"I AM PROUD TO BE A HINDU," SAID THE SWAMI VIVEKANANDA LIKE NONE ELSE OF THE MODERN TIMES

"I AM PROUD TO BE A HINDU," SAID THE SWAMI VIVEKANANDA LIKE NONE ELSE OF THE MODERN TIMES

Of the great men of our country who have attempted social reform, most of them resorted to carping criticism of Hinduism and blamed it for the ills of society, for none of them have striven to plumb the depths of spiritual realisation to arrive at a comprehensive understanding of it and have, merely on the basis of an intellectual understanding of the Sanskrit texts, formed their opinions about the grand religion and formulated the panacea for the social ills thereof which necessarily did not work. None from Rammohan Roy to Rabindranath Tagore -- to name but the extremities of the long line of critics of this type -- had the immediate experience of the Brahman but proceeded, nonetheless, to fault Hinduism on many undue counts on account of their aforesaid ignorance. This lacuna was removed in the root and branch reform of Swami Vivekananda and he did successfully guide Hindu society through loving patience, forbearance and insight brought about by his direct perception of the Brahman whose pale reflection is human society.

Swamiji in thunderous tones said that it was not religion that was at fault but that the fault lay in its lack of proper application in social terms, in the relegation of the pristine principles of the Vedas only to the worn-out pages of forest texts and their utter lack of use in day-to-day living in the thoroughfare of life. Following the exhortation of his divine Master, Swamiji proceeded to bring back the Vedanta of the forests to the cities and the towns, to the villages where farmers dwell and to the hills and the dales, the factories and the marts, the palaces of kings and the cottages of the peasants. Swamiji spread the gospel of the Vedas, of the divinity of man, and ushered in the new age not by rejecting the Sanatan Dharma or by partially accepting it but by embracing it in its entirety that made every Indian for the first time proud to be a Hindu. Herein lay the mantra of Swamiji's success -- intense sympathy for his countrymen and for their encyclopaedic spiritual heritage which no other great man of modern times had.

Written by Sugata Bose