Swami Vivekananda 150 - A Tribute - 1st part

With the nationwide celebration of the 150^th Birth Anniversary of Swamiji it is evident that how much space he still occupies in the hearts of India and Indians. Many love him and look upon him as the ideal. Several others hate him and try to denounce everything that he preached or stood for by quoting him out of context or by questioning the very work for which he devoted his life, still others are ambivalent and use his teachings for putting forward their own doctrines and agenda. Some other cunning folks are there who use his words in a slightly different way but never acknowledge him. So one thing is evident, India cannot ignore Swami Vivekananda. Rightists, leftists, centrists, all have made a beeline either to hero worship him, use him for political gains or debunk him. So he towers above the rest of India and probably smiles. If his devotees are upset perhaps by reading some obscure scholar trying to assert himself by “tearing the myths” associated with him, he perhaps smiles that characteristics benign smile and says, “why bother, tui tor nijer kaaj kore ja…you do your own work.” Perhaps he quotes that famous dohan of Tulsidas which his guru Sri Ramakrishna also used – Hathi chalein bazaar mein kutte bhonke hazaar – An elephant goes through a market place while the street dogs bark at her. Or perhaps he thunders, “abhih, abhih….. fearlessness, fearlessness, I have been denounced lifelong by people from every sphere – educated, uneducated, Hindus, Muslims, Christians, government, clergy, priests, zamindars and babus, police and scholars, British, American and Indians. There is nothing new in me getting the wrong end of the stick. Why are you upset? Arise, awake and stop not till my goal is reached. The ideal is important, not the person.”  In his own words -

A man who has met starvation face to face for fourteen years of his life, who has not known where he will get a meal the next day and where to sleep, cannot be intimidated so easily. A man, almost without clothes, who dared to live where the thermometer registered thirty degrees below zero, without knowing where the next meal was to come from, cannot be so easily intimidated in India. This is the first thing I will tell them — I have a little will of my own. I have my little experience too; and I have a message for the world which I will deliver without fear and without care for the future. To the reformers I will point out that I am a greater reformer than any one of them. They want to reform only little bits. I want root-and-branch reform. Where we differ is in the method. Theirs is the method of destruction, mine is that of construction. I do not believe in reform; I believe in growth. I do not dare to put myself in the position of God and dictate to our society, "This way thou shouldst move and not that." I simply want to be like the squirrel in the building of Râma's bridge, who was quite content to put on the bridge his little quota of sand-dust.

Swami Vivekananda is the name of an ideal. The ideal is realization of one’s divinity through selfless work. He never cared for name, fame and fortune. Some have questioned his luxurious (?) lifestyle which he enjoyed for a brief period when his American disciples and friends could arrange some comfort for him. They have conveniently forgotten his hardships and miseries. It is of course not expected that our underdeveloped minds would ever be able to realize the fundamental traits of a Sannyasin – that he accepts luxuries and miseries with equal grace and is attached to none. Some even went to the extent of saying that he himself did nothing and only asked people to do work. All great teachers of the world including Jesus Christ and Buddha were convicted of the same "crime", if you disregard the miracles associated with them. But the world knows now what a tremendous change they ushered in and what their impacts were on the history of mankind. Vivekananda rightly said that only another Vivekananda would know what this Vivekananda accomplished. He was an Atman, a witness, not an actor. Praises or blames mean nothing to a true Sannyasin like him who is not identified with his body or mind. He came to this world out of compassion to do good to mankind and leave behind some lasting unselfish work, achieved the same and went back, leaving his devotees and detractors to fight it out. An yet, like Sri Krishna in Gita and all othe great teachers of the world, he was not attached to his work. Therefore he was not responsible for any fruits good or bad.