WHY CAN PEOPLE NOT TOLERATE VIEWS THAT DIFFER FROM THEIRS?

The poor ego being built on an unreal assumption, it finds its sustenance only through a constancy of affirmation of its propositions by others. And when that does not happen, the ego is threatened by impending annihilation which it must resist as, it being the shadow of the ever-existent Atman, cannot allow its extinction. Hence, its retrograde self-defence in the form of a vile negation of others' divergent viewpoints and observed stances.

For a thousand years we have suffered foreign subjugation and have lost our individuality as a people. It is time now to reassert our Vedic culture and reaffirm our national identity. The entire landmass of Bharatvarsha is vibrating to the cadences of the Sama Veda since time immemorial despite the surface discord and the apparent impositions of less-developed religious culture from West Asia. It is this continuous undercurrent of spiritual thought that has sustained India through all the vicissitudes

VIVEKANANDA AND INDIAN FREEDOM ... 1

Vivekananda was the inspiration, the energy and the guiding principle of our freedom movement, the la father-figure and archangel of our liberation. He gave us the vision of our heritage, our world mission and the destiny to be. The personality and principle coalesced into an integral consciousness in Vivekananda which gave him the appellation of 'Condensed India' which he rightfully became. He enfolded in his being the past and the present and the unborn future of the motherland, her halcyon days of antiquity, her maladies of the hour and her lustrous possibilities lying in the womb of futurity. All our luminous leaders of the freedom struggle were awakened, inspired and guided by this warrior monk as they battled against the dark forces of colonial subjugation with Vivekananda their leading light.

And, do not forget Ramakrishna who was the prime mover of Vivekananda. The day he was born, 18 February, 1836, in the very same year Macaulay's Minutes on Education attempted to debilitate our civilisation for good, Satya Yuga (the Age of Truth and Enlightenment) began, this Swamiji vouched. From that very day India's counterattack began to Western infiltration and subversion of her culture. Vivekananda, thereon, was the handiwork of the Master who, remaining true to his prophecy and promise made on the battlefield of Kurukshetra, appeared once more in the spiritual firmament of India to set her rudder right. Ramakrishna is God and Vivekananda is his Apostle extraordinaire who dug deep into the consciousness of sleeping India to rouse her into self-conscious activity whose final fruition in those dark days manifested as the nation-wide struggle for liberation.

It was from Dakshineshwar that the first salvo was fired by the priest and his Divine Mother and it was the soil of the hallowed precincts there trodden by the God of our times that provided the powder that shook the foundations of the British Empire and altered the course of world history for good. India was the focal point of this renaissance of mankind and her political independence the imperative for her rebirth in the comity of nations by way of fulfilment of her spiritual destiny.

BEHOLD THE GLORY OF THY SELF

It is weakness to even contemplate rising in the estimation of others when you have not sufficiently risen in your own eyes and are cowering under the weight of inferiority complex on the basis of a purely material view of things. You must understand your essential divinity if ever you wish to attain to altitudes in life and to elicit real respect from others. The principle of self-evaluation is spiritual and not material, for the self itself is, at source, a spiritual entity. Hence, no amount of material success may win you enduring reverence from others. Also, an imperfect vision of yourself in the penumbra of your being does not conduce to a high self-estimation and you have to go to the source of your being to be conscious of the glory that you are attended with.

Renunciation and service are the twin ideals for our motherland, Swami Vivekananda had famously articulated. His preceptor, Sri Ramakrishna, had lifelong taught abstinence as the way to attainment of real manhood in God. Now these are the saviours of our culture, the prophets of the age, the gods of the times. Shall we lend our ears to them and end our persisting predicament with persecution complex or shall we eternally be mournful creatures of morbid complaint against the myriad miseries of life? If we rally in the name of Ramakrishna-Vivekananda, our maladies will be at an end and life will brighten up to be of good cheer and merriment for all with no room for self-debasement or embittered feelings about others.

May we seek refuge in our scriptures for guidance in the conduct of life! May we plumb the depths of our being to arrive at the source of bliss! May we see goodness in others and, above all, never negate the goodness that is in us awaiting discovery beneath the ashes of the burnt past!  Jai Ramakrishna! Jai Hind!

A BENIGHTED NATION THAT BETRAYS ITS HEROES

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4b13EbR5nc

It is a shame that Mahatma Gandhi's name is mentioned in this lecture by Swami Ranganathananda but not Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose's name as being inspired by Vivekananda, although, Netaji openly affirmed that he considered Swamiji his spiritual mentor and preceptor and that he would have been at the feet of the prophet-patriot by way of becoming his disciple had he been alive when Netaji trod this earth. He held Ramakrishna-Vivekananda as his life's ideal. 

However, it is the speaker's discretion as to who he would like to highlight in a speech, suiting the occasion as well, and often, the mentioning of names follows the subconscious drives of a person as per his or her mental predisposition and orientation thereof, which spontaneously and without malicious intent flows out in the midst of an extemporaneous oration. 

Not only did Swamiji inspire Gandhiji and Netaji but he did so a whole army of extreme revolutionaries like Aurobindo Ghosh, Bagha Jatin, Surya Sen, Hemchandra Ghosh and others who drove the wits out of the British and made them flee Calcutta to seek safe haven in New Delhi which became necessarily the new capital city of the British Raj. Besides these valorous souls who gave back the British their own terror tonic and rose up in armed insurrection against them, great Gandhians like Chakravarty Rajagopalachari, to cite but a sole illustrious instance, and a host of others who formed the body politic of the national movement, were inspired by Swamiji as well. In fact the entire youth brigade of India in those days came under the influence of the prophet and got galvanised into revolutionary action, violent and non-violent, to eventually evict the British from India. 

This tendency, therefore, in public fora to downplay the seminal contribution of Netaji, the leonine hero of India's freedom struggle, by omission and commission, comes from a mass misapprehension of history and a superficial understanding of human character, motivations and commitment to a cause. Also, organisational compulsions often prompt people to overemphasise or underplay certain facts, which is a sad travesty of truth that knows no compromise with partial renditions or deliberate silence on contentious issues. Swamiji must have alluded to this when he forewarned about these propensities in the running of an organisation in the following words : "Organisation breeds new evils." No wonder the people of this country do not sufficiently awake to the blazing words of Swamiji when those that carry his name all the while do not sufficiently articulate the truth as it is and not as it is conveniently tailored to be. Jai Hind!

IN RESPONSE TO A QUERY AS TO WHY THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA DOES NOT RESTORE THE NETAJI-GIVEN NAMES, SHAHEED AND SWARAJ, TO ANDAMAN AND NICOBAR ISLANDS

Politics is dirty business today and all are culpable in varying degrees for preservation of self-interest. Hence, the lethargy in restoration of the names SHAHEED and SWARAJ for ANDAMAN and NICOBAR ISLANDS which were given them by Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose during his Presidency of the Provisional Government of Free India in the islands in the latter half of the Second World War. This is, of course, an affirmation being made on the basis of the rather arbitrary assumption that the Government will one day wake up to the cause of restoring the honour of oppressed India here at the Cellular Jail of infamous memory. The Indian Government is ever wary of association even remotely with wartime fascist Japan. A worse fear grips them the moment Netaji comes to the fore in the public imagination, for here is one, they feel, who can even now, at a distance of seven decades from the hour of occurrence of the aforesaid events, sway public opinion in a manner that the very foundation of the noxious Nehruvian dispensation may be severely undermined and the corruptions of the corpses laid bare. Netaji must be allowed to sleep, so the governments of independent India have resolved, else, the power brokers of the land will lose their sleep. How on earth does one otherwise explain the terrible step-motherly treatment meted out to our beloved leader throughout the history of independent India? Hence the delay.

NETAJI https://www.facebook.com/groups/netaji.bose/

The life and legacy of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, the one leader who the whole of India identifies with even today despite the conspiracies that be, the hope and aspiration of a billion Indians, it is this that is the essential subject matter of this group page and it is he who is the life-force behind us, inspiring us onto the sublimer ends of patriotism and fraternal feeling for all with a bond forged in the crucible of sacrifice and service for the common weal. Associated are the lives of the great personalities of the world who have fought for the emancipation of mankind and who, for sure, must have left indelible impression on the formative mind of Subhas Chandra as he blossomed into political maturity. Allied are some posts on the great revolutionaries of all time and climes but for whom the peoples of the world would have largely remained under the tyranny of malevolent forces that have afflicted the world periodically throughout history, and the saga is not done yet, for history repeats itself in alternate terms of thesis, antithesis and synthesis which is the dialectical triad governing human evolutionary movement. 

However, the thrust of the page is on Netaji in whose name we have assembled here to learn, study, analyse, research and discover, especially, when the hero's whereabouts post his sudden disappearance on 18 August, 1945, remain shrouded in mystery, known, perhaps, in the corridors of power, but unravelled as yet by scholars from their limited access to classified Bose files the world over, and so, unrevealed to the general public. We shall make our own effort here on this group page to throw light on his career and the mystery thereafter, by way of our homage to him but for whom we would have been in bondage to the British for God knows how long. Netaji was, historically speaking on the basis of hard facts, the true liberator of India, and we owe it to him and his valiant associates in armed revolution against the British, the Indian National Army, that we shall strive our utmost to do justice to their cause of national liberation by setting the records straight amidst historical heresies perpetrated by successive Congress Governments at the Centre in alliance with the British and who knows which other nation. We shall raise an army of disciplined workers in the name of the hero, pure and selfless, dedicated to the motherland, who will serve and sacrifice to rebuild our nation following the blueprint laid down by Netaji and his spiritual master, Swami Vivekananda. Jai Hind! ... Written by Sugata Bose (administrator)