Swami Vivekananda: A Legacy Denied

By
Saurav Basu

Several newspapers editorial pages display a remarkable conspicuity in their

absence of remembrance of Swami Vivekananda’s birth anniversary. In the
same vein, political parties have remained averse to appropriating the man
and his message unlike the passionate exhibition of their characteristic
voyeurism during Gandhi, Nehru and his parivar’s anniversaries. A full page
advert of the sports ministry celebrates National Youth Day without
identifying with Vivekananda!

Probably, it is because Vivekananda’s “unapologetic Hinduism” cannot be

straight-jacketed into ‘secular’, ‘progressive’ and ‘dalit emancipative’
categories. The BJP whose prime ministerial candidate refers to Vivekananda
throughout his exhaustive memoirs also show little recollection of the
occasion, for the man who single handedly heralded the modernization of
Hinduism and its representation and vindication on the world stage.

Does it mean Vivekananda is no longer relevant to the future of India? Was

he a mere shooting star which has now faded into oblivion? Ramachandra
Guha, a secular historian considers “behind every thinking Indian there is
either a Marxist or a Gandhian”. Vivekananda’s unique message has no place
in the contemporary discourse of such thinkers; instead critics like
Jyotirmaya Sharma believe Vivekananda’s discourse on “Hindu superiority”
represents a dangerous ‘threat’ to the ‘secular’ fabric of the nation. Perhaps,
it is out of such ideological pathology that Vivekananda’s message received
absolutely no state support for its dissemination in Nehru’s India. The
government of India in the 1950s under culture minister Humayun Kabir
while commissioning the biography of over 100 nationalists and patriots
curiously left out Vivekananda. Textbooks of India had Gandhi’s talisman but
Vivekananda was reduced to a paragraph in 300 pages of Modern History.

No national university was named after the man who encouraged J R D Tata
to build the world acclaimed Indian Institute of sciences. No national football
stadium or tournament has been ascribed to the man, who enthused Bengali
boys to go and play football, the matchless spirit which was vindicated when
a barefoot Mohan Bagan beat East Yorkshire to win the IFA shield of 1911.

The Ramakrishna Mission painstakingly carried his message through their

meager resources even against mounting Communist threats which forced
them to bowdlerize his critique of Mohammed from Bengali editions of
Swamiji’s works. They have now published subsidized copies of his nine
complete works which can be at had for the price of the latest Jeffrey Archer
thriller. But perhaps nothing but the extraordinary power and the divine
acumen of his words is what makes Vivekananda’s stand out tall as a
persistent youth icon. The Vivekananda community on ‘Orkut’, a social
networking site has Vivekananda communities with 1,50,000 members,
surpassed only by a cricketer like Rahul Dravid or Bollywood icons with
international appeal like Shahrukh Khan. Not surprisingly, you have Gavin
Flood regrettably condescend that Vivekananda’s Hinduism is synonymous
with the rapidly progressing “middle class Hindus” of today.

Vivekananda lived in an age when the response of a defeated nation was in

the words of Ram Swarup, “trying to restore its self-respect and self-
confidence through self-repudiation and identification with the ways of the
victors.” Vivekananda reprimanded those Brahmos who “for a few
patronizing pats of their masters” spat on their own culture and indulged in
self loathing. Vivekananda visualized in India an unmatched spiritual vision
for humanity at large, and he realized political freedom alone was
inadequate for its regeneration.
Those who say Vivekananda was not a nationalist are nothing short of
intellectually dishonest, for never was there a time when he considered
himself as a subject of the British Empire. This is of course in stark contrast
to Mahatma Gandhi who fourteen months after Tagore had resigned his
knighthood belatedly returned to the Viceroy his Kaiser-Hind medal in the
aftermath of the Jalianwala Bagh massacre after vainly waiting for Christian
justice.

The fashionable critics of his today claim he was a ‘status quoits’ in terms of
caste and women’s issues although nothing can be further from the truth.
Instead, Vivekananda found utterly objectionable the manner in which the
social reformers of the day appropriated Western critiques of Indian culture.
He refused to be one of those Hindus, who, having identified themselves
with a conquering nation held the misery of their own people up to ridicule
and contempt. Vivekananda rejected those destructive methods wherein an
alien system was forcibly transplanted on an unwilling subjugated people
through force of law and threat of punishment and in the process cut off
their identities. He reasoned that “No nation is great or good because
Parliament enacts this or that, but because its men are great and good….I do
not believe in reform; I believe in growth. Theirs is a method of destruction,
mine is that of construction”.

Vivekananda was again one who could appreciate the urgent need for
integrating women with the mainstream by giving them agency. Women had
to be empowered and educated, so they could take their decisions in their
best interests uninfluenced by men. “Our part of the duty lies in imparting
true education to all men and women in society. As an outcome of that
education, they will of themselves be able to know what is good for them
and what is bad, and will spontaneously eschew the latter. It will not be then
necessary to pull down or set up anything in society by coercion.”

Also, few know that Vivekananda supported the women suffrage movement
in the West, as also proposed training women in physical education and self
defense. He implored some notable Hindu women like Sarala Ghoshal, the
niece of Rabindranath to represent Indian womanhood on the world stage.
On the caste question, Vivekananda’s views were revolutionary and hitherto
unknown. He rejected both the Marxist doctrine of ‘class struggle’ along with
the communitarian view of ‘class co-operation’ and instead proposed
Vedantic socialism for organic development. “Man must love others because
all those others are Himself”, Vivekananda created a new philosophical
paradigm by stressing on the intellectual appreciation of conceptualizing the
Advaitic absolute even in the relative phenomenon. The difference between
the Brahmana and the Shudra being illusory eliminates caste conflicts and
caste privileges without necessarily breaking social distinctions and allows
nishkamma karma. The pernicious “reservation policy” of India which is
based on Marxist concepts of ‘class antagonism’ where a Brahmin and a
Shudra only work respectively for the interests of their own castes is
completely negated in the light of this higher Self affirming philosophy.
Sadly, no political party in India has considered internalizing this vital
message of Vivekananda in this age of divisive caste politics.

Vivekananda was the first Indian who impacted the West despite criticizing
Christianity and asserting Hindu superiority. Unlike Gandhi’s irrationality in
considering Western civilization to be a spurious antithesis of the pure Indian
counterpart despite himself imitating the ideas of Christ, Rosseau and
Tolstoy; Vivekananda cherished the values and achievements of both despite
the influence of no foreign thinker on him. His influence on Sri Aurobindo
who represents the last viable fusion of the East and the West is ample
testimony to this fact. His vision in the words of Sri Aurobindo has yet to find
fructification for; “the definite work he has left behind is quite
incommensurate with our impression of his creative might and energy. We
perceive his influence still working gigantically, we know not well where, in
something, that is not yet formed, something leonine, grand, and intuitive,
upheaving that has entered the soul of India.”

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