BACK TO RAMAKRISHNA ... 3
We must hold up before the youth the lives of the martyrs to the motherland's freedom, not merely in bloody terms but in sublime sacrificial terms at the scaffold. Only then will the youth awake when they get to know how much boys and girls of their age, young men and women, had volunteered for freedom and how much toil and torment they had borne laughingly to deliver the motherland from her colonial shackles.
Preaching from the pulpit tall talks on Swami Vivekananda as the prophet of the times, citing his influence on the freedom fighters, will fail to inspire the youth of today for they know how to sift the grain from the chaff. Fiery idealism is missing in these preachers who merely serve organisational interests and wish to glorify the personality of Swami Vivekananda by bringing to the fore on Independence Day how much he had influenced the lives of these leonine souls who gave their all at the altar of freedom. The motive is not good. The martyrs must be mentioned not to thus enhance Swamiji -- for such mention will then miss their mark in inspiring the youth and seem suspect and utterly insipid to perceptive young minds -- but they must be independently glorified so as to inspire the youth. Only then will historical justice be done to these children of Swamiji who were his best followers and disciples.
Today, there is an utter lack of idealism in the air. Everywhere commerce has taken over, as necessarily must be the case in the age of capitalism, the third epoch in the cycle of civilisation. But this has seriously eroded values, values that hold human society together, values that teach the youth the sublimity of service and sacrifice which were the twin ideas Swamiji had made his lifework to preach. And to aid this downward trend by organisation is to seriously compromise the original impetus of a movement that was geared to the regeneration of human society en masse. Ideals must not be thus allowed to degenerate in the name of regeneration of society in the light of Swamiji's mission and message to mankind. We must be vigilant to avoid this decline in standards and to avert a possible precipitous fall into degeneracy ourselves.
The youth are not fools who can be hoodwinked or their sanity hijacked by motivated mention of Swamiji's glorious contributions towards the freedom movement. Today, and for decades now, this tendency to glorify one at the expense of another is such an unfortunate trend that it is like highlighting Rammohan for the success of Ramakrishna's mission, to draw an impossible parallel to bring home the point. Nobody wishes to be unhistorical to the extent of leaving out Swamiji's seminal contributions to the freedom movement. Historians have well recorded his having ignited the Indian Revolution. But for organisation to harp on it to glorify Swamiji all the time at the expense of the martyrs and missionaries to freedom is to play politics with propagation of the personality. And this must be never be. We must remember the sacrifices at the scaffold with benumbed senses and soulful love irrespective of Swamiji. Only then will we have paid our respects (a) to the martyrs, (b) to the motherland and (c) to the Master and his mission on earth and the high heavens that beckon us all even unto eventual freedom.
Written by Sugata Bose
Preaching from the pulpit tall talks on Swami Vivekananda as the prophet of the times, citing his influence on the freedom fighters, will fail to inspire the youth of today for they know how to sift the grain from the chaff. Fiery idealism is missing in these preachers who merely serve organisational interests and wish to glorify the personality of Swami Vivekananda by bringing to the fore on Independence Day how much he had influenced the lives of these leonine souls who gave their all at the altar of freedom. The motive is not good. The martyrs must be mentioned not to thus enhance Swamiji -- for such mention will then miss their mark in inspiring the youth and seem suspect and utterly insipid to perceptive young minds -- but they must be independently glorified so as to inspire the youth. Only then will historical justice be done to these children of Swamiji who were his best followers and disciples.
Today, there is an utter lack of idealism in the air. Everywhere commerce has taken over, as necessarily must be the case in the age of capitalism, the third epoch in the cycle of civilisation. But this has seriously eroded values, values that hold human society together, values that teach the youth the sublimity of service and sacrifice which were the twin ideas Swamiji had made his lifework to preach. And to aid this downward trend by organisation is to seriously compromise the original impetus of a movement that was geared to the regeneration of human society en masse. Ideals must not be thus allowed to degenerate in the name of regeneration of society in the light of Swamiji's mission and message to mankind. We must be vigilant to avoid this decline in standards and to avert a possible precipitous fall into degeneracy ourselves.
The youth are not fools who can be hoodwinked or their sanity hijacked by motivated mention of Swamiji's glorious contributions towards the freedom movement. Today, and for decades now, this tendency to glorify one at the expense of another is such an unfortunate trend that it is like highlighting Rammohan for the success of Ramakrishna's mission, to draw an impossible parallel to bring home the point. Nobody wishes to be unhistorical to the extent of leaving out Swamiji's seminal contributions to the freedom movement. Historians have well recorded his having ignited the Indian Revolution. But for organisation to harp on it to glorify Swamiji all the time at the expense of the martyrs and missionaries to freedom is to play politics with propagation of the personality. And this must be never be. We must remember the sacrifices at the scaffold with benumbed senses and soulful love irrespective of Swamiji. Only then will we have paid our respects (a) to the martyrs, (b) to the motherland and (c) to the Master and his mission on earth and the high heavens that beckon us all even unto eventual freedom.
No comments:
Post a Comment