Swami Vivekananda had once expressed the desire to set up a Ramakrishna Ashrama in every village of India to inundate the country with the spirit of Ramakrishna. Rishi that he was, he was endowed with prophetic vision and had made his famous pronouncement, 'India is already Ramakrishna's.' Since then much water has rolled down the Ganga. India is now politically free. The Britishers have left dividing India and causing untold misery to the migrating mass of humanity across the borders of truncated India. Fallen India has risen like the phoenix from the ashes. Industry is beginning to thrive and so has agriculture been booming for several decades. But the condition of the masses in the hundreds of thousands of villages remains abysmal even today with water, sanitation and toilet facilities barely available and electricity yet to light up the lives of millions. Urban development is a welcome change sweeping across the country but we must remember that the masses even today live in the villages where living conditions are poor. Education, health-care, nutrition and proper residential facilities are a far cry as governmental misspending and rampant corruption steals the lot of the hapless villagers whose only right to existence seems to be founded in a God-given forbearance and a franchise periodically exercised whereby their hopes linger on for a better tomorrow that never shows up. It is thus a spiritual imperative for us devotees of Ramakrishna-Vivekananda to dedicate ourselves towards the fulfilment of Swamiji's dream of a renascent India where every village will be throbbing with the spiritual vibrations of Ramakrishna.
Young people are more enthusiastic than elderly ones for the former pulsate to the vibrancy of their hopes and aspirations which youth is heir to. However, as people age, this idealism gradually wanes in most and cynicism sets in in the wake of the harder realities of material life where hopes are so often dashed, aspirations nipped in the bud and youthful jollity replaced by hardened pragmatism. Dreams die their natural death as 'duty scorches the soul' of man. And this hardening of the soul spares neither monk nor man. It is a sad state of affairs that one witnesses, especially, when such altered status in thinking affects the life of the nation. Surely, Vivekananda is a saddened man to witness this decadent development in his beloved countrymen and must be reconsidering a voyage to planet Earth to redress the situation. What a shame it is that we who are the protagonists of his movement should so let him down that the mighty monk must be compelled to enter this terrestrial dungeon again and so suffer, O God, what miseries for fallen man one dreads to think! We love him, do we not? Then why do we let him down this way, monk and man ponder.
Swami Ranganathananda was so devoted to Swami Vivekananda that each and every exhortation of the latter was a commandment unto him. No wonder he achieved so much for the Ramakrishna Movement in his lifetime and continues to inspire others even beyond it. I wish that every one of us were as committed to Swamiji's Cause of national regeneration as Ranganathanandaji was although I know it is but wishful thinking on my part. Swami Asheshanada had once tearfully lamented before Bharat Maharaj in America that the monks of the Order had failed Thakur which is why he would have to reincarnate himself. I was stunned to read this and literally marvelled at the depth of love Asheshanandaji bore Sri Ramakrishna that he would rather have him not descend on Earth again that he may be spared the pain of bodily existence. Such love is veritably the gateway to freedom and of a spiritual status that transcends freedom as well, that of eternal play with the Master. But the moot point still remains in what Asheshanandaji disclosed that day that we have not done enough for the Cause and the masses continue to lead lives of deprivation despite Swamiji's exhortation that we must establish a Ramakrishna Ashrama in each and every village of India round which the rural reconstruction will take place leading to national regeneration. Worst of all that some of us, again, monk and man here equally culpable, choose to be vain enough to articulate that things will happen in due course of time and that it is not the duty of the Ramakrishna Math and the Ramakrishna Mission alone to fulfil this mammoth task of establishing Ramakrishna Ashramas in every village. While the magnitude of the task is surely far, far beyond the current capacity of the Mission and it is worthwhile to put things in their proper perspective, it is however expected that none, monk or man, should inadvertently slight Swamiji in rudely bringing home the practical point about activating his radical reforms. 'Bold words and bolder deeds are required' and monks should inspire the lay devotees in attempting to fulfil his national dreams instead of merely positing the limitations of current situations and even denigrating the very wishfulness of these idle dreamers, so to say, by superior attitude, so very unbecoming of the sacred saffron we all revere. Also, such an attitude clearly is a violation of reverence for the great Vivekananda for whom the youth of India performed 'impossibles' at the cost of their lives in the Motherland's protracted struggle for political independence. These heroes who went to the gallows 'laughing full of glee', for whom the spectacle of life and death were set on an even keel so much so that each vied with the other to sacrifice his life earlier for the nation, these were Vivekananda's heroes who, were they alive today, would never have been miffed if anyone sincerely suggested the fulfilment of Swamiji's massive national programmes. Rather, they would have felt exultant that there was someone amongst their countrymen who cared for the country enmasse. Surely, they would not have pooh-poohed such noble sentiment from their assumed spiritual pedestal when the country burns and Swamiji burns with it, oh what horror!
Time it is therefore that lay devotees by the thousands come forward to bear the cross of this, our Motherland, at this critical juncture of her history when she stands at the crossroads of her spiritual evolution. We will never fail Swamiji. We will do it his way, fulfil his dream of spreading the Gospel of his Master in every village of India till her very nerves tingle with the delight that was the peerless Paramahamsa of Dakshineshwar. If Swamiji had given utterance to this dream of his, surely it shall be fulfilled by his saving grace and by our collective effort at no distant an hour, however statistically blasphemous it may seem today, so help me all my sisters and brothers who bleed for our beloved country in her hour of distress. Jai Ramakrishna! Jai Swamiji! Jai Bharatmata!
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