Recall Vivekananda

By Jagmohan

The decline in our society and polity can be reversed through self-respect.

The sad conditions prevailing in the country make one apprehensive about imminent anarchy. And then one is urged to believe that India needs another Swami Vivekananda. His birth anniversary, observed last week, offers a fit occasion to explain how the great soul could have enlivened the nation at this crucial juncture.

Few realise that Swami Vivekananda was one of the principal architects who cut a new cultural stream that watered the parched soil of India and produced a rich harvest of men and women who brought her freedom. In a passionate voice, he declared: "Here is the same India whose soil has been trodden by the feet of the greatest sages that ever lived. Here first arose the doctrines of the immortality of the soul, the existence of a supervising god, an immanent god in nature and in man… We are the children of such a country."

These inspiring words removed the spell of diffidence caused by the colonial rule and created a wave of self-respect and self-confidence which brought men of sterling eminence like Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and Bal Gangadhar Tilak to the scene.

It is pertinent to recall what Sri Aurobindo said: "British rule has been the record success in history in the hypnosis of a nation. It persuaded us to live in a ‘death of will’, creating in ourselves the condition of morbid weakness the hypnotist desired, until the master of a mightier hypnosis laid his finger on India’s eyes and cried, ‘Awake’. Then only the spell was broken, the slumbering mind realised itself and the dead soul lived again."

India today is a pale shadow of what it should have been. It should have led the world in life-nurturing ideas; instead, it is being led by the crass materialism of others. Its economy should have been marked by the care and culture of her people; instead, it has been dehumanised by reckless consumerism of the rich and degrading passiveness of the poor. It should have recreated and strengthened her tradition of unity in diversity; instead, it has been torn asunder by conflicts and confusion. Who has brought this all about?

In the second half of the 19th century, when dense clouds of social and cultural degeneration appeared to have engulfed the Indian horizon in perpetuity, there arose Swami Vivekananda with a dynamic mission to purge the Indian soul. Pointing to the main culprits, he thundered: "You, the upper classes of India, do you think you are alive? You are but mummies ten thousand years old… In the world of Maya, you are the real illusion. You merge yourself in the void and disappear. Let a new India arise in your place."

If another Swami Vivekananda were to appear on the scene today, I am sure he would speak to the present-day ruling elites in the same tenor and tone. He would tell them, "You have betrayed the country. You have stifled the underlying inspiration for constitutional goals. You proceeded to set up political and administrative institutions, but failed to create the mind and motivation that would have given life and meaning to them. You built bodies without souls. You ignored ‘the ancient nobility of temper’ engendered in ‘tyaga’ and ‘tapasya’ and started worshipping the new gods of power and pelf."

"From the great storehouse of the past, you should have picked up the gems and thrown out the stones. You did exactly the opposite. You threw out the gems and picked up the stones. And they now hang around the country’s neck like a dead albatross. You have done enough damage. Go; in the name of Mother India, go."

Swami Vivekananda knew that, in building a healthy India, spiritual traditions had to play a crucial role. He said: "Each nation, like each individual, has one theme in life, which is at its centre. If any nation attempts to throw off its national vitality, that nation dies."

Unfortunately, while ushering in a new era after independence, this central vitality of Indian culture was ignored. But for occasional lip service, nothing was done to construct the nation from within.

For this lapse, things are falling apart and the country is witnessing, besides the rising blood-soaked tide of terrorism and subversion, one case of molestation every 15 minutes, one rape every 29 minutes, one dowry death every 74 minutes and one incident of sexual harassment every 53 minutes. The disparities of income have increased to such an extent that while millions go to bed hungry, the combined wealth of 36 richest Indians have touched $ 191 billion.

‘We, the people’ are sovereign, says the Constitution. But how do we give expression to this sovereignty? By electing representatives to legislatures who have criminal records, who obtain money for tabling questions in Parliament, receive bribes for voting in the House in a particular manner, indulge in human trafficking and take oaths and other pledges only to break them with impunity?

Equally spurious is our democracy. Can we legitimately call a system democratic, when 99 per cent of the members get into the Lok Sabha, as it happened in 2004, with less than half the electors voting for them? What type of democratic temper has been nursed when an election to a single State Assembly is held in seven phases, spread over a month, and that, too, with the help of paramilitary forces? And where is the question of free exercise of ‘will’ when it has been imprisoned by the prejudices of caste, creed and community?

India, "the sleeping giant", as Swami Vivekananda called it, has woken up. But unfortunately, after a few correct steps, it has again started moving on the wrong course. Another Swami Vivekananda is now very much needed, who could hold the errant ‘giant’ by the scruff of its neck, point to it the right path and make it move towards its true goal.

India could then present a new design for life, a model of contentment, compassion, balance and harmony, and also a nation that could teach to the world, as Will Durant believed, "tolerance and gentleness of the mature mind, the quiet content of the un-acquisitive soul, the calm of the understanding spirit, and a unifying, pacifying love for all living things."

Source: www.dailypioneer.com

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