VIVEKANANDA AND INDIAN FREEDOM ... 1

Vivekananda was the inspiration, the energy and the guiding principle of our freedom movement, the la father-figure and archangel of our liberation. He gave us the vision of our heritage, our world mission and the destiny to be. The personality and principle coalesced into an integral consciousness in Vivekananda which gave him the appellation of 'Condensed India' which he rightfully became. He enfolded in his being the past and the present and the unborn future of the motherland, her halcyon days of antiquity, her maladies of the hour and her lustrous possibilities lying in the womb of futurity. All our luminous leaders of the freedom struggle were awakened, inspired and guided by this warrior monk as they battled against the dark forces of colonial subjugation with Vivekananda their leading light.

And, do not forget Ramakrishna who was the prime mover of Vivekananda. The day he was born, 18 February, 1836, in the very same year Macaulay's Minutes on Education attempted to debilitate our civilisation for good, Satya Yuga (the Age of Truth and Enlightenment) began, this Swamiji vouched. From that very day India's counterattack began to Western infiltration and subversion of her culture. Vivekananda, thereon, was the handiwork of the Master who, remaining true to his prophecy and promise made on the battlefield of Kurukshetra, appeared once more in the spiritual firmament of India to set her rudder right. Ramakrishna is God and Vivekananda is his Apostle extraordinaire who dug deep into the consciousness of sleeping India to rouse her into self-conscious activity whose final fruition in those dark days manifested as the nation-wide struggle for liberation.

It was from Dakshineshwar that the first salvo was fired by the priest and his Divine Mother and it was the soil of the hallowed precincts there trodden by the God of our times that provided the powder that shook the foundations of the British Empire and altered the course of world history for good. India was the focal point of this renaissance of mankind and her political independence the imperative for her rebirth in the comity of nations by way of fulfilment of her spiritual destiny.