Vivekananda and Left Liberals

On the occasion of National Youth Day there were two interesting blog posts on him. One was in Times of India and the other was in The Tribune. Both the blogs had one common theme, that how the brand Vivekananda has been usurped by the rising tide of militant right wing whose outlook they derisively call as "Hindutva". The term was coined possibly by the Times of India that takes pride in claiming itself as a "secular", "liberal" paper. They carefully chose to distinguish it from the "Hinduism". If you are a little bit knowledgeable about Sanskrit you will know that both the terms are actually same, Hindutva is tva pratyay added to the word Hindu, depicting the Hindu way of life. However in Times of India and "secular liberal" parlance it became equivalent  to a derogatory way of referring to the right wing extremists and they chose to depict the non right wing Hindu way of life with the English ending of "ism". Laughable perhaps, but then that is the way with the people who take pride in calling themselves as secular liberal as opposed to the right wingers who are supposedly non secular and non liberal.

Coming back to the blog posts that rued the fact that Vivekananda, a champion of an enlightened Hinduism, who spoke about inclusiveness, has been hijacked by the Hindu extremists who do not subscribe to his core ideology of universal acceptance. The Times of India blog blamed it on the Hindu extremists to have dared to make Vivekananda of Ramakrishna Vivekananda tradition as the main inspiration. It chose to carefully avoid mentioning about Sister Nivedita who is unfortunately in the eyes of all left liberals almost unanimously depicted as the driving force behind the rise of nationalist militant Hinduism along with Tilak and Aurobindo. The Tribune blog was a little more honest as it rued the fact that the fellow left liberals have failed to understand and appreciate Vivekananda and therefore right wingers could have so easily hijacked him.

Of course the so called "liberals" would hesitate to mention about the dedication of Eknath Ranade who established the Vivekananda Kendra and who was the driving force behind Vivekananda Rock despite opposition from powerful politicians and the Christian Church. It was really a tapasya for Ranade to fight against all odds and build the Vivekananda memorial on the rock on which he meditated on India's problems before deciding to go to the West. So here is one right winger who has actually embraced the philosophy and principles of Vivekananda, unlike his left counterparts who were prolific talkers but were seldom doers. The left liberals would also not talk about Golwalkar who spent several days in Sargachi ashrama with Akhandananda or Gangadhar Maharaj, a brother disciple of Swami Vivekananda who was the first to wholeheartedly adopt Swamiji's philosophy of serving the God in the poor. Akhandanandaji, moved by compassion by seeing the condition of famine ridden people in the poorest region of Mahula village, stayed with the villagers and constructed an ashrama to take care of the orphans and the needy. He, popularly called as Baba in that region, became a legend for his selfless service. Akhandananda blessed Golwalkar wholeheartedly when the latter wanted him to put the hand that had served Vivekananda on his head.
Therefore the right wingers did not necessarily worship Vivekananda because they thought that he was a precursor to Savarkar or other militant Hindu leaders. They were inspired by his spirituality and universal spirit of renunciation and compassion for all.

During Vivekananda's life time of course the conservative Hindus were not very well disposed towards him. A case in point was the newspaper Bangavasi of the the staunch Hindus who constantly attacked him. Also other conservative and orthodox section did not like him as they questioned his travel across the ocean, his mingling with Westerners and even his eating habits etc. They also did not quite understand his practical Vedanta. Some of them even questioned his right of being Sannyasi as apparently only Brahmins can become sannyasin. Some of these staunch Hindus who were critical of Vivekananda included Satish chandra Mukherjee of Dawn Society fame, Panchkori Bandopadhyay & Brahmabandhob Upadhyay, the latter two being friends of Vivekananda. But then again we see that some of them repented their earlier behavior and became followers of Vivekananda, like Brahmabandhob. Others carried out their work sincerely following the spirit and ideals of Swamiji. So orthodox Hinduism somehow later got converted. Swamiji himself had said that any new idea is first met with indifference, then ridicule and finally acceptance.

Another thing to be noted here is that Swamiji only disliked insincerity. If he found a person sincere, even if that person was his staunchest critic, he had no problems in establishing a kinship as he knew that sincere people had purer minds and they would come to realize the truth sooner or later. However insincere hypocrites would never understand him and his ideals. He clearly perceived the dangers that would confront India in the later period and warned that among skyllas of orthodoxy and cherybdis of European style reformists (which probably characterizes today's so called liberals) he would any day prefer the orthodoxy as they are sincere in their belief and they have a belief. So they have hopes. On the other hand the neo reformists who derided everything in their culture and adopted everything Western as the best, had no such prospect. More harm will come from them than from sincere fundamentalists. Vivekananda also wanted Hinduism to develop depth. He believed that Hinduism was broad enough in its catholicity but lacked depth, while Semitic traditions like Islam had depth but not enough breadth to accommodate every opinion. He often cited the story of the Muslim lady in Kashmir who when asked about her religion proudly replied that Allah is all merciful that she is a Muslim. Vivekananda praised her outlook and rued the fact that similar sradhha is not displayed by the so called Hindus about their own religion and culture. He said that if Hindus develop that kind of depth and atma sraddha - implicit and explicit pride in their own culture, then possibly Hinduism will make progress and stand in its own right. So as per this analysis Vivekananda would have prefered right wingers any day over the left liberals whom he would have found insincere and hypocrites in many ways in their differential treatment of issues. Therefore there is nothing wrong in rightists usurping Vivekananda if they can follow some of the principles. Their fanaticism is a necessary step towards growth towards a more egalitarian approach, in assuming a pan Hindu identity which is so critical for creating a unified nation. Right wingers are rightly using Vivekananda as an icon to achieve that objective of establishing a pan Hindu identity for the larger substratum which was neglected so far. In the process their approach may seem narrow and even intolerant in dealing with other communities but that is more of a reaction to the treatment, the prejudices and biases that the secular liberals harbour against them, their differential approach towards the different communities and their issues.
To summarize, I think the blogs are not intended to glorify Vivekananda and highlight his contribution, but rather attempts to portray the right wing in rather poor light. There is no objective evaluation of the problem, instead their hatred and contempt for what they term as "hindutva" is the central theme, and which they try to disguise in the light of the universal philosophy of Ramakrishna Vivekananda. But as Vivekananda said, you cannot glorify an ideal by vilifying another. Instead the bloggers would have done a better job had they sincerely done a retrospection of why the left liberals failed to understand and appreciate Vivekananda and why they denounced him and his worthy disciple Sister Nivedita as a champion of militant Hinduism and therefore pushed them to a corner, even painting them as pure evil. If they were sincere enough, they would have done that soul searching, but even that much of sincerity is hard to expect from their species.