SWAMI VIVEKANANDA - Bhabani Bhattacharya

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA ― In the Words of Bhabani Bhattacharya

A strange mendicant walked the streets of Upper India in the hot months of 1888. Tall, broad-shouldered, thick-set, he had a wide forehead, a strong jaw, large dark piercing eyes. He wore the saffron garb of an ascetic, and carried a staff, a begging bowl. He was twenty-five.

Some years earlier he had been a student at college, reading avidly, using his amazing intellect to assimilate vast funds of knowledge, but ever restless, bewildered by his own inner hungers, torn within, baffled and at bay. With the other Bengali intellectuals of the time he visited the holy man Ramakrishna at Dakshineswar, somewhat sceptic, yet drawn by his bitter soul-storm to seek a place that held the promise of anchorage.

Ramakrishna fascinated him. He had met the mystic of the Kali temple with battle in his eyes. He struggled awhile with the dominating personality, wielding logic like a sword, till argument faded into faith. There followed a period of self-preparation – the study of philosophy and the meditative way.

Wanderlust seized him then. He felt stifled among the little community of disciples at Baranagore and longed to escape. He left all at once and set out on the highway. Benares, Ayodhya, Agra, Brindaban…. At Hathras he found a companion. He had reached the railway station, weak with hunger, when Sadananda, the young station-master, saw him and was strangely perturbed by his glance. ‘I followed two relentless eyes,’ he said later. He asked the yogi to his house, and when his guest left, he went with him, dressed as a mendicant. Up the heights of the Himalayas then went, and in the silent grandeur and solitude of the white-clad peaks the searchful mind sank into meditative repose.

Sometime after he set out on a second journey across Upper India. Great ideas were developing in his mind, among them the Vedantic conception of ‘Oneness of all,’ a universal gospel. He felt the pressure of an inward power, a torrent of his own creation that beat upon him for an outlet. In an unguarded moment at Benares he broke into rough words: ‘I am going away; I shall never come back until I can burst on society like a bomb and make it follow me like a dog.’ Romain Rolland aptly comments: ‘He suffered from that excess of power which insists on domination and within him there was a Napoleon.’ 

So, he left Baranagore again during the rains of 1890 and stayed away for over six years. The first three were years of wandering, always on foot, from the Himalayas to the Cape. In the Himalayas he lived with Tibetan races. Down in the plains he had contact with criminal tribes. In Central India he lives awhile with sweepers. One day he was a beggar on the street or else sheltered by untouchables, and the next day he was an honoured guest in a Maharaja’s Palace. His interest in man was as compelling as his interest in God. Was no missionary. He was travelling to see India and to feel India. The poverty and misery he witnessed crystallised the thought: ‘Religion is not for empty bellies.’

He reached Cape Comorin, fatigued, with no money to pay the ferry. But he would not be held back at Land’s End. He swam the water of the strait!

It was in those days that he made a fateful decision. He had now heard of the Parliament of Religions to be held at Chicago a year later. He decided to take part in it. India had a gift for the West. He would be a conveyor of that precious gift of Advaita philosophy. A friendly Maharaja gave him his passage. At the moment of his departure from India’s shores he assumed the name of Vivekananda.

In America he suffered from bitter cold and even starvation. And then it seemed that the long journey would end in disaster. No speaker was to be accepted without official credentials, and of these he, an unknown wanderer, had none. Anyhow, it was already too late for the registration of new speakers.

The difficulties faded unexpectedly. A chance introduction in a railway train brought Vivekananda into contact with a renowned Harvard Professor. Fascinated by the young Indian’s personality, the Professor used his influence to arrange that Vivekananda would represent Hinduism at the Parliament of Religions.

The great assembly opened on September 11, 1893. Vivekananda did not speak until the end of the day. At last he rose, saffron-robed, a great saffron turban on his head. He addressed the vast gathering as ‘Sisters and Brothers of America!’ The informal words were electrical in their effect. Hundreds rose and applauded.  Never before had Vivekananda spoken to such an assembly, and unlike the other delegates he used no written text, not even notes. His subject was the Vedantic concept of Advaita, Oneness of all, and ‘his speech was like a tongue of flame. Among the grey wastes of cold dissertation, it fired the souls of the listening throng.’ His voice was deep, impassioned, full of beauty and power; it was described later as ‘an admirable baritone having the vibrations of a Chinese gong’. 

During the session he spoke about a dozen times. The American press recognized him as ‘undoubtedly the greatest figure in the Parliament of Religions’. All at once Vivekananda had risen from obscurity into glory such as no Indian had yet known overseas.

He wept over his victory; Romain Rolland tells us.  ‘Oh Mother,’ he groaned, what shall I do with fame when my people are lying in misery?’

He was undeceived by America’s outward glitter. In course of his subsequent lecture tour through the United States he often stirred the anger of his audience by laying bare the many evils of Western civilization, the narrowness of spirit and the brutality. He did not spare Christianity either. ‘Yours is a religion preached in the name of luxury…. Those who call upon Crist care for nothing but to amass riches! Christ would not find a stone on which to lay his head among you…. You are not Christians. Return to Christ!’

When enraged clergymen began to spread base lies about Vivekananda’s private life, he laughed them to scorn. An accusation came from his disciples in India that he had eaten beef. His answer was characteristic: Do you mean to say I am born to live and die one of those caste-ridden, superstitious, hypocritical…. cowards…. I belong to India just as much as to the world, no humbug about that. ‘he believed in on other restrictive vows save those of poverty and chastity.

From America he crossed over to Europe. He met Max Muller, Paul Deussen and Margaret Noble. As he returned home in a blaze of publicity, India feted him. Flowers were strewn on his path. A Rajah drew his carriage. The county was struck with joy and pride that an Indian has imposed himself on the West and become a world personality.

Now it was time to gather the fruits of victory. But Vivekananda was a sick man, marked out by death. Malaria and diabetes had been sapping his vitality for years. Yet he roused himself to a herculean task and laid the foundations of Ramakrishna Mission.

His fight was, in a measure, against age-old traditions. India’s yogis had always striven to realise their ideals in meditative inaction. They seemed lost to the outer world. Vivekananda made service the keystone of religious quest. ‘Your Bhakti is sentimental nonsense.’ he told his brother monks roughly. ‘Who cares what your scriptures say? I will go into a thousand hells cheerfully if I can rouse my country men to stand on their feet and be men inspired with the spirit of Karma Yoga.’

He began a whirlwind tour of India. He urged the necessity of ending the poverty of the masses. He preached inter-caste marriage, a better life for Hindu widows, abolition of untouchability. He lashed at the ‘don’t-touchisms’ (as he called them) of Hindu society with angry scorn. ‘Feel, my would-be reformers,’ he cried, his eyes flashing. ‘Do you feel? Do you feel that millions and millions… have become next-door neighbours to brutes?  Do you feel that millions are starving for ages? Do you feel that ignorance has come over the land as a dark cloud? Does it make you restless? Does it make you sleepless?... Has it made you almost mad?’

Western disciples came to India at his call. Then he set out again for America and Europe to establish branch Missions at different centres. His life was ebbing fast, but he would not spare himself. He went to Paris as delegate at a Congress of Religions. Eastward through Austria to Constantinople and the Bosphorus, on the shores of which he met some Sufi monks. Then to Athens, to Cairo. Suddenly in Egypt he heard the call of death and hurried home to India. Shattered in health, he yet undertook, because of an inward urge, a journey to Mayavathi, the ashrama perched on far Himalayan heights. Four days’ march through the severe December snow exhausted him utterly. While at Mayavathi, he stepped into his thirty-eight year. He felt soon, journeying down the slopes.

Then he lay dying at Belur. Ever since his days of wandering he had drawn heavily on his great balance of physical energy. Even when worn out completely by diabetes, he had willed his body to relentless toil. He had lived intensely, and his task was accomplished. ‘What does it matter?’ he cried, as the end was near. ‘I have done enough for fifteen hundred years!’

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