Swami Vivekananda 150 - A Tribute - 4th part

Even though Vivekananda passionately highlighted the positive aspects of India, its culture and its people to the world, showing that even the negatives had their purpose and utility for which they were originally conceived, in speeches to his own country men he was vocal about their weaknesses. He was often scathing in his criticism of the weaknesses of her people. He despised the treatment received by the poor, the outcasts and the so called lower strata of the society and never stopped short of highlighting their greatness amidst all persecutions and insults. 

Some of his detractors have gleefully put up some "adverse" comments of him (of course out of context, as is their norm) about India as told to Ms. Josephine McLeod on the occasion of her first visit to India.  They suppressed the fact that these comments were told to Ms. McLeod to set her expectations about India. Any foreigner with a superficial knowledge of India and with scanty respect for her would feel in the way Swamiji had represented her and he was merely echoing their sentiments, not his own. Its a different story that Ms. McLeod decided to visit India to form her own impressions and later when she asked Swamiji what she could do for him he said just two words to her - "Love India", something which she did for her entirely life, devoting herself entirely to her welfare. Vivekananda had more love for India than all her patriots taken together. He was the only one who explored the length and breadth of the country and studied her problems and devised solutions. 

Vivekananda called for a reform from within, through education. Suffering of the poor and women made him weep and his philanthropic ideas were stemmed from his desire to do something for the upliftment of the poor in a selfless way, by serving the living God in them, and thereby attain salvation – “Atmano moksartham jagad hitaya cha” – for one’s own emancipation as well as for the benefit of the world at large, that Ramakrishna Math and Mission ideas were conceived by him. Setting aside the stubborn opposition of some of the devotees and direct disciples of Sri Ramakrishna he proceeded with the work, against all odds, and that his work was a divine purpose was evident from the way opposition became collaboration and difficulties, esp. that of funding the endeavors, melted away. It’s a true case of demolishing a mountain through sheer will power. Only the mountain in this case was that of accumulated false notions, orthodoxy, superstitions, sloth and lack of Sraddha or intense faith in one’s own abilities. By his ideals of Hinduism he preached the Upanishadic and ancient Indian ideals of respect for all opinions, far removed from the orthodox who practiced and professed exclusion as means of retaining purity. He had a deep contempt for the “religion in kitchen”, which was the prevailing custom esp. in South India where the orthodox section laid great emphasis on the purity of food. He treated all superstitions as arrant nonsense and being of rationalistic disposition challenged any custom which was not logical or not supported by the Vedas. He compared the orthodoxy and the modern atheists and skeptics to Scylla and Charybdis of Greek mythology. He however did not denounce the atheists or skeptics in general, but rather only those who tend to ridicule every bit of Indianness and hold everything European and modern as sacred. Similarly his scorn was reserved for the orthodoxy which was intolerant, oppressive on the lower castes and which refused to respond to the changing needs of time by being more rational, logical and less superstitious.