SWAMI VIVEKANANDA AND INDIA ... 1

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA AND INDIA ... 1

INTRODUCTION

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The Sanatan Dharma is the bedrock of Indian civilisation. If it goes, goes with it India. Swami Vivekananda was extremely disturbed by this trend even in his days when he in his Rishi's vision could foresee the coming clash and conflict which India would be subject to. Unfortunately, he was in no position to spell out definite action plans for working out India's destiny beyond offering broad outlines and perceptive hints as to her future course.

The problem with great men is that they have to balance many contradictions of life and arrive at humanistic formulations for all of humanity. The world is such a mess with variegated evolutionary developments in places, violent and warring, and even worse, bound in superstition and faith, that it becomes an intractable problem for such seminal souls to resolve human issues en masse. Thus, they provide broad solutions which can work out to improving the human situation only over a sizeable period of time. This was the problem that Swami Vivekananda faced during his lifetime.

BIRTH AND BOYHOOD

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India was under European colonial occupation in 1863 when Swamiji was born. It was six years after the Great Revolt of 1857 and the subsequent suppression of the aspiration for freedom had now entrenched British imperial rule in India following the 1858 Queen's Proclamation. Vivekananda grew up in this colonised, imperially subjugated state. The perceptive youth understood the economic and political implications of this servitude and was restless to break free.

There was a popular saying those days which ran as follows: 'First send the merchants. Next send the missionaries. Last send the army.' Thus it was that Indian wealth was being drained out before the boy Vivekananda's very eyes as India's GDP fell from a whopping 22% in global terms in 1800 to 1.8% in 1900. This reduced India from an age-old prosperous civilisation to one grovelling in abject penury. Britain was built on Indian blood, for this ruination to economy cost India no less than 20 million lives through famine itself. Add to that Christian proselytising, converting Hindus by the hordes, and you have half the picture yet. The other half was the systematic conversion of Hindus to Islam that had been going on for a thousand years which is what prompted Vivekananda later to say that India was under chains of slavery for a thousand years.

These were the challenges of the times that faced India and the boy Vivekananda as he grew to maturity. Let me place them before you in bullet form. 

● British colonisation of India and drainage of wealth.

● British political occupation of India. 

● Christian ✝️ conversion of Hindus 🕉 en masse.

● Islamic ☪️ conversion of Hindus 🕉 en masse.

● Destruction of Hindu education system.

THE DUAL STRUGGLE

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A great soul is one who faces not only external challenges but internal challenges as well. Seminal spiritual souls face this dual challenge all the more. Swami Vivekananda was one such Spirit of the Age who had to overcome both internal and external barriers to envisioning Truth before he could embark on his voyage of discovery of the Promised Land where universal peace and harmony could be. But it always begins with the internal quest in such souls.

THE INDIAN AWAKENING

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Raja Rammohan Roy was born in 1772, alternatively in 1774, at Radhanagar in Bengal. He stood up to the challenges of the times and in alliance with sympathetic European friends and British authorities did away with some of the social evils that had beset Hindu society those days. He was well schooled in Islamic theology, was proficient in several languages such as Arabic, Persian, Hebrew, Sanskrit, Urdu, Hindi, Bengali and English, was a Vedantist and had studied the Bible in Hebrew. He established the 'Atmiya Sabha' (Society of Kindred Souls -- translation, author's) in 1815 and the Brahmo Samaj in 1828 to combat Christian proselytising as also to provide rational Hindus a way back to their pristine philosophy of the Upanishads. He patronised the Hindu College (Presidency College, today), created India's first indigenous Press, authored books in Bengali, English and Arabic/Persian, got the Anti-Sati Bill passed by Lord William Bentinck's Government in 1829, then sailed for England to represent the cause of India in the British House of Commons with title of 'Raja' given him by the last Mughal Emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, where he died of brain fever in Bristol in 1833.

End of Part 1

To be continued...

Written by Sugata Bose