WHITHER MANLINESS ... 2

Why is it that we speak without any fire of the Spirit while exhibiting all weak and weakening impulses of the flesh? Is it a provincial feature born of geographical characteristics that softens us down so to such a debility or is it some genetic attribute that thus compels us to behave in this effeminate manner? Swami Vivekananda was keenly aware of this loss of manhood in our nation overall and in especial in our provinces of erstwhile Bengal and Orissa and the southern states. He had caustically commented in this regard and, to awaken the latent fire in us, had reprimanded us as a nation of 'women and eunuchs'. Again and again he exhorted us to awake to the stirring rhythms of our ancient scriptures, to the beat of the Sanskrit verses and to the masterful message of the Upanishads that admits of no weakness. In his bid to set the youth of the day moving and help them overcome their inertia, he had exhorted them to take up football instead of the idle whiling away of time in the ineffectual study of the Geeta, thus hoping that with muscles strengthened, the youth would emerge fitter to understand the virile import of the Geeta better. Swamiji had thus inspired a generation of revolutionaries to sacrifice their all to achieve independence for their motherland even when apologists of all contours were attempting to strike the middle path of moderation in method so as to inadvertently perpetuate the alien occupation of our country.

That the youth in vast numbers responded to Swamiji's clarion call then must be attributed to the volcanic force of the Swami in its early explosion as also the imperatives of the times when a nation struggled to shake off the colonial yoke and fell on its inherent fund of fundamental power which manifested in abhorrence of anything abysmally low and weakening. However, even then there was the other trend of slow injection of effeminate tendencies in the form of soft music and dance, paralysing poetry and prose without a semblance of virility embedded in it whatsoever, and a brand of beggarly politics that masqueraded as a messianic one that went deep into the surface psychology of the masses to hold them in servitude to this crass hypnotism of the senses we see today.

A bold voice, a thundering delivery of a message and an articulate authority is in the realm of rarity these days and men and women sing and dance at every turn like minstrels without a mission, hollow personalities with neither character nor cause, just whiling away their terrestrial time in puerile pursuits of the senses while the vast responsibilities of nation-building lie unattended to for future generations to work on. It is disheartening to see so many give in to the selfish claims of the flesh to thus live in free India, true, but in servitude to their base sensory impulses as parasites of the first order who merely suck vitality from the environment but return nought to it save their enervating tendencies which sap the surroundings of the vital flow.