THE NATIONAL NEED ... 10

THE NATIONAL NEED ... 10

Our entire conversation must be remodelled along virile lines. The words and phrases which we use in common discourse are so often so effeminate that they do not bear any kinship with what would be deemed strength in linguistic expression. Swamiji was much concerned about it and wished to refashion the Bengali language along a more masculine mode. Not only that, he felt that Bengal and Odisha have been rendered into habitats of effeminates by the preponderance of the 'Vamachara' or the left-handed sensate mode of worship and by the weakening over-emphasis on the softer side of devotion by Sri Chaitanya.

Swamiji had desired the entire nation to rise up in virile courage for the sake of redemption of the motherland, then grovelling in the dust under colonial tyranny. He wished to exhort manliness in men so that they would take to the task of national reconstruction at every level right up to liberating the motherland from foreign rule. To that effect he even urged his countrymen to take up the worship of 'Shakti' in the forms of the Divine Mother Kali and the valorous Mahaveer or Hanumanji. He urged his fellow Indians to give up soft and sentimental music and take to the playing of the deep-sounding drums instead. In every way he exhorted men to be manly and this he said was his last gospel on earth -- manliness.

Unfortunately, although many in his days and thereafter till independence did follow active principles of pronounced virility and self-restraint as directed by Swamiji, the present generation, born and bred amidst decadent capitalist-consumerist culture, have forsaken his ideas of strength and valour, and have taken to debilitating desires and dreams, and their speech and manners betray all such traces as Swamiji has forewarned us as being symptomatic of our destruction in three generations if we persist in this decadent sensuous mode.

So, we must heed what Swamiji has said and reform our ways accordingly forthwith. Let us begin with our manner of speech and writing which must be robust. But above all we must cultivate 'shraddha' or a reverential attitude to life and knowledge, secular and sacred, that leads to perfection in life's endeavours with spiritual freedom as its final outcome. Jai Ramakrishna !

Written by Sugata Bose