THE DEATH OF SWAMIJI AT OUR HANDS

THE DEATH OF SWAMIJI AT OUR HANDS

Swamiji died on 4th July, 1902. He has lived on, nonetheless, in fiery terms in the virile veins of the revolutionaries. Now, though, we are witnessing a terrible watering down of his ideas and ideals for humam emancipation in all its catholic comprehensiveness. This, indeed, is the true demise of Swamiji. His ideals are being destroyed by presenting him in an effeminate manner, a tendency among his countrymen which he so detested. Soft music and sentimental stuff doing the rounds in his name was exactly what he had fulminated against but that is just the tribute devotees keep paying him, lip-service of a kind that is so antithetical to what the 'cyclonic monk' had ever aspired for from his countrymen. Even men who have renounced in his name and have joined the Order founded by him resort to entertaining the people with soft, sentimental music when the country, nay the whole world, needs a fiery spread of his message in virile terms. This has been the real death of Swamiji and not what he voluntarily took upon himself on 4 July, 1902.

We want the resurrection of Swamiji now, now that we have killed him, a feat which neither he nor his God could perform. It is feat, indeed, and the damned fate of our country that, we, the effeminates of this nation, have declared ourselves to be the imbeciles who were born to kill the greatest man of our country, the grandest soul of the Age in this despicable fashion which, sure enough, the seer in Swamiji must have foreseen when in desolation and despair he gave up his body 'like a disused garment' hours after the vesper service of his Master on the fourth day of the month of July one hundred and nineteen years from this day.

Written by Sugata Bose