“They alone live who live for others, the rest are more dead than alive.”
By Kanchan Banerjee
Voyage to America
This was 1893. Vivekananda got a call to go to America when he heard that there a World’s Parliament of Religions was being held in Chicago. When he was asked why he was going to America,
Swamiji expressed his pain and said:
”I have traveled all over India. But alas, it was agony to me, my brothers, to see with my own eyes the terrible poverty and misery of the masses, and I could not restrain my tears. It is now my firm conviction that it is futile to preach religion amongst them without first trying to remove their poverty and their suffering. It is for this reason – to find more means for the salvation of the poor in India – that I am now going to America.”
After leaving the shores of India, he landed up in Chicago. But it was July and the Parliament was to happen in September, and he had no invitation or credentials to be a delegate at the grand event. Upon suggestions from his new friends, he came to Boston for the time being.
It was a small village north of Boston called Annisquam. Swami Vivekananda met Professor J.H. Wright, of the Greek Department at Harvard University. They talked for hours and became friends. Prof. Wright organized Swamiji’s very first public talk of Swamiji ever held in any language, at the Annisquam village church.
The professor was so impressed by the Swami that he insisted that his new friend should be the representative of Hinduism at the World’s Parliament of Religions. Upon hearing that the Swami lacked proper credentials, he replied,
“To ask you, Swami, for your credentials, is like asking the sun to state its right to shine.”
Harvard’s Prof. Wright then wrote a letter to a friend responsible for selecting the Parliament’s delegates stating, “Here is a man who is more learned than all our learned professors put together.”
On September 10, 1893 Swamiji travelled to Chicago to attend the Parliament after many incidents and much struggle.
His speech at the Parliament earned instant fame and he became very popular throughout America. The newspapers were covering his talks on a daily basis.He met many of the most influential Americans of that era and in turn influenced them with his great personality, wisdom and purpose in life. No one knows exactly what his impact has been on the world scene. But directly and indirectly, he has changed the world forever, for a better world.
When the Beatles famed Gorge Harrison was asked about the origins of his famous song “My Sweet Lord,” he answered “the song really came from Swami Vivekananda, who said, ‘If there is a God, we must see him. And if there is a soul, we must perceive it.’
Who was Vivekananda?
So, was he just a famous religious monk? He was called by many names, including the ‘Cyclonic Hindu Monk’.
Anglo-American Novelist & Playwright Christopher Isherwood wrote about him as: “..one of the very greatest historical figures that India has ever produced. When one sees the full range of his mind, one is astounded.”
Was he a great figure for the Indians only? India’s first Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru said:“Swami Vivekananda was one of those persons, who belonged to our ancient culture, knit the country together and inspired a new life into the people and awake the country from slumber. His voice was not momentary, although it was suited for the occasion, and rose from the heart of India. During the brief period of his life, not only did he win the hearts of the people of India, but also of the entire world.”
During America’s bi-centennial celebrations in 1976,the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution listed Swami Vivekananda among the 29 most eminent people ever to have visited America and said: “At this exposition [the World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893], the Swami charmed audiences with his magical oratory, and left an indelible mark on America’s spiritual development.”- National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution (from “Abroad in America: Visitors to the New Nation”)
There are compelling reasons to accept that not just the Indians or the Americans, but the entire world should remember and celebrate the life of Swami Vivekananda.
Historian and author A L Basham said: “It is very difficult to evaluate his importance in the scale of world history. It is certainly far greater than any Western historian or most Indian historians would have suggested at the time of his death. The passing of the years and the many stupendous and unexpected events which have occurred since then suggest that in centuries to come he will be remembered as one of the main moulders of the modern world.”
Let us explore and try to understand his ‘importance in the scale of world history’ and see how true he was to his Avatar-like statement ‘Buddha had a message for the east, and I have a message for the west’.
What India needed
It was 1890s, Vivekananda was not even 30 years old. He found that India was suffering from lack of self-esteem. One reason behind that was forgetting the nation’s glorious past. Colonial and European historians and authors presented that India had nothing to take pride in. It appeared to be a poor and fragmented society without and hope.
Who would give the nation the beacon light of hope? Who would bring to them the confidence to rescue them from sheer darkness? Who would give them the energy to rejuvenate?
It was Swamiji. His first attempt was to connect present with past and infuse confidence among people. He was one of the first ones to debunk the racist and divisive Aryan Invasion theory fabricated by colonists to justify occupying and ruling India.
Then he said ‘”The debt which the world owes to our motherland is immense. Taking country with country , there is not one race on this earth to which the world owes so much as to the patient Hindu, the mild Hindu.”
This was later confirmed by many Western scholars including Nobel Laureate Romain Rolland who said: “If there is one place on the face of earth where all the dreams of living men have found a home from the very earliest days when man began the dream of existence, it is India.”
That was it. The psyche of the whole nation was stirred and a new awakening arrived in this part of the world where millions lived in abject poverty without any hope for future.
Pandit Nehru said: “He came as a tonic to the depressed and demoralized Hindu mind and gave it self-reliance and some roots in the past.”
Vivekananda reoriented Indian and world minds to go back into history and rediscover the Indian knowledge system and wisdom tradition to not only take pride in, but to understand, revive, use and share with the world meanwhile positioning India as a nation with a definite purpose and a global mission.
Today much information is available about India’s past, but it took almost over a century for India to get recognition for its contributions in all the major pillars of our current civilization – from mathematics to grammar to astronomy to metallurgy to health to yoga.
Sir Charles Elliot, a British scholar, remarked: “Scant justice is done to India’s position in the world by those European histories which recount the exploits of her invader and leave the impression that her own people were feeble dreamy folk, sundered from the rest of mankind by their seas and mountain frontiers. Such a picture takes no account of the intellectual conquests of the Hindus.” (Hinduism and Buddhism – an Historical Sketch, 1921)
Vivekananda’s next great challenge dealt with the Indian society within. Today India has world’s most diverse society as it has been in the past. With innumerable linguistic, ethnic and regional diversity, India has had from time immemorial a strong sense of unity through its culture. Swami Vivekananda re-discovered and presented to the Indian leadership the inherent unity among diversity and pluralism and laid a solid foundation to unite the psyche of the nation.
Swamiji installed a proper understanding of the nation’s ancient yet living heritage, its contributions and a sense of pride among the people so that they may work towards a better future. He also rang the warning bell against mimicking alien cultures and ideas without properly evaluating and assimilating.
All these efforts provided an impetus to the freedom movement of India. Swamiji set the movement in motion and then to position India among the comity of nations, he presented India’s global mission: “Every nation has a message to deliver, a mission to fulfill, a destiny to reach. The mission of India has been to guide humanity.”
(This is part 2 of a 9 part series)
