WHEN VIVEKANANDA HAILED MICHAEL

Swamiji had hailed Michael Madhusudan Dutt as a genius, ranking his epic composition of the 'Meghnad Bawdh Kabya' even above contemporary European poetic works. The virility of Michael's poetic style appealed to this lion among men and he could not help highlighting the robust manliness of this dramatic genius. Swamiji had much expected manifestation of a bit of manliness in his countrymen and wherever he saw it manifest, he appreciated and encouraged it. This explains his great admiration for Michael Madhusudan Dutt and his encouragement of Jatindranath Mukherjee (Bagha Jatin), Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Jamsedji Nusserwanji Tata and his hailing of the great man of science, Jagadish Chandra Bose, as a genius who would make even inanimate objects come to life, Swamiji quipped in a lighter vein.

But we have much belied the expectations of Swamiji. We have not manifested the manliness he had expended his life to quicken in us but have become more and more debilitated as a people to even allow the partition of the motherland. Thereafter, sensate culture and the death-grip of desire have reduced us to human brutes with no feeling for our suffering masses who, reduced as they are to destitution, daily live a death-like existence. Consumer culture, shameless pursuit of ill-begotten wealth and artificial arousal of the desire to possess have made us more mercenary than men as Swamiji understood the latter term to mean. Gone are the geniuses of yore who loved their motherland and gone with it India's hopes of a high resurgence as mediocrity masquerades as messiahs in every walk of national life. Once more must Swamiji come amongst us and once more must the Michaels and the J.C.Boses be born to save us from our present plight, although, this very aspiration is in itself a degeneracy so very characteristic of the times. May this may then be the only prayer : Mother, make me a man!