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The Sword of Kali – 8
Reply to "A Philosophical Critique of Radical Universalism"

Swami Vivekananda and the Will to Heroism

Not being content with his apostasy against Sri Ramakrishna, Dr. Morales proceeds to give us his warped opinions about the great Hindu lion-heart, Swami Vivekananda:

Notwithstanding his remarkable undertakings, however, Vivekananda found himself in a similarly difficult position as other neo-Hindu leaders of his day were. How to make sense of the ancient ways of Hinduism, and hopefully preserve Hinduism, in the face of the overwhelming onslaught of modernity? Despite some positive contributions by Vivekananda and other neo-Hindus in attempting to formulate a Hindu response to the challenge of modernity, that response was often made at the expense of authentic Hindu teachings. Vivekananda, along with the other leaders of the neo-Hindu movement, felt it was necessary to both water down the authentic Hinduism of their ancestors, and to adopt such foreign ideas as Radical Universalism, with the hope of gaining the approval of the European masters they found ruling over them.

This is how Romain Rolland describes the man that Dr. Morales accuses of stooping to gain the approval of European masters:

“His pre-eminent characteristic was kingliness. He was a born king and nobody ever came near him either in India or America without paying homage to his majesty.”

“It was impossible to imagine him in the second place. Wherever he went, he was the first. Even his master Ramakrishna, in a vision which I have related, represented himself with regard to his disciple as child beside a great Rishi. It was in vain that Vivekananda refused to accept such homage, judging himself severely and humiliating himself – everybody recognized in him at sight the leader, the anointed of God, the man marked with the stamp of power to command. A traveller who crossed his path in the Himalayas without knowing who he was, stooped in amazement, and cried, ‘Shiva’ … It was as if his chosen God had imprinted His name upon his forehead.”

When Vivekananda, the unknown Indian monk, began his speech in the Parliament of Religions, the whole assembly rose up unbidden, and they knew not why! If there is one trait of Vivekananda that comes across consistently from all his biographies, it is this: he never stooped to the opinions of anyone, be it a saint of a European master! Vivekananda walked like an unsheathed sword. He abhorred hypocrisy and never hesitated to strike down any form of sham. This trait of Vivekananda has been recorded uniformly in all his biographies, and it echoes in these words that he once spoke to his sannyasi brethren:

“Bravery is the highest virtue. Dare to speak the whole truth always, to all without distinction, without equivocation, without fear, without compromise. Do not trouble about the rich and great. The Sannyasin should have nothing to do with the rich. To pay respects to the rich and hang on to them for support is conduct which becomes a public woman.”

Dr. Morales suffers from some kind of delusion in saying that Vivekananda diluted Hinduism to cater to foreign masters! Vivekananda was a fire! A fire doesn’t bow down; it burns, it roars, it reduces everything that stands before it to ashes! To say that he wilfully watered down authentic Hindu teachings to gain the approval of European masters is not only false, but it is blatantly offensive to the Hindu who regards Vivekananda as a man in the mould of the raja-rishi, Visvamitra.

Many thousands of sages and holy men have enriched the soil of Hinduism. Not all of them were alike. Some came as saints that sang and danced from the divine ecstasy of their devotions. Some came as acharyas to expound the scriptures and establish the Vedantic path. Sri Shankaracharya, Sri Ramanujacharya and Sri Madhvacharya were in this mould. Vivekananda was not an acharya; he did not come to this world to establish any particular darshana. He had a different role to play here. He came to awaken, not to formulate Hindu doctrinal responses to modernity.

“Is man a tiny boat in a tempest, raised one moment on a foamy crest of a billow and dashed down into a yawning chasm the next, rolling to and fro at the mercy of good and bad actions? The heart sinks at the idea, yet this is the law of Nature. Is there no hope? Is there no escape? The Vedic sage replies – ‘Hear, ye children of immortal bliss, even ye that reside in higher spheres: I have found the Ancient One who is beyond all darkness, all delusions: knowing Him alone you shall be saved from death over again.’ Ye are the children of God, the sharers of immortal bliss, holy and perfect beings. Ye divinities on earth – sinners! It is a sin to call man so; it is a standing libel on human nature.”

Though Vivekananda’s message was centred in Vedanta, he delivered it with a freedom of form that suited the purpose of rousing the sleeping Hindu. Had it not been for Vivekananda, the mental sloth that possessed the average Hindu at the end of the nineteenth century would probably have sunk him to the lowest level of servility. Vivekananda was the fire that burned through the sleep of the Hindus and stirred them to rise from their inertia, and this fire sometimes burned in strange ways:

“Who cares for your Ramakrishna? Who cares for your Bhakti and Mukti? Who cares what your scriptures say? I will go into a thousand hells cheerfully, if I can rouse my countrymen immersed in Tamas, to stand on their own feet and be men inspired with the spirit of Karma-Yoga…. I am not a servant of Ramakrishna, or anyone, but of him only who serves and helps others, without caring for his own Bhakti or Mukti?”

A sadhaka on the path of Vedanta needs to have adhikara. This adhikara comes from his predispositions and his readiness for Grace. Vivekananda saw that the majority of the Hindus at the end of the nineteenth century were sunk in self-service and servility. Servility is another form of self-service. Vivekananda knew that it is futile to speak Vedanta to the servile. Vivekananda came not to preach Vedanta; he came to awaken the Hindu from self-service to the service of God in humanity.

“Why is it that we, three hundred and thirty millions of people, have been ruled for the last thousand years by any and every handful of foreigners?…. Because they had faith in themselves and we had not…. I read in the newspapers how when one of our poor fellows is murdered or ill-treated by an Englishman, howls go all over the country; I read and I weep, and the next moment comes to my mind who is responsible for it all…. Not the English…. It is we who are responsible for all our… degradation. Our aristocratic ancestors went on treading the common masses of our country underfoot, till they became helpless, till under this torment the poor, poor people nearly forgot that they were human beings. They have been compelled to be merely hewers of wood and drawers of water for centuries, so…. That they are made to believe that they are born as slaves, born as hewers of wood and drawers of water.”

“Let her arise – out of the peasants’ cottage, grasping the plough, out of the huts of the fisherman,…. the grocer’s shop, from beside the oven of the fritter-seller. Let her emanate from the factory, from marts and from markets. Let her emerge from the groves and forests, from hills and mountains. These common people have suffered oppression for thousands of years – suffered it without murmur, and as a result have got wonderful fortitude. They have suffered eternal misery, which has given them unflinching vitality…. Such peacefulness, such contentment, such love, such power of silent and incessant work, and such manifestation of lion’s strength in times of action – where else will you find these! Skeletons of the past, there, before you are your successors, the India that is to be. Throw those treasure-chests of yours and those jewelled rings among them – as soon as you can; and you – vanish into air, and be seen no more.” ********

Only in selfless service can vairagya take root and make one worthy to take on Vedanta, the conquest of the last barrier of the soul. These words of Vivekananda still ring in our ears today:

“If you seek your own salvation, you will go to hell. It is the salvation of others that you must seek…. and even if you have to go to hell in working for others, that is worth more than to gain heaven by seeking your own salvation….. Sri Ramakrishna came and gave his life for the world. I will also sacrifice my life; you also, every one of you, should do the same. All these works and so forth are only a beginning. Believe me, from the shedding of our blood will arise gigantic, heroic workers and warriors of God who will revolutionize the whole world.”

Vivekananda once said to Nivedita that the heart must become like a cremation ground – its pride, selfishness, desire, all burnt to ashes. In Vivekananda we see not the dissections of Hindu doctrinal tenets, but the will to heroism, and his words, his actions, and his life were the burning fire that stirred the heart of the Hindu to rise from his slumber and to take pride once again in being a Hindu. Romain Rolland describes the power of Vivekananda’s words thus:

“His words are great music, phrases in the style of Beethoven, stirring rhymes like the march of Handel choruses. I cannot touch these sayings of his, scattered as they are through the pages of books at thirty years’ distance, without receiving a thrill through my body like an electric shock. And what shocks, what transports must have been produced when in burning words they issued from the lips of the hero!”

The hero was the voice of a resurgent Hinduism. At a time when the educated Hindu had begun to be ashamed of his own religion, when the downtrodden Hindu was sunk in abject poverty and had not food enough to eat, when the voiceless Hindu watched in dismay his religion being sacked by the Indologists on one hand and the Hindu reformists on the other, Vivekananda was the hero that brought back the glory of Hindu religion, epitomizing both the pursuit of the highest Truth and the selfless service of God in humanity. It is a travesty of truth to accuse Vivekananda of diluting the teachings of Hinduism. Let him that accuses Vivekananda first bring to us genuine arguments instead of hollow superfluities! Ironically, it is Dr. Morales that is watering down the teachings of Hinduism by denying to it the great universalism that lies in its heart! As regards Sri Ramakrishna and Vivekananda, we can hardly do better than to echo the words of Richard Schiffman:

“The Baul had come and gone. But his band would continue to dance their way through nearly half of the twentieth century. Through most of the nations of the earth, through India, through the alien lands of Europe and America and the Far East, they would dance their heady dance – unsung, unknown perhaps to the great mass of men, but not without sowing the flaming seeds of Love on the winds of the dark age of untruth.”

There is one last thing that needs to be said here and it is this. Before one sits in judgment over Hindu saints, it is better to be immersed oneself in the living waters of Hinduism. Theories and papers are dry academics. Hinduism is not an institutionalized religion. It is a religion that flows out from the breath of Being; it sings in the wide open spaces, it takes root like the seed that falls on the ground, and like the seed it sprouts silently to rise up like a grand poem; it gushes out of the earth like spring waters to merge in the hearts of the Hindus just as spring waters merge into the fields where the rice and the corn grow. Hinduism has no fixed contours; it cannot be caged in a box. It is nowhere to be grasped precisely, and it is everywhere like the tune of an ineffable song. It has a deep structure, but its roots are elsewhere and it is only the branches that are seen here. Hinduism knows how to hide its secrets well - even when you announce it to the world! It remains esoteric to the closed heart, but it reveals its secrets to the simple of heart, to the pure of mind, to him that surrenders herself to the harmony of the Ubiquitous Breath. Hinduism is a religion of tears, of the finest emotion, of the greatest sacrifice, of the supreme zenith of intellect. And even of transgression. Even of the pariah and the outcaste, and the butcher and the murderer. Who shall here define Hinduism? The Vedas stands at its summit, but what about the Tantras?   

– Continued

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