Preparedness is the other name for civilization, wrote
Tagore. To be able to serve the Cause of Ramakrishna-Vivekananda we have to be
prepared with the due requisites of character and information so that we may
not be caught napping when the hour of delivery comes. The national cause is
important, far more so when our Motherland is in the formative years of her
socio-economic development after a lapse of close to a millennium of servitude
to foreign powers when she was robbed of her resources and her culture
despoiled till she was reduced to death’s door. But the ancient land of Bharat
is indestructible, immortal and once more she has risen like the Phoenix from
the ashes, resplendent in her spiritual might, ready to deluge the world once
more with the onrush of a spiritual current that will sweep away all the dross
of materialism and render humanity pure and conscious of the highest ideals it
is heir to. The world today is on the edge of an abyss with a damaged
environment, and, damaging ideologies battling for primitive supremacy where
dialogue and deliberation are deemed distrustful dissent deserving damnation of
death dealt out by demonic clerics masquerading as devout dervishes. Capitalism
for all its pretentious claims to resource-utilization for world-welfare is
driving the common man the world over to penury and fuelling the fire of
revolutionary violence that lies embedded in the womb of future history. Greed
for gold has subverted human culture and reduced man to an ‘economic animal’
such that he can without compunction exact inordinate and ruinous profit from
brother man oblivious of the latter’s capacity to pay the exorbitant prices
that attach themselves to commodities of dire necessity and driven desire. The
situation the world over is not at all conducive for harmonious living or
peaceful co-existence. When necessity drives man to desperation, he no longer
considers what is good for human society in the long run but with his myopic
vision stimulated by the exigencies of the times, he dives into dangerous
deeps, the treacherous terrain of violent revolution. Such an occurrence is
periodic in history and it entails untold damage to civilization even as it
ushers in a new age amidst terrible violence, the horrors of which echo through
the portals of history for ages.
This then is the world for us as we know it to be and which
we are attempting to refashion after our heart in order to make it habitable
for us all, not merely the privileged few for whom it may be a veritable heaven
but also the vast majority, the teeming millions toiling it out under the
scorching sun of the tropics or amidst the icy chill of the poles, men and
women everywhere, gods and goddesses living and dying their daily deaths before
the very eyes of us who choose to worship not these visible living
manifestations of the Divine but vain imaginary beings, the derivatives of our
fertile human imagination, products of our quasi-rational selves thinking along
mythical lines. The task is onerous and requires the life-sacrifice of
thousands of us who vouch to be Vivekananda-devotees. And what a blessed life
it will be when we sacrifice it all for the sake of the Motherland!
Come my friends, let
us all make a glory of our terrestrial existence and leave a mark indelibly on
society for the furtherance of the cause of human evolution. Let us live and
die for the Cause of the Master and His children and so attain to immortality
in human heart where every throb shall pulsate with the rhythms of love for us,
the forgotten heroes of the Motherland, even as our predecessors bled in
oblivion for the cause of national liberation from foreign occupiers. How many
of them who gave up their lives on the gallows for the sake of freeing India from
foreign yoke do we know of or care to remember today? But every breath we
inhale as free citizens we owe it to them whom we know not, every pulse of life
and love that we feel is bequeathed us by them, our forgotten heroes who lie
embedded in those chapters of our national life that never came to historical
limelight but whose vibrations keep the flame of our freedom burning even
today. Sisters and brothers, ponder once. May we not emulate these valorous
souls, these soldiers of the Divine, these self-sacrificing sons and daughters
of the soil who died on the Cross of National Liberation that we may live lives
of freedom and peace today? Do we not owe it to them to fulfil their vision of
a renascent India, the Mother of their dreams, of countless souls who then lay
in the womb of posterity but whose life-breath impregnated their beings
envisioning their future birth? Are we not the inheritors of this legacy of
sacrifice for all that made our nation great in the past and shall make her
infinitely greater in the future? Surely, we have not yet come to that degree
of callousness where we can let things pass by, unheeding of their present and
future import, let millions suffer their daily grind for bare survival or a
decent death and ourselves wallow in the lap of luxury bought at their expense.
When a violent change comes in the wake of revolution, we wake up to gather
ourselves from the dust of the ages. Why wait for such a call O my beloved
countrymen? Time it is to live for the cause of nation-building as Swami
Vivekananda had envisaged. Let us tarry no more but dive deep into the deluge
of tears that have flown for ages from the eyes of our mothers and sisters and
brothers who have none save ourselves to care for them, who have prayed to all
the gods and goddesses that be and attained to wonderful fortitude but have found
no earthly succour in terms of the bread of life. I have determined to help
them out in whatsoever meagre way my finite form permits. Be thou my helpmates
in this great mission of national regeneration. We may offer our modest means
and our heartfelt love for our hapless sisters and brothers who adorn the
cottages in our countless villages and light up the India that is and the
pathway for the India that will be. Let us serve them, share in their woes and
help assuage their grief that they may also feel but perchance fail to articulate,"Yes,
we are also the children of the same Mother Bharatvarsha who can never forsake
us."
To such a dawn my friends,
I send these lines tonight,
They’ll waft through
the starry skies
To welcome you with
the light.
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