TO WHOSOEVER MAY CHOOSE TO LISTEN

TO WHOSOEVER MAY CHOOSE TO LISTEN

A practising Hindu is far stronger than a non-practising titular Hindu of little scriptural learning and much liberal talk.

By spiritual practice is meant doing the rounds of daily worship, chanting, meditation, scriptural study et al. But by spiritual practice is also meant observing the tenets of purity, truthfulness, sincerity and, above all, FEARLESSNESS, in one's life. This must be understood. In the absence of the last attribute all else is in vain. Remember what Sri Ramakrishna said: "লজ্জা, ঘৃণা, ভয়---এ তিন থাকতে নয় |" ["Shame, detestation, fear---so long as these persist, you cannot make it (to spirituality).] Swamiji was never tired of arousing his countrymen to a sense of fearlessness. He used to often thunder, "Abhih." ("Be fearless.")

Swamiji invoked the Divine Mother to infuse his countrymen with fearlessness. Then alone would they be able to drive the marauding foreigner away from the motherland. Then alone would they be able to reclaim their lost civilisational heritage, defiled, desecrated and destroyed for over a millennium. Then alone would they be able to rise up in the world once more as the great civilising force they once were.

All these require vigorous action and not verbal gibberish in the name of cowardly surface liberalism or vain spiritual talk tantamount to nothing in the face of the adversarial sword drawn to destroy the Hindus.

It is a shame that we have become such an effeminate mass of men incapable of guarding our civilisational citadels, hordes of hypocrites who talk tall but act little. This much shame let us have as we reflect on our shortcomings and seek to rectify them en route to strengthening ourselves as a polity that is fired by the best attributes of the chaturvarna (the four varnas). Let us once more acquire the superlative intellect of the braahman, the deathless valour of the kshatriya, the honest dealing and not crafty commercial instinct of the vaishya and the capacity for selfless labour of the shudra. May all these attributes be fused into a whole in each one of us and make us instruments of civilisational upkeep and advancement in line with the blueprint of the Vedas and of all later glorious additions that have finally found their synthetic utterance in that supremely integrated being, Swami Vivekananda! 

Written by Sugata Bose