict in which all common ground and natural affinities are thoughtlessly disregarded. It also offers us an opportunity to pause and reconsider the nature of escalating tensions in society and seek new ways of transcending them. But this is possible only if we suspend the tug-of-war method. The search for ways out of the present darkness cannot be marred by a discourse that is implicitly premised on notions of perennial conflict. Besides, the dueling mode of 'debate' only legitimises that approach to human interaction and history which found expression in the destruction of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya.
Let us then, by an act of faith, mark the parameters of this discourse with a shared commitment to preventing Indian society from becoming an all-consuming battle field. Having done that we may also attempt to shun the methods and language of "use". Then the entry into Swami Vivekananda's world-view can be fittingly marked with these words of Sister Nivedita:
"The "purifying of the heart' connoted the burning out of selfishness. Worship is the very antithesis of use." (1-endnotes)
Swami Vivekananda is significant a century after he lived and worked, precisely because of this struggle for 'Chittashudhi' which runs through his life and work. The value and meaning of these struggles tends to be minimized when Swami Vivekananda is attributed oracle-like powers or viewed through the haze of adulation as a certified national hero and patriot. He did, in part, fill many of these roles with a larger than life presence. But the best way to travel with him seems to be as companion — simultaneously questioning and trusting, irreverent and affectionate.
I would like here to share a small part of my attempt to journey thus with Swami Vivekananda.
Narendranath Datta started out in life as a doubting agnostic and grew into a devout servant of God. By the time he came before the world as Swami Vivekananda, the young sannyasi was both a 'jnani' and a 'bhakta'. Such a transformation is not uncommon. But in Narendranath's case it was marked by a rigorous commitment to synthesising reason and faith. All religion, he decided, "is going beyond reason, but reason is the only guide to get there." (2-end notes)
Even while he studied the Vedas with reverence Swami Vivekananda accepted only that part which agreed with reason. Thus even though he disagreed with much of Buddhist doctrine, the Buddha was the one person Swami Vivekananda revered above all others in human history:
"Buddha never bowed down to anything — neither Veda, nor caste, nor priest, nor custom. He fearlessly reasoned so far as reason could take him. Such a fearless search for truth and such love for every living thing the world has never seen." (3 - end notes)
Narendranath's eventual 'surrender to Goddess Kali was preceded by an intense and bitter struggle. The essentially mystical experience did not contradict the Swami's commitment to reason. Eventually he explained it thus:
"Religion is neither talk, nor theory, nor intellectual consent It is reali sation in the heart of hearts; it is touching God; it is feeling, realising that I am a spirit in relation with the Universal Spirit and all Its great manifestations." (4-end notes)
Swami Vivekananda's inner being remained ever faithful to this quest. But as a spiritual aspirant inspired by Buddha and guided by Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, personal salvation could not be the central goal of his life. Thus his mission to demystify spirituality, free it from the shackles of priest-craft and make it accessible to people of all classes, castes and creeds. But Vivekananda was also an activist entangled in the worldly throes of history. It is this dimension of his mission that preponderates over our present.
By the time Swami Vivekananda's wanderings across India culminated at Kanyakumari, his sense of 'mission' was as multi-faceted as his personality. While his moorings were in eternal principles, the worldly concerns of Swami Vivekananda were shaped by his times. Therefore, retrieving pure spirituality from the vast diversity of Indian philosophical traditions was not enough.
As he traveled to America and saw nations on the move Swami Vivekananda felt the full force of changes and challenges posed by the modern era. He located himself between the religious tradition and those strains of an emerging Hindu middle-class that had begun to function entirely in the Western frame of knowledge. To the orthodox pundits he appealed that the contents of Hinduism be submitted to the test:
'Tor this reason we must come out of the limited grooves of the past and take a look at the world as it moves onwards to progress at the present day. And if we find that there are hidebound customs which are impeding the growth of our social life or disturbing our philosophical outlook, it is time for us to advance a step by eschewing them." (5-end notes)
Likewise he could fall with 'thunder-bolt vehemence' upon
those who spoke in a belittling manner of the 'the meaningless
teachings' of the Vedic seers:
"How dare you criticise your venerable forefathers in such a
fashion! A little learning has muddled your brain. Have you tested
the science of the Rishis? Have you even as much as read the Vedas?
There is the challenge thrown up by the Rishis! If you dare oppose
them, take it up: put their teachings to the test." (6-end notes)
Poised confidently at the cross-roads of divergent trends in
Indian society, Swami Vivekananda set out to question the bigotry
and prejudices of orthodoxy, as well as the crisis of self-confidence
among the classes closely inter-acting with the West. He traced India's degeneration to its people's loss of faith in themselves. Over the years Swami Vivekananda elaborated a historical analysis of this decay which need not be detailed here. It will suffice to mention that he traced the roots of decay to ancient, pre-Buddhist times. Internally the Swami identified the need for a liberality which would allow both religion and society to breath freely and grow.
Yet underlying the sharp critique were anxieties about Hinduism's ability to stand up in modern times, not only as a cohesive body of thought and practice but also as a distinct and confident member of the family of world religions. Thus he sought the common bases of Hinduism. Sister Nivedita, perhaps the most prolific and outstanding of Vivekananda's disciples, believed that his whole life was a search for the common bases of Hinduism.
This search led Swami Vivekananda to identify two essential commonalities between the plethora of Hindu sects — the Vedas and belief in God as:
"...the creating, the preserving power of the whole universe, and unto whom it periodically returns to come out at other periods and manifest this wonderful phenomenon, called the universe." (7-end notes)
The lecture (in Lahore), at which Swami Vivekananda elaborated this theme, also illustrated his tension between the universal and particular.
At one point he said:
"Ay, we often mistake mere prattle for religious truth, mere intellectual peroration for great spiritual realisation, and then comes sectarianism, then comes fight. If we once understand that this realisation is the only religion, we shall look into our own hearts and find how far we are towards realising the truths of religion." (8-end-notes)
Swami Vivekananda applied this universal principle to the task of galvanising Hindus into a cohesive group, which for him was a move against sectarianism:
"Then and then alone, all sectarian quarrels will cease, and we shall be in a position to understand, to bring to our hearts, to embrace, to intensely love the very word Hindu and every one who bears that name. Mark me, then and then alone you are a Hindu when every man who bears the name, from any country, speaking our language, becomes at once the nearest and the dearest to you." (9-end notes)
Was this not an exclusivist definition of what it meant to be a Hindu? Within Swami Vivekananda's own frame of thought it was not so. He was convinced that a 'true' Hindu would have to be above all sectarianism. For the Hindu ideal, Vivekananda believed, was not 'tolerance' but acceptance:
'Toleration means that I think that you are wrong and I am just allowing you to live. Is it not blasphemy to think that you and I are allowing others to live." (10-end notes)
Therefore the Swami was firmly unforgiving about the intolerance and violence of all religions — whether it was Islam and Christianity's "conversions by the sword" or Brahmanical Hinduism's brutality to Shudras. Just as he denounced the exploitative ways of Hindu priest-craft yet sought to reaffirm the "ideal' of a Brahmin, Vivekananda denounced the violence of Islam and yet identified with the philosophic men within Islam who protested against the cruelties.
Swami Vivekananda's life reflects the inter-face of Hinduism and Indian Islam at the close of the 19th century. Even a cursory account of his life, from childhood to sage and abbot of Belur Math, would illustrate the closely inter-linked social and cultural life of Hindus and Muslims. The Swami could enthrall his disciples by rendering the coronation song of Akbar "in the very tone and rhythm of Tansena." (11-end notes) But his life also reflected how, even after a thousand years of co-existence with it, Islam was still seen as an "outsider'. Vivekananda would speak of how "The sword had flashed, and "Victory unto Allah' had rent the skies of India; but these floods subsided leaving the national ideals unchanged." (12-end notes)
Even while he resented the historical role of Islam, at certain periods of history, as an activist committed to revitalising not only Hinduism but the whole of Indian society, he saw the necessity for a more active give and take between Hinduism and Islam. He realised that it was easy to talk glibly about the Vedantic ideal of oneness of all beings. Hindu society had done this for centuries while also practising many forms of inequality and virtual apartheid. Thus Swami Vivekananda suggested that the Vedantic ideal of oneness needs a social body imbued with the spirit of equality and fraternity. And, in this respect, Islam had made greater strides. He wrote to Sarfaraz Hussain — described in The Life of Swami Vivekananda as "an Advaita Vedantist at heart" who became a disciple of the Swami and took the name Mohammedananda:
"I believe it (Advaita Vedanta) is the religion of the future enlightened humanity...I am firmly persuaded that without the help of practical Islam, theories of Vedantism, however fine and wonderful they maybe, are entirely valueless to the vast mass of mankind...For our own motherland a junction of the two great systems, Hinduism and Islam—Vedanta brain and Islam body — is the only hope." (13-end notes)
Yet some germ of anger with the 'invader' nagged Swami Vivekananda till late in his brief life. The destruction of temples bothered him and he struggled with this emotion. Then, writes Sister Nivedita:
"He came back, in Kashmir, from one of the great experiences of his life, saying with the simplicity of a child, There must be no more of this anger.' Mother (Devi) said: 'What even if the unbeliever should enter My temples, and defile My images, what is that to you? DO YOU PROTECT ME? OR DO I PROTECT YOU?' (Emphasis in original.)
"His personal ideal was that Sannyasin of the Mutiny, who was stabbed by an English soldier, and broke the silence of fifteen years to say to his murderer, — And thou also art He." (14-end notes)
That Sannyasin also embodied what was for Swami Vivekananda the Indian ideal — Sita, who knew no bitterness and never returned injury.(15-end notes)
Of course Sita does not become India's ideal because Swami Vivekananda believed so. Yet there must be more than poetic significance in the Swami's intense and rigorous life finding its centre in this ideal. On this note let us shift to the present day situation and travel to Mathura-Vrindavan.
In January this year (1993), an assortment of left-wing activists and some members of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) met at Vrindavan to attempt a dialogue. The meeting, called 'Samvad Prayas', had been planned several months in advance and originally included a much wider range of participants. Many people had withdrawn following the destruction of the Babri Masjid, and the unrepentant stand of the RSS and its affiliates, because there seemed no scope for dialogue.
Others who condemned the destruction of the masjid and yet attended the meeting, went with a great deal of trepidation and came away with a deep sadness.
Perhaps the visit to the temple known as Krishna Janmasthan will illustrate the nature of the problem. Just beside this relatively smaller temple stands a grand, five or six stories high, temple built perhaps in the last half century. Directly behind this towering edifice is a mosque of older vintage but nearly matching proportions. One of the younger RSS activists asked, with apparently genuine bafflement, why the sight did not bother me. On the contrary, I attempted to explain, it is for me a reassuring and enriching sight. But just as I could not understand the outraged sentiments of that young man, he could not fathom how I could view those adjacent houses of worship as a symbol of beauty and highly evolved cultural strengths.
Like the unsuccessfully attempted 'Samvad Prayas' this exchange also demonstrated how, unresolved questions about, the Hindu-Muslim equation in post-Partition India are not at the core of what ails us today. The threat of fratricidal conflict alluded to earlier, does not pertain essentially to Muslim-Hindu tensions, but to the self-destructive polarisation that seems more and more to pervade public discourse.
It is in this context that Swami Vivekananda has become the focus of a bitter dispute between the proponents of 'Hindutva' on the one side and liberal, secular, democratic view point on the other. By a strange coincidence the destruction of the Babri Masjid has taken place in the centenary year of Swami Vivekananda's famous Chicago address. But those responsible for the action, a body of organisations affiliated to the RSS, also claim Swami Vivekananda as their hero. They seem indifferent to the tragic irony of how their vandalism in Ayodhya on 6th December has undermined the claim for peace and tolerance which Vivekananda made on behalf of Hindus at the Chicago Parliament of Religions.
In a fragmentary way the RSS does conform to some of Swami Vivekananda's ideas about galvanising Hindus through dynamic organisation and service. But cultivation and legitimisation of communal hatred, which is implicit in the RSS world-view, was clearly not a part of the Swami's agenda. His dream for rejuvenating Hinduism was at its core an internal challenge of retrieving strengths — a return to intelligent spirituality cutting across the plethora of superstition and thoughtless repetition of ritual.
The manner in which Swami Vivekananda linked the revitalisation of Hinduism with that of India as a nation is a contentious issue.
How this indirectly contributed to the perception of the non-Hindu as, a sometimes offensive, 'other' remains a question. However, the present war of quotations, involving Swami Vivekananda's works, does nothing to help answer such questions or build an understanding of our past and present. Instead it further worsens the overload of tension in public life. This is partly because this quarrel is dominated by those who are using Swami Vivekananda for some narrow partisan interest. A genuine debate may offer ways of appreciating how the universal appeal of Swami Vivekananda offers possibilities of exploring common ground among different people who may have conflicting view points but not ruthlessly competing agendas.
The urgency of this endeavour has been brought home not merely by the demolition of the mosque but by the active and tacit consent given to the demolition by a wide cross-section of people in different classes. In one sense Swami Vivekananda's worst fears have come true. Such rampant and brutal sectarianism implies an erosion of spiritual values. And it is these values, Swami Vivekananda believed, which are the life-blood of India. Their decline would mean the death of the civilisation.
However, the purpose of invoking Swami Vivekananda in the contemporary debate is not to serve as a voice of doom. Nor is there much point in going to him as an oracle. The importance of his life rests in how he grappled with various contradictory pulls. These were pressures generated by the exigencies of India's struggle not only with colonialism but the multiple challenges of modernity. In this context Swami Vivekananda struggled simultaneously to retrieve the humanist strains of the tradition and socially and philosophically strengthen Hinduism for its encounter with the modern era. My reading of the Swami's works and those of his contemporaries is far too inadequate for a thorough understanding of this endeavour to reshape Hinduism and locate it in the 20th Century.
I am merely suggesting that a genuine debate on Swami Vivekananda's life and world-view may enhance our understanding of forces that shaped our present and will help us grope our way out of the present darkness. This firstly demands a commitment to preventing a decline towards all-consuming conflict. This means exploring the spaces between the shrill and vicious propaganda of Hindutva' and the still largely silent disquiet among believers of the diverse layers of Hindu society.
This will also mean that those of us who have never accepted the notion of 'injured Hindu pride' as an issue of contemporary relevance will have to concede the objective reality of this perception and attempt to understand why this remains a vulnerable sore. So far most anti-communal efforts have focused on the vested interests who have manipulated this perception of injured pride for narrow and short-sighted political gain. It is doubtful whether those who brazenly justify historical vengeance as a valid form of social mobilisation, can be engaged in a meaningful dialogue. But there is a vast body of people who may willy nilly support the rhetoric of 'Hindutva' without agreeing with the full agenda of its votaries. Perhaps Swami Vivekananda's works offer a common ground for dialogue between such people and those who altogether oppose the preoccupation with 'symbols of defeat'.
The exercise could begin by addressing just one question. At the time of Swami Vivekananda's unexpected and overwhelming success at the Parliament of Religions, Indians celebrated the restoration of their pride and honour. In the context of the traumatic on-going encounter with Western colonialism, in the 19th century, this was understandable. There followed, in the next half century, a burst of creative energies and activities which seemed to imbue the society with a fresh vitality and self-confidence. That process, though far from complete, is an on-going endeavour. Why then are some Indians now feeling a need assert their pride by settling historical scores that add no creative, constructive worth to national life? How can the terms of discourse be altered to shift the focus inwards and seek reasons for needing an enemy, some 'other', who can be blamed for assorted failures of civil society and state policy?
End Notes References:
1. The Complete Works of Sister Nivedita, Vol.1; Advaita Ashram, Calcutta; p.41.
2. The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda; Vol.7; Advaita Ashram, Calcutta; p.60.
3: Ibid, p.59.
4. Swami Vivekananda A Pictorial Biography.
5. The Life of Swami Vivekananda by His Eastern and Western Disciples; Vol. 1; Advaita Ashram, Calcutta; p.360.
6. Ibid; p.364-65.
7. The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda; Vol.3; p.373.
8. Ibid; p.378.
9. Ibid; p379.
10. The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda; Vol.2; p.374.
11. The Complete Works of Sister Nivedita; Vol.1; p.46.
12. The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda; Vol.4; p.159.
13. The Life of Swami Vivekananda by His Eastern and Western Disciples; Vol.2; p.333.
14. The Complete Works of Sister Nivedita; Vol1; p.48 .
15. The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda; Vol.4; p.76.
(An earlier draft of this essay was presented at a seminar at the Institute for Development Studies, Jaipur, in