Vivekananda: An Apostle of Hinduism

(Late Dr. C.R. Reddy was the first Vice-Chancellor of the Andhra University, a well-known educationist a keen debater and scholarly writer known for his sparkling wit and intellect.)

IT WAS ABOUT 1893 that Swami Vivekananada. a beggar in the street, hardly able to convince the doubting Thomases, and even more than the doubting Thomases, the men eaten up with inferiority complex, came to Madras for funds to take him to Amer­ica, to the Chicago World Congress of Religions. Well, he went, he spoke and, he conquered, as never before. What was there peculiar in that message of Swami Vivekananda that captured the hearts and souls of the West?

I think his very first speech at that Congress struck the note of his Mission. It may be remembered that most of the Western nations are of the Christian persuasion. I speak with much hesitation because I have no right to speak of other religions, and if I fall into error, I hope, it will be attrib­uted to my ignorance and not to ill-­feeling. The first principle of a prosely­tising religion is to proceed on the hy­pothesis that it and it alone possesses a complete monopoly of the grace of salvation, that it alone can lead you to truth and God and that no other relig­ion could be its equal, even if it be not false. Therefore it tries to convert per­sons of other faiths to its own and expand by conversion, which is a form of religious imperialism, Prof. Mahadevan put it in a somewhat different way. He said that they were associated with a person; and everything de­pended on what he was and did. But I would like to give it a broader outlook and therefore I call them historical religions. They have had a definite beginning and they have their growth and their developments. Now in both these respects Hinduism is different.

It may be that a person may ask. “Is there such a thing as Hinduism?” and stop to examine that question. I am not competent to answer. Granting that it is a religion, it can claim two special features. It is the first of all religions or religious philosophies that has laid down a great doctrine, the supreme doctrine of universal benevo­lence, namely, that there are many ways by which God could be reached, that the different religions, if followed sincerely, took you to the same God and that all religions were equally true, and good and that only convic­tion was necessary while conversion was not. Sri Ramakrishna’s parable puts it in one way; the Bhagavadgita puts it in another. Even as there may be many ways of reaching the upstairs of a house, say by means of different stairs ladders from the front and from the , or by using a modem lift, which will take you in double the quicker time, if there is no accident in the meanwhile, so too through several different religions all could reach the same God. Rivers taking their rise in different mountains, flowing through different countries and in such flow getting coloured in different ways, empty themselves in the same ocean. “O Partha”, says the Lord in Bhagavadgita “people reach Me through different religions, if followed in all anxiety and sincerity”. That must have caused astonishment to our friends in America. In the robe of a Missionary of Hinduism, he says. “I recognize that Christianity can give you salvation just as much as Hindu­ism”.

The second thing is, Hinduism, as he put it, is ever-growing, ever-increasing and ever-taking you nearer the fullest truth. It has neither begin­ning nor end, but co-extensive with rational life. In that sense it is not a historical religion.

The Swamiji received splendid welcome in many homes; and you remember what happened at the World Congress. The Swamiji became so popular that the Chairman, when he found the house emptying after labori­ous and dull lectures, would say: “Towards the end of the meeting Swami Vivekananda will speak” and that would stop the exodus. When he went to London with that big reputation in America, the London hostesses also welcomed him and inspite of our po­litical inferiority treated him with unreserved consideration and honour. The India Office was near. Naturally he visited it. Whatever might have beer the nature of the climate, the atmosphere there too was very good. The result was that he mistook it all for the reception of his Vedanta and not the reception of Vivekananda, a proof of his modesty. Later he discovered that all these material antagonisms of races and nations could not be solved by spiritual prescriptions and that we must be a first class nation and power if we must make ourselves respected and if our rights and religions are to be honoured. In the end came the large synthesis wrought by his genius of which the embodiments are the Belur Mutt in Calcutta and more espe­cially the Ramakrishna Missions with all their branches and hostels and schools as in Madras and the relief and uplift work organized on a non­sectarian basis, extending help and charity to Hindu, Muslim, Christian and all. This is practical Vedanta, the Vedanta of life as well as of the soul.

Years ago, before I returned from Cambridge in 1907 Swami Viveka­nanda the great, died at the early age of 39. I suppose there is something in the great proverb “Those whom the gods love, die young”. My first speech happened to be on Vivekananda, and I characterized him then as the greatest synthetic thinker that India had pro­duced. In Gokhale, Naoriji, Pherozsha Mehta, and Malavyaji, we had splen­did politicians, in Ashutosh Mukerji and Malavyaji we had noble educa­tional organizers, in Dayanand we had a mind which revived Vedic Hinduism and in the greatest apostles of all time who in his own life illustrated the highest spiritual virtues. Ramakrishna is the embodiment of what might be called the harmony of all religions that it is the pride of India not merely to preach, but to practise. Those who have read the life of Sri Ramakrishna know how for sometime he actually embraced Islam, and realized God that way: how again he practised Christian­ity and realized God that way too. He had direct experience of the equal truth and grace of all religions. But to Vivekananda belongs the further hon­our of having seen life and religion in all their aspects economical, educa­tional, social, and political, life is one and religion cannot be isolated beyond a certain limit.

A living religion spreads. If it is universal in its scope, it cannot rest being tribal or racial, but must em­brace all humanity. So Vivekandanda felt that he had a message to the West. He organized the Missions which are now functioning in America and in Europe, in the true Ramakrishna spirit. I was in San-Francisco. Natu­rally I visited the beautiful building in which the Ramakrishna Ashram is housed. It is their own property. Americans give you plenty of money even when they do not believe, just as even when we believe we don’t. In New York and everywhere they attracted, large audiences. So the message of Hinduism is of permanent and universal value. Reason appeals to all, whereas authority cannot. The core of Hinduism is philosophy lived. The Hindu missionary need not base his appeal on what was said by any prophet or what was written in their books. He has to give reasons for the teaching of Rishis and appeal to the head as well as the heart. In this method, the mastermind is Vivekananda.

Being therefore a dynamic relig­ion in which all fresh elements of knowledge and new methods of ap­proach are assimilated. Hinduism has a permanent and ever-growing mis­sion.