SWAMIJI AND HIS BIOGRAPHER BROTHER

SWAMIJI AND HIS BIOGRAPHER BROTHER

One of the greatest, if not the greatest, books on Swamiji was written by his youngest brother, Bhupendranath Datta, a revolutionary, a socialist, a Brahmo by early adoption, an anthropologist and a scholar par excellence, one who lived for the freedom of the motherland and served several sentences in jail, made his mother, Bhuvaneshwari Devi, proud by his patriotic commitment, and finally lived his old age till his death in 1961 in dire poverty, his bare means of survival being provided by a handful of devoted followers. 

Bhupendranath Datta's epic work titled 'Swami Vivekananda Patriot-Prophet' remains a seminal composition on one of the greatest human phenomena that has ever been. He admired deeply his elder brother (Vivekananda) and thought that the monks of the Ramakrishna Mission including Swamiji's own brother disciples scarce understood him to any great depth of sociological clarity, a view in alternate terms which even the Swami held till his very last day on earth. Forget not that on his last earthly day Swamiji mused to himself what Baburam Maharaj (Swami Premananda) overheard from behind him, "What this Vivekananda has given, it will take another Vivekananda to come and realise its import. And, yet, in the coming ages countless such Vivekanandas will be born."

Golden-wombed Bhuvaneshwari Devi, who mothered Narendranath, Mohendranath and Bhupendranath, deserves our eternal gratitude and holiest reverence. 

Written by Sugata Bose