ARISE DEVOTEES...1

I exhort the millions of devotees of Ramakrishna-Vivekananda to rise up as a single body in their bid to rebuild India along the blue-print laid down by the Rishis of yore and such modern sages as Vivekananda. A radical transformation of society is needed today to end the inequities that abound and are killing the life-blood of the masses. Capitalistic exploitation has reached gargantuan proportions and has reduced man to destitution in body and in spirit. Free market reigns freely to scientifically rob billions from the masses in the name of unbridled profit-making. A few benefit from this unequal state of affairs and glorify it in the name of freedom but millions are daily crushed under the wheels of this terrible machine that knows no pain nor does it recoil as it inflicts terrible agony to the ones it crushes without a tinge of remorse. When magazines glorify the increasing number of billionaires in our country and news-channels laud them, remember devotees, they make a sham of the significance of TAKA MATI, MATI TAKA (Money is mud, mud money) which our beloved Thakur had uttered as the gospel truth for the age. Mercantile civilization is ugly as it debases the masses by driving them to penury even as it scientifically fuels in man the insatiable thirst for more possession and evermore although it cuts from under his feet his very means of future sustenance thereby. Businessmen do not earn profit from their mothers but relentlessly extract exorbitant profits from others' mothers, not caring once how the poor souls will survive in their grey years. What holy prayers you offer devotees in your temples when you passively acquiesce in this terrible state of affairs? Do you realize that it is your bounden duty to revolve about and carry out the dictum of social transformation as envisaged by Swamiji? Passive piety is good but what we need is something better. We need millions of devotees armed in truth and purity with the firm resolve to carry out Swamiji's action plans without begging for the wherewithal from rich capitalists who are the very cause of this man-made poverty situation. Help will come from within ourselves and Thakur will help, NONE ELSE, NONE ELSE.