SWAMI VIVEKANANDA AND SRI RAMAKRISHNA ON THE BENGALIS

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA AND SRI RAMAKRISHNA ON THE BENGALIS

Both Swami Vivekananda and his great Guru, Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, did not have too high an opinion on the Bengalis as they were.

The physically weak and intellectually sharp Bengali, who was given to much sensory pleasure in accordance with degenerate left-handed Tantrik tradition in vogue for centuries in Bengal, did not evoke much admiration from the seminal Swami. When Lokmanya (Bal Gangadhar) Tilak visited Swamiji at Belur Math in 1901, the latter even in jest asked the former to exchange location for the furtherance of their mutual work for the country. Swamiji suggested that he, having failed to enthuse the timid Bengali in fiery nationalism, would settle in the Bombay Presidency where the valorous Marathas (courtesy, Shivaji, Phirozshah Phadke and Tilak) were already aflame with the call to revolution, and Tilak could resettle in the dead Bengal Presidency and fire up the docile Bengalis with his vigorous message of nationalism. Elsewhere, Swamiji in his private conversations and correspondence would call these masses of sensate people cowards, effeminate and what not. He had deep respect for Shivaji and his inspiring Guru, Samarth Ramdas. Swamiji's manliness and his warrior valour, even as a sage of the highest spiritual altitude, were in sharp contrast to the cowardly character of the Bengali background he hailed from, a characteristic which has further been accentuated by succeeding developments in the community post-independence.

Such was Swamiji's aversion to cowardice and effeminacy that he often derided his great brother disciples and his own disciples for exhibiting them. In letter after letter he is seen rousing his countrymen to life and action by shedding unmanliness and rising to the call of sociocultural revolution whose basis was to be founded in the Upanishads of sublime strength of the soul. His 'Svadesh Mantra' encapsulates his message to rising India, a message loaded in Hindu nationalism with roots deep in the Vedas, for which he has been cast aspersions on by leftist historians as being a Hindu nationalist. To this end his Bengali brethren have made their seminal contribution, theirs being today the role, as if assigned by Providence, to malign every move and movement that conduces to the well-being of the Hindus and in consequence the nation.

Swamiji had said, "I have traversed the whole world but have not come across a race possessed of such a fine brain as the Bengali, but what he lacks in muscle." In other words, the Bengali is capable of fine conception and poor execution which is why Swamiji so stressed his triple-H formula of 'head, heart and hand' which he deemed as imperative attributes for all great work. Swamiji was often given to reinterpreting ancient scriptural verses (shlokas) to infuse manhood into his countrymen, more especially into his Bengali brethren. He would say, "Naaymatma balaheenena labhya" and would explain its meaning thus: None who was without physical strength was equipped to realise the Atman (Self). When the disciple in discussion (Sharatchandra Chakrabarty) dissented, saying that the commentator (Shankaracharya) had interpreted 'balaheenena' to mean 'devoid of brahmacharya', Swamiji retorted saying that the physically weak were incapable of acquiring the wherewithal for the realisation of the Atman. Brahmacharya or continence was a far cry for one who was of a weak constitution. Such reinterpretation of scripture was, of course, the domain of an Acharya of Swamiji's stature, his mission in life whereby he could reestablish the Sanatan Dharma with reference to the current Age and its specific requirements.

Swamiji did succeed in firing up the revolutionaries of Bengal post his Mahasamadhi which led to the effective start of revolutionary movement throughout India in due course, the revolutionaries of Bengal carrying the Geeta and Swamiji's books with them ever while rendering him Godlike reverence, but the treatment he received in his lifetime from contemporary Bengali leaders of thought was despicable. Pratap Chunder Mozoomdar outright maligned him in America in deplorable terms that went to the extent of calling him a man of low morals (I will say no further and leave it to you to research and find out). He ganged up with the Theosophists and the adversarial Christian missionaries to oppose Swamiji's propagation of the Vedanta in America at every bend and turn. Newspaper reports came out in consequence of such malicious propaganda which spread the false accusations far and wide but no response by way of defence of Swamiji came from Bengal or anywhere in India despite Swamiji's repeated requests for such. In letter after letter he exhorted his disciples and associates to garner support for him in India by calling for a meeting of leading lights and yhe common man and thence send forth to him newspaper clippings of the reports on such a meeting. This, he said, the American newspapers would publish widely that would quell all suspicions about his identity and representative status on behalf of the Hindus which was then much in question in America, courtesy his carping critics among which Mozoomdar numbered. But no such meeting was held, no newspaper report in support of Swamiji accordingly went and Swamiji, frustrated with his disciples, associates, colleagues and countrymen, was left to lament this loss of initiative on their part. Alone he stood in enemy terrain, Prophet of the West, bruised and battered but blessing nonetheless his bigoted adversaries and emerging with triumphant with message delivered but with health shattered for good which took him away from the world before he touched forty.

Sri Ramakrishna thought the Kolkata of his days to be a city inhabited by worldly people with hardly much spiritual propensity. As such he wondered how Narendranath (later, Vivekananda) could have been born in such an unspiritual place.

In his discussions with his devotees at Dakshineshwar Sri Ramakrishna said that the people of Kolkata were hyperenthusiastic about things, but only for a while. Thereafter, their enthusiasm subsided in much the manner it had arisen. Kolkatans neither had the patience nor the perseverance to pursue a line of action to fulfilment to which end he gave the following illustration. Ramakrishna observed that the people of Kolkata would dig for water at a place for a while but would perhaps strike rocks only whereupon they would leave the location and start digging elsewhere. Here as well failing to find water after a brief digging, they would shifting site again and come to the same consequence. These people did not even know that only upon deep digging would water, the fluid that sustained life, be found. This parable not only has deep philosophical  significance in general but is also a pointer to the shallowness of intelligence, superficiality of understanding, feebleness of purpose, weakness of will and scattered attention that characterises the average Bengali despite his much-sounded self-proclamation.

Written by Sugata Bose