A LETTER TO A DEVOTEE OF SWAMIJI

A LETTER TO A DEVOTEE OF SWAMIJI

Dear Debjit,

Even during Swamiji's time the Bengalis in general were apathetic towards Swamiji. It was the Madras Presidency that gave him his first devoted disciples, ordinary lay persons like Alasinga Perumal and kings like the Maharaja of Mysore and Ramnad with, of course, Raja Ajit Singh of Khetri (Rajputana) being the crowning gem among them, though he was outside the fold of the Deccan. In Gujarat also Swamiji was honoured by a queen whose magnanimous donation of a large amount the pennyless mendicant monk gracefully refused for he was then under a vow not to touch money or accept any and could be persuaded by the Maharani only to receive a new silken ochre cloth to cover his body. Thus Swamiji traversed the landmass of Aryavarta to stir up the souls of men barring his native Bengal before he leapt like Mahaveer across the oceans in the name of Thakur without a destination and the limited sum of Rs 300 and an orange robe given him by the Raja of Khetri which he donned on 11 September, 1893 at the Art Institute, Chicago to bring home the message of the Rishis to the New World. When he returned triumphant home in 1897 and let 'the lion of the Vedanta' roar across British India from Colombo to Almora he was received with tumultuous exultation by all and sundry. In Calcutta he was carried on the shoulders of the enthusiastic crowd that awaited him at the Sealdah Station on 19 February, 1897 who released the horses of his chariot to bear him on through the festooned metropolis. His young devotees -- Shuddhananda, Virajananda, Bodhananda, Prakashananda, Atmananda, Kalyanananda, Shubhananda and Achalananda -- who had already renounced hearth and home, now lay themselves one by one at his feet and received the monastic vows. That much and no more barring his brother disciples and Thakur's householder disciples who were exultant on seeing their beloved Naren back. And Ma whose crowning jewel Naren had come back and lay prostrate at her feet in one of her twenty makeshift residences in the Shyambazar-Bagbazar area. But beyond that there was effusion for sure but insult as well. At the Town Hall of Calcutta where the hero was felicitated after his first reception at Sobhabazar Royal Palace on 27 February, 1897, Swamiji was addressed as 'Brother Vivekananda' and not as 'Swami Vivekananda' by the President of the meeting because he was supposedly unfit to be deemed a monk as he was born of the Kayastha caste. To top it all, after his felicitation he was handed the bill for the expenses incurred by the organisers as evidently they could not muster the money to pay it. This was Bengal and the inertia is on even today, an irreverent, atheistic, sensuous, destructive Bengal that has been partitioned once and is sliding down that path to be discharged in the cosmic drain. And here we have work to do, Debjit, we who feel proud to proclaim ourselves devotees, disciples, servants, nay, children of Swamiji.

Yours ever in Thakur-Ma-Swamiji,

Sugata Bose