VIVEKANANDA DAY

11 September remains in the annals of history as the day Swami Vivekananda stormed the World Parliament of Religions with his historic speech that set in the New Age in human civilisation. It was a moment of fusion of all that was inherently good in human culture, a climactic point crystallised in time for posterity when civilisations occidental and oriental met, when reason fused with faith in a splendour of realisation unheard of in the Western Hemisphere, when the harmony of the Sama Veda rang through the organ voice of the Swami to send the 7000 strong audience into rapture. Chicago, 1893, September 11, the day of reckoning when the Spirit of India gave itself utterance through the young unheralded monk at the vesper hour to usher in the New Age, an age of hope and light, of fraternal feeling, harmony and transcendental realisation.

Vivekananda came to America with no credentials, no Hindu organisation backing him up as their official representative nor any prior registration with the organisers of the Chicago Parliament of Religions. He barely had 300 dollars to spend and was in dire straits soon when chance acquaintances with Katherine Sanborn and Prof. John Henry Wright of Boston saw him through to the Parliament. Prof. Wright, the Harvard professor of Greek introduced him to Dr. Barrows, the Convener of the Chicago Parliament of Religions, in glowing terms through a letter which ran as follows : ''Here is a man whose is more learned than all our learned professors put together.'' To the Swami Vivekananda he said, ''To ask you, Swami, for credentials is like asking the sun to state its right to shine!''

Thus, with an introductory letter to Dr. Barrows, Swami Vivekananda set forth from Boston to Chicago. But unused to carrying things as a mendicant monk, he promptly lost the address of the boarders of the Chicago delegates where he would have found residence. He spent the night in a coach-box and tried his luck through the streets of Chicago the following morn. As he sat fatigued and hungry at a place after a long inconsequential search for his boarder's residence, it was again destiny that came to his rescue. Mrs. Hale, a wealthy lady beckoned him in to the apartment which faced the Swami, refreshed him and then the Hales dropped him off at the delegates' residence.

September 11. The auditorium of the World's Congress Auxilliary Building was packed to capacity. 7000 of the intelligentsia and the best culture of Europe and America were assembled in the central hall where proceedings were to begin. All the major religions and many minor sects as well were represented by their respective delegates. Vivekananda was the lone man without any official status or credential or even a formal registration with the Parliament. But the anointed of God was there to represent Him who had sent sent him across the seas to this distant land to announce the arrival of Man on the centre-stage of the spiritual world. But the young man was nervous. He had never spoken before such an august assembly and continued to defer his address till evening set in. And then as Dr. Barrows announced his name as the next speaker, the young man rose with a fluttering heart and took up his position at the rostrum. A prayer to the Goddess Saraswati and a few opening words, 'Sisters and brothers of America', and the audience was in raptures. 7000 people kept clapping for a full two minutes before the hero could commence his speech. America had fallen at the feet of the young sage of India. 5000 years of Indian spiritual experience then burst forth from the lips of this leonine monk in a cascade of sublime oratory, divine poetry issuing from the heart of this youngest of the rishis of India, and ushered in the Age of Truth and Enlightenment, the Satya Yuga.