“India will be raised, not with the power of the flesh, but with the power of the Spirit; not with the flag of destruction, but with the flag of peace and love, the garb of Sannyasin; not by power of wealth, but by the power of the begging bowl. Say not that you are weak. The Spirit is omnipotent.”
The English-speaking Hindu monk Swami Vivekananda (January 12, 1863 – July 4, 1902) wrote these words addressed to “Friends, Fellow-countrymen, and co-religionists of Madras” in September 1894 after his successful tour of the Western world. He addressed the Chicago Parliament of Religions in 1893. He did stress: “The people of Northern India are especially grateful to you of the South, as the great source to which most of the impulses that are working in India today can be traced.”
With funds partly collected by his disciples and party provided by the Raja of Khetri, Swami Vivekananda left for America from Mumbai on May 31, 1893. It was the British India then. The freedom movement was gaining momentum after the establishment of Indian National Congress in December 1885. Lokmanya Tilak and other leaders were making efforts for mass awakening of Indian masses. Vivekananda – the chief disciple of Sri Ramakrishna Paramhamsa, the 19th century Indian saint – at that time was in Chicago addressing the Parliament of World's Religions as a Hindu monk.
His nearly three-and-a-half-year tour to USA and London earned him the title of “a Messenger of Indian wisdom to the Western world”. If you come across lectures by Vivekananda in his voice at Chicago Parliament of Religions on YouTube or any other social media, be sure that it must be a fake recording as, according to the Ramakrishna Mission established by the Swami, no audio of Swami Vivekananda is available in the world!
He returned to India in January 1897. Later established the Ramakrishna Mission on May 1, 1897, to propagate practical Vedanta for unification of Hinduism and social service. The Hindu monk responsible for mass awakening of Indian youth could leave his footprints before he gave up his mortal body on July 4, 1902.
It surprises many why a question is being raised about his religion, as Vivekananda is known as a Hindu monk. While presenting his paper on Hinduism at the Parliament of World's Religions on September 19, 1893, Swami stated: “From the high spiritual flight of Vedanta philosophy, of which the latest discoveries of science seem like echoes, to the low ideas of idolatry with its multifarious mythology, the agnosticism of the Buddhists and the atheism of the Jains, each and all have a place in the Hindu’s religion…The Hindus have received their religion through revelation, the Vedas. They hold that the Vedas are without beginning and without end. It may sound ludicrous to this audience, how a book can be without beginning or end. But by the Vedas no books are meant. They mean the accumulated treasury of spiritual laws discovered by different persons in different times.”
Vivekananda proudly announced in the Chicago Parliament: “I am proud to be a Hindu.” But his followers and the office-bearers of the organisation he established i.e. Ramakrishna Mission, not only claimed to be non-Hindus but they also fought till the Supreme Court of India to get themselves declared non-Hindus and a minority. They claimed to be following Ramakrishnaism! The RK Mission was earlier declared a minority institution, given special privileges, by the States of Bihar and Karnataka. The Mission wanted to get covered under the Non-Hindu minority status as it claimed that the leftist government of West Bengal was averse to its educational activities.
Documents were submitted by RK Mission to the courts in its attempt to establish that Swami Vivekananda founded a new religion. “Thus the religion of Sri Ramakrishna is the religion separate and different from the religion of the Hindus. Ramakrishnaism has its separate God, separate name, separate church, separate worship, separate community, separate organisation and, above all, separate philosophy. It is claimed to be a separate religion by its own followers, and it was declared so by its founder – Swami Vivekananda. A Hindu has no respect for the scriptures of other religions. Swami Vivekananda was an aggressive Hindu monk when he went to the Chicago Parliament of Religions. After returning from the West, he had become a preacher of a religion basically different from Hinduism.”
Fortunately, the three-judge bench, Justice Kuldip Singh, Justice N Venkatachala and Justice S Saghir Ahmed of the highest court in India rejected their claim for a different religion and a minority status too on July 2, 1995, and gave a judgment that they were Hindus.
Dr Karan Singh, an eminent scholar on Hinduism, rightly remarked: “I have said many times in my talks the Ramakrishna Mission is the real crest jewel of Hinduism. How can they say they are not Hindus?”
Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission are worldwide, non-political and non-sectarian spiritual organisations. The organisations were brought into existence by Sri Ramakrishna, the great 19th century saint from Bengal who is regarded as the Prophet of the Modern Age, and Sri Ramakrishna'schief disciple, Swami Vivekananda, one of the foremost thinkers and religious leaders of the present age, who is regarded as “one of the main moulders of the modern world”.
Although the Math and the Mission are legally and financially separate, they are closely inter-related in several ways and are regarded as twin organisations. The headquarters of the Math and the Mission are situated in an area named Belur in the district of Howrah, West Bengal, India. The entire campus of the headquarters is popularly known as ‘Belur Math’. Sprawling across 40 acres of land on the western bank of the river Hooghly (Ganga), the place is an hour’s drive from Kolkata. The Math and the Mission have 181 centres all over the world – 136 in India, 13 in the US, 13 in Bangladesh, 2 in Russia, and one each in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Fiji, France, Germany, Malaysia, Mauritius, the Netherlands, Singapore, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Switzerland , and the UK, according to the official records.
Though Swami Vivekananda lived for just 39 years, he became an icon for the youth of India. His famously inspiring quote: “Arise! Awake! and stop not until the goal is reached” still reverberates in every Indian's mind.
Next Column: Mahatma Gandhi and Frontier Gandhi
(The writer is a Socio-political Historian. E-mail: [email protected] )
