IN RESPONSE TO THE FEAR OF A GRADUAL SLIDING DOWN OF OUR NATION INTO THE FOLD OF A FOREIGN FAITH ... 1

You are right, my friend, and your concerns very valid in the light of the unseemly developments we daily see here in West Bengal and in many other parts of our great country where dangerous sectarian elements are threatening to take apart the unity of our people and to destroy the age-old dharma tradition of our race by supplanting it with a foreign doctrinaire absolutist faith that is totally antithetical to the universal spiritual culture of India. The danger looms large and we must be vigilant that the perversion of our nation to predatory culture does not take place. For this we must vigorously practise our religion on the basis of what Swamiji has taught us as we take our nation forward in these treacherous times. We cannot shirk our responsibility of defending our faith and safeguarding our spiritual tradition from present and future perversions and, thus, we must take to the thorough study of the 'Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda' for a clear conception of the fundamentals of our faith and our duties in defence of such. The study of Sanskrit must be popularised if we are to survive as a race and every effort must be made to spread the message of Ramakrishna-Vivekananda across the length and breadth of our vast nation and beyond the seven seas to the remotest corners of the globe as Swamiji had envisaged. To that end we should support the welfare projects of The Ramakrishna Mission and get supported spiritually by the monks of the Ramakrishna Math, for we need a rudder to keep our course right in this world of dangerous dilemmas. Swamiji had wished that there should be a Ramakrishna Mission Centre in every village of India, for in his vision that would be the appropriate basis for the future fostering of spirituality in the whole of India. Now that would mean 550,000 centres for the 550,000 villages of India as they stand today. Herein lies a vast task for our future accomplishment for we cannot let Swamiji's words go in vain nor can we indefinitely wait for their fruition at the hands of future generations. We must, therefore, set ourselves to this mammoth accomplishment as we go about building a nation out of the diverse inharmonious elements that disrupt the national life today.

Vande Mataram! Jai Hind!