By Shivam Kousal
“…..we feel how foolish it is to send missionaries to this great nation. His culture has given us a new idea of the Hindu civilization…..“
On September 11, 1893; Swami Vivekananda delivered his lecture at the World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago. The quoted text above were the lines of Herald a day after, leading daily of America then.
Prior to that date, western press used to image India as a land of snake charmers. Such was the impact of Vivekananda’s lecture that the entire western media could not dare writing a single piece denigrating India and the ‘Hindu Civilisation’ again.
On his birth anniversary, here are five learnings taken from the diaries of a man who made this shift possible.
After his father’s death in 1884, a young Narendra came to terms with the harsh realities of life. His relatives ousted his mother and brothers from the ancestral property. All of his father’s friends and colleagues from Calcutta High Court refused to give him a job owing to a rumour that had spread then over his relationship with Ramakrishna Paramhansa.
Vivekananda recalls those years as the most difficult ones of his life, especially financially. There were nights when he would fake going out for dinner on a friend’s invitation in front of his mother so that all of his family members could eat satisfactorily.
All these instances made him come to the conclusion that there is no place for the weak in this world. It is the weak who are exploited first and exploited by all. The only blasphemy one can commit is to voluntarily remain weak. One should devote all of his energy to gain physical, spiritual, intellectual and mental strength with each passing second. It is here that he writes;
“…strength is life, weakness is death. expansion is life, contraction is death. love is life, hatred is death..”
During one of his nights in America before the Chicago Conference, he contemplated the idea of returning back to India. There were several reasons for the same. He had too little money left and he was upset by the attacks of locals on him owing to his seemingly unusual appearance and attire. Vivekananda followed his heart and decided to stay in America. It is here that he writes in his diary;
“…..in a confiict between your heart and brain, follow your heart…..”
Just before his turn for a lecture at the Chicago Conference, Vivekananda was fearful. All the speakers before him had come with prepared speeches. And here was ‘Speaker Number 23’ who had already asked for a postponement of his turn once and was now sitting empty handed without precisely knowing what to speak about. He writes;
“…..and my legs were shivering. i had never before spoken in front of so many people. my tongue went dry just before my turn and i am sure that my body temperature was up by several degrees…..”
Vivekananda later, in one of his public discourses, recalled how foolish he was to be fearful of delivering a lecture. He writes;
“….fear comes from selfishness. the moment you fear, you are reduced to a nobody. be a hero. always say that i have no fear….”
Vivekananda became famous soon in America owing to his lecture delivered at the Chicago Conference. In a matter of months; PC Majumdar, who had gone to the Conference as a representative of Brahmo Samaj, started defaming Vivekananda. Majumdar wrote in several newspapers that Vivekananda was no Swami in reality and was faking being a saint in America. Majumdar further spread a rumour that Vivekananda had broken the vows of aparigraha (non possession) and brahmacharya (celibacy).
Vivekananda writes that a person should always remain vigilant more against his own than against the enemy. He quotes several instances spread across Indian history to prove his point. Although it seems that he was deeply hurt by the blames of Majumdar labelled against him, he decided to ignore Majumdar and his allegations. It is after this incident that Vivekananda writes;
“…….condemn none. if you can lend a helping hand, do so. If however you cannot, fold your hands, bless your brothers and let them go their own way…..”.
During his days in America, he met various wealthy people and some of the most significant industrialists including Nicole Tesla and the Oil kingpin Rockefeller. It was his interactions with Rockefeller that inspired the latter to start the philanthropic organisation Rockefeller Foundation.
He observed that the rich people of this prosperous nation had become too individualistic. Vivekananda came to the conclusion that his fellow Indians, although seemingly poor and weak at the present, were far better than these people who were dead from inside despite having all the riches of the world. In his diary, he writes;
‘‘….an insect on a railway line might think of itself as insignificant in front of a mighty approaching locomotive. but there is one difference : the former is living and has a conscience. those without a conscience are as good as dead. millions of indians are like that insect at the present moment ”
All through his life, he kept on challenging beliefs and superstitions. His voyage to America and subsequently to Europe was a watershed moment. A saint from the oldest civilization of the world was going to the newest nation of the world.
At that time, crossing the seas was considered equivalent to committing blasphemy; and for a saint to do it was sufficient to be ripped off his sainthood. But despite all these, he decided to pursue because these concerns were too petty in front of his goal of spreading the message of Vedanta.
When it came to mindless rituals, he was as brutal as one could be with his words. He writes;
“….what can you expect from people who for the farthest time imaginable have debated whether we should drink water with the right hand or the left? these mindless practices have made us a nation of lunatics and reduced our great religion to a joke…..’
The first of the four vedas, Rigveda; opens with an ode to the Agni. Vedic rishis wanted an ideal human life to follow the dharma of agni : burning oneself for the service of others.
And here was a man who lived exactly like that : a man whose life was like a flame of fire which provided light of hope to millions of colonised Indians; a man who gave up on his personal aspirations to ensure that millions else could dare to aspire; a man who was a personification of ‘Vedanta in action’.
In one of his diary entries of the year 1902, he himself writes that he sees a very bleakish chance of him crossing the age of 40. On the fourth day of July later that year, he breathed his last. How long could a flame of fire keep on burning afterall?
The flame did its job well and enlightened people across disciplines ranging from the likes of Subhash Chandra Bose to Gandhi; from Rabindranath Tagore to Sri Aurobindo; from Nicole Tesla to JRD Tata; to name a few. Vivekananda presented an example of an ideal youth. It is appropriate that National Youth Day is celebrated on his birth anniversary.
Views expressed in the article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the editorial stance of Kashmir Observer
- The author is an IIT graduate and an educator
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