Some of my friends questioned the main contention of my previous post on
Swami Vivekananda - they felt that I tried to give an impression that
introducing Hinduism and Indian philosophy to general population abroad is
Swamiji’s chief legacy. In fact I tried to highlight just one aspect of his
enduring legacy as a pioneer of Indian soft power ascendancy in the West. Within
India I feel there are two important legacies of Swami Vivekananda – a proud
nationalism more in a cultural sense than political and the legacy of service. Two
separate organizations – Sangh Parivar and Ramakrishna Mission, respectively, have
emerged as the primary torch-bearers for these two distinct legacies. It is
important to remember that if one goes by his writings and recorded speeches,
Swami Vivekananda was not always consistent in terms of his views and at times
was even self-contradictory. Today therefore when we look at his legacy we must
remember that this is how he has been interpreted by different people and
organizations, which in turn led to continuation of these legacies. |
| M S Golwalkar |
In 1963, while Ramakrishna Mission made acquisition of Vivekananda’s
ancestral house the chief focus of their centenary celebration, RSS decided to
build a national memorial and a nation-wide movement around it. Ramakrishna
Mission’s project eventually was completed almost four decades later following
a protracted legal battle. On the other hand, RSS Chief Golwalkar appointed
Eknath Ranade, an energetic former Secretary General of RSS to spearhead this
project. Before talking about Ranade’s spectacular success, let me go back to
Guru Golwalkar – in his youth he joined Ramakrishna Mission and took diksha
from Swami Akhandananda, a direct disciple of Ramakrishna and a pioneer of
service in the Mission. Golwalkar went back to RSS after Akhandananda’s death –
reportedly following his guru’s last wishes. Though founded by Hedgewar, who
took inspiration from Savarkar and Maharastrian variety of Hindu nationalism
(Hedgewar himself studied medicine in Calcutta between 1910-14 and admired
Aurobindo Ghosh and Bankim Chandra), it was Golwalkar who defined the RSS
philosophy for successive generations in his book – We or Our Nationhood
Defined. Perhaps it was his short stay at Ramakrishna Mission with Swami
Akhandananda, which prompted Golwalkar to introduce the concept of service in
RSS fold.
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| Vivekananda Rock Memorial |
After deciding on the site for Vivekananda Memorial at Kanyakumari, where
Swamiji meditated for three days before leaving for Chicago, Ranade started
building a full-fledged movement to collect necessary resources. He enlisted
the support of a large number of politicians cutting across party lines;
collected money from more than 30 lakh ordinary citizens by distributing
Vivekananda’s posters/folders and even army units contributed for the project.
It took four years to build the now famous monument at the southern tip of the
country. Once it was done, the focus shifted to building of an organization –
Vivekananda Kendras. This was to be the service affiliate of RSS, focusing on
its twin objectives – man-making and nation-building. In half a century since
then this organization – formally a special affiliate of RSS – has grown into
one of the largest socio-cultural organizations in the country. Today it has
234 branches and runs a large number of schools, medical camps, and cultural
organizations across the country with millions of people directly associated
with it. It tries to reach out through soft cultural or social messages to
marginal population or those who are not enamoured by open right-wing political
campaigning. Other Sangh parivar outfits, particularly ABVP, routinely project
Vivekananda as a youth icon. Vivekananda was responsible for instilling a great
degree of pride in our (mainly Hindu) heritage and that way it may not be out
of place to hail him as a nationalist icon. But the crucial difference is in
approach – Sangh Parivar’s nationalist agenda is exclusionary whereas his was
always inclusionary.
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| RK Mission Relief Work (from Mission's official website |
Between 1890 and 1893, Swami Vivekananda travelled through a large part of
India, mostly on foot and begging for food, not always successfully. Before
this, from 1887 to 1890, he was trying to establish Ramakrishna Math with his
brother monks braving crushing poverty. This tryst with poverty and real India opened his eyes in a way unseen in case of other great Indians of 19th and early 20th century. His experience of widespread starvation, illiteracy and resultant backwardness forced him to adopt seva (service to
humanity) as sadhana instead of sticking only to religious activities. He was
continuously writing to his brother monks to emphasize that a person has to be
first provided food, educated and then only he would be in a position to appreciate
his own spirituality. It is also important to remember that in his lifetime
service was hardly the central theme of the Mission and even his attitude to
service was at times ambivalent. Over the years, Ramakrishna Math and Mission
has evolved into India’s premier humanitarian agency, providing healthcare,
education and other facilities not only in towns and villages but also in
remotest parts of the country from Arunachal to insurgency-affected areas of
central India. It is also a pioneer in disaster relief – a service, through
which the likes of Akhandananda, initiated the Math and Mission’s commitment to
daridra-narayan-seva. Ramakrishna Mission does run programmes focusing on Vedanta, cultural heritage and other themes. In the USA, it mainly
focuses on such activities. But today the main focus of the organization, which
is the living embodiment of Vivekananda’s visions, is on managing and
perfecting a complex web of service it offers across a vast geography of the
subcontinent, including Bangladesh.
Though RSS and its affiliates have appropriated and in a sense expanded
Vivekananda’s legacy of proud nationalism, it incorporated service also in its
agenda, mainly through Vivekananda Kendras. On the other hand, within India,
over the years, service has become prime focus of Ramakrishna Mission though it
continues to work on his legacy of cultural nationalism/projection of Indian
spirituality both in India and abroad.
