Images of Prime Minister Narendra Modi meditating on the Vivekananda Rock Memorial near Kanyakumari were dished out to the Indian electorate towards the end of the recently concluded general elections. Bolstering his Hindu nationalist image, Modi brazenly appropriated the legacy of Swami Vivekananda, a 19th-century monk who propounded the idea of India based on communal harmony and uplift of the poor. Modi also made it a point to highlight his connections with the much-venerated Ramakrishna Mission, founded by Swami Vivekananda, in his scripted interview on ABP News even as the elections were entering the last phase. The Mission has innumerable followers in eastern states that were going to vote.
In these actions Modi had flouted with impunity the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) delineated by India’s Elections Commission (ECI), confident that the ECI would not stand in his way. Indeed, the ECI had in the most spineless fashion failed to recognise the BJP’s scandalous abuse of ‘electoral bonds’, virulent hate speech against India’s Muslims and political opponents unleashed by Modi and his acolytes, or the blatant use of state machinery to imprison political opponents just before elections.
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty
In the end, however, it would seem that the legacy of Swami Vivekananda won, and Modi’s politics of hate lost. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) could garner only 240 seats, 32 short of a majority, making it reliant on its coalition partners in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). This makes for a shaky NDA whose key constituents N. Chandrababu Naidu and Nitish Kumar enjoy a political base that is not aligned with the Hindu nationalism propagated by Modi.
Moreover, despite heavy odds, the opposition Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA), led by the Indian National Congress (INC), has found a strong voice in the parliament with 234 seats. INDIA’s victory is a victory for Swami Vivekananda’s idea of India over Modi’s India. These elections signal the limits of the forces of communalism, in favour of social democracy centred on the discriminated and oppressed.
Also read: Reading Vivekananda Against the Hindutva Grain
How can we imagine that the life and message of Swami Vivekananda is more aligned with the idea of India than Modi’s Hindu nationalism? Vivekananda not only powerfully articulated the conviction of accepting all religions, but he was also India’s first socialist who inspired the struggle against poverty and discrimination. The life and the message of this philosopher-saint is therefore at great odds at Hindu nationalism’s Muslim-bashing and upper class- and caste-oriented character.
Vivekananda articulated three powerful ideas supporting the catholicity of all religions in his famous Chicago speeches of 1893 and beyond. First, he argued that the persons who call themselves Hindus must accept all religions as true. Citing the Bhagavad Gita, he asserted that just as all rivers lead to the sea, so too do all religions have the capacity to advance human beings towards spiritual enlightenment. He would respect atheists who had faith in themselves rather than the pseudo-religious who cannot be lifted above the vanities of the world.
Second, he argued persuasively that religious diversity is a social need. Just as different individuals living in different geographies have different social and cultural needs, so too do different individuals have manifold spiritual tastes and appetites. Society needs different religions to satisfy the different tastes.
Finally, Swami Vivekananda opined that different religions are needed because each one of them has imperfections. Religions should therefore learn from each other and grow without losing their individual appeal.
Swami Vivekananda was also India’s first socialist. He used the term “Daridranarayan” (or God in the poverty stricken and discriminated) many years before Mohandas Gandhi used a similar term “Harijan” (persons of God) to highlight the dire need for social uplift. He inspired not only Mohandas Gandhi, Subhash Chandra Bose and Jawaharlal Nehru; even leftist leaders – such as the architect of West Bengal’s land reforms Binoy Choudhury – were inspired by him.
Also read: Remembering 9/11 Speech of Swami Vivekananda That Warned Us of the Dangers Posed by Fanaticism
The motto of the Ramakrishna Mission founded by him was “Atmano Mokshartham Jagaddhitaya Cha” (To serve the world for the uplift of the soul). Fifty years before India’s independence he wrote into the Constitution of the Ramakrishna Math (Church) and Mission (service arm, founded after his Guru Sri Ramakrishna Paramhansa) that the organisation will neither enter politics nor will it take political positions. It will respect all religions and the monks of the Ramakrishna order will not vote.
How then did the electorate choose Vivekananda’s idea of India? The INDIA alliance was fighting both bigotry and discrimination. That is the reason Modi accused the INC of favouring Muslims over the majority Hindu population, even though there was no such inclination either in the INC’s manifesto or its actions. In fact, the manifesto which was firmly in favour of social democracy did not even once mention the word “Muslim”. It stayed clear of pampering either to the majority or the minority groups.
India’s millennial traditions re-interpreted by Vivekananda emerged victorious in the Indian general elections of 2024. The BJP’s candidate lost in the constituency that houses Ayodhya, the very birthplace of Lord Ram from where Hindu nationalism had grown, that too against a Dalit candidate on an unreserved seat. The destruction of a mosque and the construction of a temple over it, inaugurated by the prime minister in a grand spectacle, failed to mobilise the Hindu electorate. Modi himself, while retaining the Varanasi seat (a holy city for Hindus), saw a considerable dip in his margin of victory.
Also read: Vivekananda Dismissed Hindutva View That Blames Foreign Invasions for India’s Civilisational Decline
Now Modi has to rely on his two coalition partners who take Muslims and the poor more seriously than he does. The future will tell how much respect for all religions and social democracy will evolve within the NDA in the presence of such coalition partners. Or will an unwieldy coalition fall to give INDIA a chance?
Either way, the elections seem to have vindicated Vivekananda’s idea of India. Prayers for publicity, after all, do not work devoid of the faith.
Rahul Mukherji is Professor and Chair, Department of Political Science, South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University, Germany and Prateek Pankaj is Research Assistant, Department of History and Department of Political Science, South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University, Germany.
