Darjeeling,
3rd April 1897.
Dear Miss Noble,
I have just found a bit of important work for you to do on behalf of the downtrodden masses of India. The gentleman I take the liberty of introducing to you is in England on behalf of the Tiyas (Ezhavas), a plebian caste in the native state of Malabar. You will realize from this gentleman what an amount of tyranny there is over these poor people, simply because of their caste. The Indian government has refused to interfere on grounds of non-interference in the internal administration of a native State. The only hope of these people is the English parliament. Do kindly everything in your power to help this matter [in] being brought before the British public.
Ever yours in the truth,
Vivekananda.
(The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Vol IX, Page 95, quoted in Vivekananda, the Philosopher of Freedom p. 393)
This letter to friend-disciple Margaret Noble (later with the monastic name Sister Nivedita) demonstrates certain aspects of Swami Vivekananda’s outlook: the importance he placed on anti-caste activities and his belief that social justice denied for the lower castes wasn’t an internal issue of Indians or Hindus – a pointer on his attitude towards the west. The discrimination against Ezhavas did get raised in the British parliament on the July 19, 1897 through Herbert Roberts, a Liberal MP, then in the opposition. Thanks to the communication between Vivekananda and Dr Padmanabhan Palpu, the architect of the Kerala’s remarkable lower caste Ezhava politico-cultural, and socio-economic awakening, and translations of Vivekananda’s work by Ezhava poet and social reformer, Kumaran Asan, in Kerala, Vivekananda lingered on in Kerala’s common memory as a progressive, anti-caste, socialist-minded, modernity-inspired vedantin.
But this can hardly be said of most of north India, where Vivekananda is the most used icon of the Sangh parivar. In a space evacuated by liberals and seculars, abandoned by nuanced scholarship, the Sangh parivar seems to have created a symbol emptied out of its historical, political and ethical content but naturalised through propagandist rituals repeated inexorably. Govind Krishnan V. is trying to evaluate this claim of the Sangh parivar in his recently published book, Vivekananda, the Philosopher of Freedom, published by Aleph Books. Govind’s task becomes particularly daunting because a body of recent scholarship, coming from parts of the left and the marginalised, echo the Hindutva views on the man. Given the available narratives, Govind tries to create a third narrative to establish how Vivekananda is not just outside inclusive, egalitarian political thought and social action but should be a beacon of it. The book’s reiteration on the anti-Sangh nature of Vivekananda becomes an act in reclaiming his legacy, almost making it one to inherit, reminding us of Walter Benjamin’s observation in On the Concept of History: “The only historian capable of fanning the spark of hope in the past is the one who is firmly convinced that even the dead will not be safe from the enemy if he is victorious.”
Govind’s methodology is quite effective: he outlines the political events and developments of our times and elaborates on the positions of Hindutva leaders that forms the ideological base for these. Then he brings out the underlying political philosophy, explaining the position of Vivekananda, both through analysis and presentation of historical events.
Govind Krishnan V.
Vivekananda, the Philosopher of Freedom
Aleph, 2023
Govind identifies the first contradiction between Vivekananda and Hindutva outlook in that the latter blames outsiders, be that the rule by Muslim kings or that of the British empire (dubbed Christian by the Hindu right). Vivekananda held that the downfall was due to the dominant castes of India: “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.”
To the Hindus of Tamil Nadu’s Shivaganga, during a welcome meeting after the American journey, Vivekananda said: “We are neither Vedandists, most of us now, nor Pauranikas, nor Tantrikas, we are just ‘Don’t Touchists’. Our religion is in the kitchen. Our God is the Cooking-pot and our religion is, ‘Don’t touch me. I am holy’. If this goes on for another century every one of us will be in the lunatic asylum.”
Vivekananda held not Hindu religion but Hindu society guilty for caste discrimination and exploitation. According to him, “No religion on earth preaches the dignity of humanity in such a lofty strain of Hinduism, and no religion on earth treads upon the necks of the poor and the low in such a fashion as Hinduism.” While Hindutva tries to consolidate power through manufactured and perceived fears and insecurities about the outsider expressed through symbols of power, Vivekananda is looking inwards, at concrete social situations and historical realities, with enormous ethical courage.
The outsider-villain is furthered through “foreign religions” in the Sangh narrative and Vivekananda not only doesn’t share the Hindu supremacist position but he actively opposes the parochial view. One of the two books, points out Govind, Vivekananda carried in his travels is The Imitation of Christ, a book on Christian mysticism, authored by Thomas a Kempis – he also later translated this book to Bengali with the title Ishanusarana. It is also brought to our notice that “In America, many of Vivekananda’s lectures were held in Unitarian churches”. Constance Towne’s account of a church visit demonstrates Vivekananda’s attitude best: “He went to mass with me at St. Leo’s Church, the little one on Twenty-eight Street…There he knelt at the high noon at the canon of the Mass.”
Also read: Remembering 9/11 Speech of Swami Vivekananda That Warned Us of the Dangers Posed by Fanaticism
Govind narrates instances where Vivekananda defended the egalitarian outlook and universal fellow-feeling that Islam preached when Western Christians and missionaries tried to dismiss Islam as crazy and archaic. His appreciation for Mughal architecture and aesthetic surely reads as an antidote to the Hindutva project, which understands history as gravedigging of the present. In Christine Greenfield’s words: “The Moghuls seemed to have cast a spell over Swami Vivekananda/ He depicted this period of Indian history with such dramatic intensity, that the idea often came to us that he was telling the story of his own past.” Govind maps the Muslim presences in Vivekananda’s journey including Muslims whose hospitality he accepted, quite contrary to the prevailing norms. His response when questioned on staying and eating at a Muslim household is revealing: “I am not afraid of God, for he sanctions it. I am not afraid of the scriptures for they allow it: but I am afraid of you people and your society.”
Govind situates Vivekananda in two traditions: one, in the Indic spiritual tradition as a practical vedanist, with a key social sense on hunger and backward suffering. Second, in the Victorian period as a person who is trying to creating an enabling theoretical perspective, using British empiricism and German idealism with a Romantic aesthetic. Vivekananda’s insistence on individual freedom (“Let men have liberty. That is the only condition for growth”), Govind substantiates, goes completely against a supremacist ideology and organisational set up of Hindutva organisations that seek complete submission of the individual. Govind historicises Vivekananda enough for the modern reader, by providing a “why” for a number of his positions that it doesn’t necessarily jar! The intellectual honesty with which such instances have been identified and presented is noteworthy.
Govind doesn’t at all engage with the academically powerful post-colonial school of thought and its readings of Vivekananda, even as an exploration of the absence – in that the book is courageously unfashionable. The situating of Vivekananda in medieval Indian traditions remains half-hearted. In his insightful and nuanced comparing and contrasting of Vivekananda and Dr B.R. Ambedkar, the author does point to the theoretical possibility of capturing the visions of justice and equality – an idea to be furthered using Gandhian ethics and praxis – a link the book curiously doesn’t develop.
In reading this book, one gets the sense of an amazingly free personality – one who cherished and upheld his religion and culture but with confidence, resourcefulness, grace, rigour and even wit. Vivekananda comes across as both a critical insider and a powerful spokesperson of Hindu religious thought in Govind’s articulation. The dyanamicity of an evolving, concrete world and guidance received for it from the abstract, ethical principles pushes him, perhaps, towards the idea of a universal religion. Vivekananda’s views on women’s freedom (“the best thermometer to the progress of a nation is its treatment of women”), much advanced for his age, shows the possibilities of freedom and the need to universalise it. This engagement with a changing world also counters the revivalist impulse of the Hindu majoritarian scheme. Reading about this Vivekananda is a heartily enabling process, one that makes hope possible and not despair convincing.
Also read: Vivekananda Dismissed Hindutva View That Blames Foreign Invasions for India’s Civilisational Decline
This book’s achievement is that the concluding lines of the 1893 Chicago address feels like an apt and adequate summary of what Vivekananda tries to do through his life and work:
“… and I fervently believe that the bell that tolled this morning in honour of the representatives of the different religions of the earth, in this parliament assembled, is a death-knell to all fanaticism, that is the dealth-knell to all persecution with the sword or the pen, and to all uncharitable feelings between brethren wending their way to the same goal.”
And then to this, the historic salutation of the speech, it looks, would write itself: “Sisters and brothers of America.”
N.P. Ashley teaches English at St. Stephen’s College, Delhi.
