Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP leadership have been most pro-active in recent years in projecting Swami Vivekananda as Hindutva icon of the RSS variety without understanding the teachings of this great religious leader and social reformer who underlined the special role of youth in rebuilding a new India free from foreign exploitation.
On Monday, January12, PM addressed in New Delhi Viksit Bharat young leaders dialogue to commemorate Swamiji’s 163rd birth anniversary calling upon the Generation Z to end the slave mindset that afflicted a generation of Indians due to the education policy of Thomas Macaulay. From 2014 itself, the Narendra Modi government has been observing the National Youth Day on January 12 with more fanfare to project Vivekananda as the new mascot of Hindutva and use this in the assembly polls in Bengal. PM failed in 2021 assembly elections and now on the eve of the coming assembly polls in March/April in Bengal, the names of Vivekananda and Bankim Chandra Chattopadhayay are being used to mislead the people. The half baked understanding of the RSS historians about the trends of thoughts in 19th century Bengal has led to the distortions which the PM is repeating.
Vivekananda in his short life of 39 years wrote extensively in both Bengali and English. He had a lucid style and his Bengali writings showed a reader savvy diction. His understanding of Hindu religion, nationalism, socialism and how to prepare the youth for building the nation, is quite clear in his teachings. He was just not a seeker of Truth, he was also looking for ways to do away with inequality, untouchability and religious fanaticism. His Hindu philosophy calls for tolerance and respect to all other religions.
Indian Nationalism as understood by Swamiji is not the same as understood by Hindutva followers like the present BJP leaders.. To him, a nation meant the people. He wanted the material and moral advancement of the same. By the word “people” he did not mean a political term, but the masses who constitute the major portion of humanity living in India. He has divided the Indians into two classes, the rich – the upper class, and the poor – the lower class. This latter class he has designated as the “masses”. They form the foiling classes of India. Swamiji’s efforts were directed in drawing the attention of the youth of the country towards the betterment of the condition of the masses. He has not only repeatedly asked them to take up this onerous task but he has laid down the principles of his programme also.
Vivekananda (Narendranath Datta) was born in 1863 while his youngest brother Dr. Bhupendranath Datta was born in 1880. Bhupendra was 17 years junior to his eldest brother. When Narendranath became famous in India and the world after his 1893 Chicago address, Bhupendra was just thirteen. But he was a prolific reader. By the time Vivekananda died in 1902, Bhupendra a 22 year old man was ready to join the movement against the British domination. Both brothers had extensive discussions on the foreign domination and how to make use of youth power in the last four years of Vivekananda’s life. From 1898 to his death in 1902, Vivekananda had a very active phase when his thoughts were concerned on the ills of British rule apart from expanding the Vedanta philosophy to the new areas including overseas.
Significantly, many of close disciples of Swami including his younger brother Bhupen joined the movement of the Swadeshis against the British rule in 1905 and onwards. Bhupendra was the Editor of the Jugantarpatrika. He was in close association with Rishi Aurobinda and his brother Barin Chandra Ghosh. Bhupenda had a varied political career later in USA, Germany and Russia, meeting the leader of Bolshevik revolution V I Lenin in 1921. He later came back as a Marxist and joined the movement of the workers and peasants keeping close touch with the Communist Party of India. He died in 1961 in Calcutta and till his last, he was involved in conducting classes on Marxist teachings.
Bhupendranath who closely interacted with Swamiji in his last years, writes in his book on his eldest brother Vivekananda, that a Marxist will be amazed in seeking his ideas anticipated in the sayings of Swamiji, and he will be more amazed when he reads that Swamiji has openly called himself a “socialist”. Therein lies the key to Swamiji’s advice to the youth of his country. One will be surprised in reading that Swamiji has not only used Marx’s phrase, that “the poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer” but he has also spoken about the “proletarian culture”, and has foretold that the “Proletcult” (Proletarian Culture) of the Indian masses will be the future culture of New India! In going through the pages of this book one cannot but admit that Swamiji was saturated with the ideas of the social-revolutionaries of the West. Indeed, he gave evidence enough that he was well acquainted with their literature and ideals.
According to Bhupendranath, to many an admirer of Swamiji, this will sound quite strange and unorthodox. Some will call it a blasphemy even. But truth is stranger than fiction. Some part of his life is not known to the Indian public. Very few people know that he had political revolutionary ideas in the beginning. He wanted to free the country from the foreign yoke. But he failed in his attempt, and seeking the cause of his failure, he tried a different remedy and deflected his attention to another channel. Here, Vivekananda had some similarity with Rishi Aurobindo who turned to spiritualism after being an active participant of the anti-British movement in 1905 and following years. But the difference was that Vivekananda had always talked of the removal of inequality till the last, while Aurobindo was deep in his spiritual quest only till 1950 when he died.
Here, it should be mentioned that the news about the attempt at revolution on the part of the Swamiji was not unknown to the leading revolutionaries of the first batch. It was narrated by the Swamiji himself in the course of a dialogue with Pandit Sakharam Ganesh Deuskar at Belur. Pandit Deuskar himself was an active member of the revolutionary party. On being interrogated by Deuskar regarding the future of the country Swamiji answered: “The Country has become a powder magazine. A little spark may ignite it. I will see the revolution in my life time.” On being asked as to the nature of this revolution, whether the Indians will seek foreign help, he answered, “No, the Indians will not make mistake the fourth time. I know several princes who can successfully carry on the revolution.” Later on, this conversation was divulged by Deuskar to the leading Bengal revolutionaries in about 1904. This news about Swamiji’s attempt lent further strength to them.
Thus, the keynote of his attitude towards the Indian national question was to uplift the Indian masses by educating them, and by instilling the feeling of mass-consciousness in them. What he wanted was to give a background to the process of nation-building. On this account, he emphasised education for the masses and to help “to develop their lost individuality”. He clearly discerned that without the uprising of the majority of the population of India who are lying in a debased condition, Indian regeneration is not possible.
Swamiji was clear in his vision that our degradation is not due to political enslavement, but loss of all round freedom of the man from time immemorial. That religious, social and economic slavery have dehumanized the Indians, was the burden of his theme for India’s upliftment. For that reason he wanted the disturbance of the status quo of the Indian society as can be gleaned from his sayings when he depicted the same as “horrid, diabolical”, and as a remedy he said, “No priestcraft, no social tyranny! More bread, more opportunity for everybody!”
Bhupendranath explained in his book, Swamiji called himself a socialist. Yet his socialism is not of the same brand as of today. In making an analysis of his sayings, a Marxist may say that his “Socialism” does not tally with that of Lenin, and may fall short of the socialist ideal of the West; his was more of the reformistic school. Yet one must not forget that during the time when Swamiji penned these epistles, Socialism did not take a revolutionary attitude. The only exception to it was in Russia, where in the milieu of that country it could not be otherwise. But the Bolshevists had not arisen as yet.
But strange as it is, Swamiji did foretell about the dictatorship of the proletariat when he said, “Yet, a time will come when there will be the rising of the Sudra class……..a time will come, when the Sudras of every country……..will gain absolute supremacy in every society”. It will sound still strange when one hears what is narrated to Bhupendranath by Swamiji’s American disciple Sister Christine, that “it was in New York during Swamiji’s last visit to America he told us these things. Swamiji was walking up and down the floor and saying – first comes the rule of the Brahmans, then the rule of the Kshatriyas. At present the world is being ruled by the Vaishyas. Next comes the rule of the Sudras. I am wondering where the first Sudra State will be established. It must be either in Russia or in China. In both these countries the huge masses of peoples are oppressed and downtrodden”.
Nobody knows what conversation took place between Swamiji and Kropotkin at Paris. They met only once at the same place. But some of Swamiji’s Occidental disciples were ardent admirers and friends of Kropotkin. They always talked of the latter to the author. But it cannot be said that Swamiji was influenced by Kropotkin in his conversation. Yet one must realise that Swamiji had extensively travelled over the world, and had met savants of different shades of ideals. Hence it was not a wonder that he was alive to the problems of modern world and would see the problems of his own country in that light.
Vivekananda had a more modern approach to good living and pleasures on the line of Rabindranath Tagore, as against Mahatma Gandhi. Bhupendranath noted that those nationalists who in their hatred of British rule have hated everything that is foreign, and have thought that the institutions of their own country are the best in the world and have exploited Swamiji’s name in this field, take a heed of what he has said: “Modern India admits spiritual equality of all souls – but strictly keeps the social difference”. “A country where millions of people live on flowers of the mahua plant, and a million or two of Sadhus and a hundred million or so of Brahmins suck the blood out of these poor people,…… is that a country or hell? Is that a religion, or the devil’s dance?”
Again, those who think that Swamiji has talked of spirituality and spiritual civilization of India only, take a lesson of what he has said in this matter. He said, “we talk foolishly against material civilisation……Material civilisation, nay even luxury, is necessary to create work for the poor.” Swamiji was not dead to the fact that without satisfaction of material wants, higher thought and ideal cannot develop, therefore he said, “I do not believe in a God who cannot give me bread here, giving me eternal bliss in heaven!”
As Bhupendranath explained in his book on Vivekananda –Prophet Patriot, Swamiji was opposed to exploitations of all kinds. He was the first Indian to discern that our so-called religiosity and patriotism has taken the shape of exploitation! He has denounced the class-character of our civilisation, and as a remedy wanted to educate, and uplift the masses on the basis of equality, because in them he saw, lies the hope of India. Further, as the means of building up a New India, he has preached that “Proletocult” will create a new Indian Nation. That future India will not be a sectarian one, but it will rise on the basis of a new culture evolving out of the participation of the masses.
All these observations by Swami Vivekananda show how Swamiji was not only a great leader of Hindu religion, he was also a socialist to the core and talked of the upliftment of the masses, irrespective of faith and creed. His teachings are absolutely contrary to what BJP stands for today. At the same time, it is also true that the Communists ignored a proper assessment of the teachings of Vivekananda. The CPI should have made efforts to publicise the teachings of Vivekananda which help the movement for a better India, Still, there is time to recapture the vision of Vivekananda from the clutches of BJP and RSS and make use of that in the coming battle against the Narendra Modi government. (IPA Service)
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