Narendra Modi kicked off a recent rally with a Swami Vivekananda statue adorning his campaign vehicle. A large number of his supporters sported images of Modi and the great seer on their shirts. This symbolic appropriation ought to have embarrassed Modi.
The philosopher Ramachandra Gandhi바카라s Sita바카라s Kitchen: A Testimony of Faith and Inquiry famously recalls an episode: 바카라Swami Vivekananda was in Kashmir towards the end of his life but his heart was heavy even in that paradise on earth. Large-hearted though he was, he felt tormented by the fact that successive invaders had desecrated and destroyed countless sacred images of Hinduism바카라s gods and goddesses and pulled down Hindu temples and built mosques over their ruins. Unable to bear the burden of this humiliating testimony of history, Vivekananda poured out his anguish at the feet of the Divine Mother in a Kali temple. 바카라How could you let this happen, Mother? Why did you permit this desecration?바카라 he asked despairingly. Swamiji has himself recorded all this, and reports that Kali whispered in his heart: 바카라What is it to you, Vivekananda, if the invader breaks my images? Do you protect me, or do I protect you?바카라바카라 His questions were laid to rest. The goddess had awakened him to his own unexamined arrogance and temptation towards self-deification. This episode is unlikely to hold a moral lesson for Modi.
Like his guru, Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, who strove to experience the divine variously as a Muslim, Christian and Hindu, Vivekananda had profound respect and love for Prophet Mohammed and Jesus. Even if one is not able to read through the swami바카라s nine-volume corpus, his famous 1893 address at the Parliament of the World Religions, Chicago, alone should confirm his love of religious diversity: 바카라I am proud to belong to a religion which has taught the world both tolerance and universal acceptance. We believe not only in universal toleration, but we accept all religions as true.바카라
Besides, the swami has termed himself a socialist on occasion (바카라I바카라m a socialist not because it바카라s a perfect system, but (sic) half a loaf is better than no bread.바카라). Although his socialism wasn바카라t a well worked out doctrine, his concerns towards social and economic equality are present across his writings and speeches. Modi바카라s unconditional love of business capital for Gujarat and steadfast refusal to apologise to the Muslim victims of the Godhra riots make him singularly ineligible to bear the swami바카라s legacy. But the symbolic and electoral gains from this association pip considerations of ethical integrity.
Modi, of course, is in a long line of Hindu right-wing activists striving to attach Swami Vivekananda to their work. In the early 바카라60s, M.S. Golwalkar, a former Ramakrishna Mission initiate who later became RSS chief, asked his colleague Eknath Ranade to help establish the Vivekananda Memorial in Kanyakumari. After the memorial was completed in 1970, Eknath went on to found Vivekananda Kendra to further RSS activities in the Northeast. Right-wing outfits bearing the swami바카라s name in India are now legion. It is doubtful whether the swami바카라s respect for Islam and Christianity or his rejection of priestly orthodoxy posed an ideological problem for the RSS. What seems to have mattered for them was his charisma and status as a Hindu youth icon who inspired trust and goodwill among people of different religions. A symbolic hijack of the swami would bring them a popular legitimacy and visibility they could never hope to earn through their deeds. And so, the Hindu right has expended much cynical labour in this regard over the decades. They misalign the swami바카라s thoughts with their own interests and don바카라t let his deep Hindu reformist concerns or love of religious diversity deter them.
The Ramakrishna Mission, founded by Swami Vivekananda, has stayed silent amidst the heinous abuse of the swami바카라s words and deeds. A monk from its Mysore branch once told me: 바카라We do not comment on politics since we are a social organisation.바카라 Swami Vivekananda바카라s passionate efforts to renew Hinduism (which, for him, meant Advaita Vedanta) in the late 19th century steered clear of metaphysical and social malice towards non-Hindus바카라in marked contrast to the revivalist efforts of contemporaries like Bankim Chandra Chatterjee and Dayanand Saraswati. Little surprise, therefore, that he should hold moral appeal for Gandhi, Aurobindo and many others who saw good politics as inseparable from spiritual values. It is this valuable historical legacy of social interventions outside of secular frames that the Hindu right has sought to take over. This should not go uncontested. Swami Vivekananda needs to be claimed back.
(The author is professor of sociology at Azim Premji university)
