THE INCOMPLETE WORKS OF SWAMI VIVEKANANDA

THE INCOMPLETE WORKS OF SWAMI VIVEKANANDA 

Ramakrishna Mission must publish 'The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda' completely. Right now it is a heavily edited version. Too many ... [triple dots] everywhere, hiding vital information. Consequently, the Mission has compromised its founder and diluted the message of Swamiji, much emasculating it. The original words must be restored forthwith. Else, the nation and the world will not duly awake to his message.

It is frustrating to find Swamiji so compromised, quite against the grain of his general character, while reading his works so full of gaps that have been filled by triple dots [...]. It does a great disservice to a hero of matchless valour and reduces him to secondary status who as if dared not to speak directly the bare truth about historical personalities and their tyrannical abuses of humanity, often supporting their offensive stances by forwarding specious arguments based on fallacious logic in their favour with triple dots following which completely alter content and context of the actually spoken words. This does tremendous injustice to Swamiji in the name of, I guess, the organisational inperative to maintain communal harmony and international understanding. But it does disservice to truth to establish which divine personages such as Swamiji periodically appear on earth.

Editing Swamiji thus is a confession by the Ramakrishna Mission therefore that Swamiji's ultra-truthfulness and his undaunted averments have put them in a fix from where the easiest way to extricate themselves is to suppress the more volatile words of the cyclonic monk who cared for no compromise whatsoever but often made self-contradictory utterances out of overwhelming compassion for fallen humanity as actuated by the changing contours of his spiritual moods, the character and composition of his audience and the complexities of the times he operated in. The Ramakrishna Mission, of course, may cite a similar reason for their editing Swamiji's works thus but let them bare the reason for such an action before the public. Will they?

One cannot claim Swamiji to have been an uncompromising soul adhering to truth and nothing but the truth if the Ramakrishna Mission chooses to selectively publish and selectively edit his volcanic words. It frustrates the reader to come across these sudden lapses in the passages wherever Swamiji must have said something very direct about the evils perpetrated by prophetic personalities.

A straight question one may ask the Ramakrishna Mission. Does it have the right to edit in print what Swamiji thought it fit to speak in public or write on paper? How much longer must we wait to get the real Swamiji who with his words had rocked the continents from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic and from the Atlantic to the Pacific? Publish all, edit no more.

Written by Sugata Bose