'Futteh Billass', the residential palace of the erstwhile Maharaja of Khetri, played host to three visits by Swami Vivekananda to this hilly kingdom of his disciple Raja Ajit Singh. The two shared a unique relationship, that of mendicant monk and mighty monarch, that of spiritual preceptor and devoted disciple and that of a common love for India and her heritage. It was here at the 'Futteh Billass' that the king, in a moment of inspiration, gave the monk the name 'Vivekananda' so aptly that one wonders how deep must have been the devotion of the disciple for his preceptor.
Vivekananda, the man with a mission, was then in his wanderjahre in search of the soul of India. His spiritual master, Sri Ramakrishna, had commissioned him with the charge of awakening the sleeping mass of humanity and it was this arduous task that the virile young man was attempting to accomplish. But the path was uncharted, the method unknown and the destination undefined. It was all a maze and yet this solitary soul had to discover the soul of India and set it right if he was to fulfil his Master's will. He travelled through the whole of India and it was during his journey through Rajasthan that he chanced to tread upon the soil of Khetri. Thus began a spiritual bond between the sage and the sovereign of this small principality of Khetri that has gone down in the annals of the Ramakrishna Order as one of those key events in the career of the Swami that punctuated his epic life.
The vast power of Vivekananda was about to burst upon the world and Khetri provided the springboard for his first visit to the West whence he launched his spiritual ministration for the brief but momentous period of three years and a half that brought about the transformation of the consciousness of the Western world at its depth, beyond the cognition of the mortal eye, but whose effect, slow and sure, will in the course of centuries, alter the world-view of men, liberalising perspectives and making way for harmonious co-existence en route to spiritual Self-realisation. The ambit of the Swami's mission was so great that one wonders how inspired must have been the vision of Raja Ajit Singh when he set about to persuading Swamiji to make his trip to the West adding for good measure that he would bear the expenses of the passage to America and of his initial subsistence there.
It was the quatercentenary of Christopher Columbus' landing on American shores that had prompted the organisation of the World's Fair within which was to be held the World Parliament of Religions at Chicago and it was here that Raja Ajit Singh was helping Swamiji to go and blazon the eternal truths of the Sanatan Dharma. What happened thereafter is history and need not be recounted here but we need to roll back in time for a while to savour those hours of delightful interaction between a king and a monk in the hill-town of Khetri and behind the palace walls of 'Futteh Billass'
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