CHAPTER IV
FULL DEFENCE OF THE OLD RELIGIONS
1870-1913
At the beginning of our third chapter we noted the rise in India about 1870 of a new spirit, which generated many religious movements, roughly divisible into two series, one marked by defence of the old, tempered by reform, the other eager to defend the old in almost every particular. We deal with this latter series in this chapter.
I. BEGINNINGS
The earliest stirrings of the new spirit appeared in and around Calcutta. In 1872 Raj Narayan Bose, one of the leaders of the Ādi Brāhma Samāj,¹ delivered a lecture on The Superiority of Hinduism over all other Forms of Faith,² which attracted a good deal of attention. The very next year, the idea of the equality of all religions, which has become so closely associated these last thirty years with the defence of Hinduism, found organized expression at Barahanagar, a few miles to the north of Calcutta. Mr. Sasipada Banurji, a Kulīn Brāhman, who had early turned to various forms of social service, and had become a member of the Brāhma Samāj in 1865, established a religious association, which he called the Sādhāran Dharma Sabhā, or General Religious Association, in which Hindus, Brāhmas, Christians, Buddhists and Muslims were allowed freely to express their own religious beliefs, so long as they condemned no one. The following is a description of its work :
Its two main features were, first, a spiritual union, held every week, of the followers of various religions on the basis of commonly-accepted principles — a union in which prayers and other spiritual exercises took place and were joined in by all ; and, secondly, a platform for the preaching of diverse opinions by their advocates, a platform where the most perfect freedom and toleration were allowed consistently with brotherly feeling and general co-operation ; for no one was allowed to vilify or ridicule the beliefs and practices of another.¹
The work has died out at Barahanagar. But, within recent years, Mr. Banurji has started it again in Calcutta. The institution is named the Devālaya, or " Divine House.“² The building is his own, and stands in the compound of the Sādhāran Brahma Samāj. He has made over this property to a group of trustees, so that it may be used for the purposes described by the donor. It is most curious to note how similar Sasipada’s original idea is to those which, a few years later, were expressed by Rāmakṛishṇa, and later still, by Theosophists.
We may also note that in 1873, at the very time when he was starting his General Religious Association at Barahanagar, a group of Hindus formed in Calcutta the Sanātana Dharma Rakshinī Sabhā, or Association for the Defence of the Eternal Religion. They were anxious to found a Sanskrit School in the city to counteract modern tendencies. One of the reasons why Dayānanda Sarasvatī visited Calcutta was that he hoped to help this society.³ A few years later the Hindus of the South began to move in the same direction, as we shall see.
2. RĀMAKRISHṆA PARAMAHAMSA
But the man who really made these ideas current coin in India was a Bengali ascetic, known as Rāmakṛishṇa Paramahamsa.
- Gadādhar Chatterji¹ was born in the village of Kamarpukur in the Hoogly district of Bengal, on the 20th of February, 1834,² in a poor but orthodox Brāhman family. The accounts which are published of his life already tend to be mythical. Even the best biography that exists, which was written by one of his pupils, and published by Max Müller, decidedly tends here and there towards the marvellous; and a large volume, published by another of his disciples, and called the Gospel of Śrī Rāmakṛishṇa, imitates the Christian Gospels so carefully in many minor points that one wonders how far the assimilation has gone. Yet the main events of his life stand out quite clear, so that we can trace, in large measure, the growth of this gifted man’s mind.
Even when quite a boy, he showed wonderful powers of memory and considerable interest in religious books and stories. He received no education. His father died when he was about seventeen; and he then went with his elder brother, Paṇḍit Ram Kumar, down to Calcutta, to try to make a living. For some time he was employed as pūjārī, or ministrant, in certain Hindu families in the northern part of the city, his duty being to see to the worship of the household idols. But a wealthy Bengali lady built rather a striking temple at Dakshineśvara, four miles north of Calcutta, on the bank of the Hugli River; and, when this temple was opened on the 31st of May, 1855, his elder brother was appointed chief priest. Soon after, Gadādhar was appointed one of the assistant priests.
The two brothers were now in comfortable circumstances; but almost at once religion began to assert itself in Gadādhar’s life. The form which his religious passion took was a fervent worship of the image of Kālī in the temple. He thought of her as the mother of the universe, and as his own mother. The following quotation is from Max Müller’s life:¹
He now began to look upon the image of the goddess Kālī as his mother and the mother of the universe. He believed it to be living and breathing and taking food out of his hand. After the regular forms of worship he would sit there for hours and hours, singing hymns and talking and praying to her as a child to his mother, till he lost all consciousness of the outward world.
In his religious ecstasy he would pass into that form of trance which is called in Hinduism samādhi. When this came on him, he became unconscious. He would sit in a fixed position for a short time, or it might be for hours, and would then slowly return to consciousness. When he was in this condition, the best doctors could find no trace of pulse or of heart-action.² It is also said that he already had the power of inducing samādhi in others. This trance is clearly a form of hypnotism.
His mother and brothers, thinking that marriage would make him more like ordinary people, took him home, and had him married. This was in 1859. He was then twenty-five years of age, while his little bride was only six. This Hindu marriage-ceremony is a full Hindu marriage, and completely binding: but the husband and wife do not live together until the little girl-wife is eleven or twelve years old.
Then he returned to the temple, leaving his little wife in her father’s home. But, instead of getting rid of his religious ecstasy, he developed a new phase. He now had an overpowering desire to realize the existence and the presence of his mother, the goddess. The following is from one of his disciples :
“Oh Mother !” he would cry, “show me the truth ! Art Thou there ? Art Thou there ? Dost Thou exist ? Why then should I be left in ignorance ? Why can I not realize ? Words and philosophy are vain. Vain all this talk of things ! Truth ! It is truth alone I want to realize. Truth I would touch ! Truth I seek to feel !” ¹
He believed that God can be seen. He felt that, until he had seen Kālī, he had not realized her, and that there was something wrong with his devotion. He would fall into samādhi, and remain unconscious for hours. His neglect of his duties as priest of the temple was so serious, that he had to be deprived of his position. He left the temple, and lived in a little wood near by. From now onwards for about twelve years he lived a life of prayer and supplication, of severe self-repression, and of unceasing effort to reach union with God :
Looking back to these years of self-torture in his later days, he said, ’that a great religious tornado, as it were, raged within him during these years and made everything topsy-turvy.’ He had no idea then that it lasted for so long a time. He never had a wink of sound sleep during these years, could not even doze, but his eyes would remain always open and fixed.²
The first person who understood him and helped him, was a Brāhman nun (sannyāsinī), who came and resided in the temple for some time. She was a woman of great beauty, and considerable learning. She knew and practised yoga, that is, various bodily postures, breathing exercises, and forms of intellectual drill, meant for the progressive restraint of both body and mind and the development of supernatural powers. The books she knew were the Tantras, old manuals written for the worship of Kālī, and the exposition of the theology con- nected with her name. She understood Gadādhar’s religious condition, and her sympathy was of great service to him. She showed his friends old Vaishṇava books from which it appeared that the saints of Bengal of former days were afflicted just as he was. She taught him all she knew; and then, after a stay of some years, departed and was never seen again.
Gadādhar was still dissatisfied. He longed for higher knowledge; and, fortunately, there came to the temple a man named Totā-puri who was able to help him. He was a tall, strong, muscular ascetic, who wore no clothing, and never slept under a roof, but kept up the use of the sacred fire. He was some sort of monk, sannyāsī, but he cannot have belonged to any of the great orders, else he would not have had a fire. The system of philosophy which he followed was the monistic Vedānta, as taught by Śaṅkarāchārya. The doctrines are that God is impersonal, that the human spirit is identical with God, and that the world is an illusion. This he expounded to Gadādhar; and the latter proved a quick pupil. He also taught him the highest stage of religious trance, nirvikalpa samādhi, in which not a trace of consciousness remains. But the master also learned much from the pupil; so that he stayed eleven months with him. He initiated Gadādhar as a monk, sannyāsī. As we have already seen, the sannyāsī gives up home, property, caste, ornaments, the work of the world, money and marriage. Gadādhar was able to take this vow, because he had forgotten that he was married. When a man becomes a sannyāsī, he takes a new name. From this time forward, then, he was known as Rāmakṛishṇa. At a later date his friends called him Paramahaṁsa, a title bestowed only on sannyāsīs of the most advanced knowledge and sanctity.
After the departure of Totā-puri, Rāmakṛishṇa desired to remain continuously in the exalted form of trance he had learnt; and we are told that, for six months, almost without a break, he lived in religious unconsciousness. His own account of these days is as follows:
In those days I was quite unconscious of the outer world. My body would have died for want of nourishment, but for a sādhu (religious ascetic) who came at that time and stayed there for three days for my sake. He recognized my state of Samadhi, and took much interest to preserve this body, while I was unconscious of its very existence. He used to bring some food every day, and when all methods failed to restore sensation or consciousness to this body of mine, he would even strike me with a heavy club, so that the pain might bring me back to consciousness. Sometimes he succeeded in awakening a sort of partial consciousness in me, and he would immediately force down one or two mouthfuls of food before I was lost again in deep Samadhi. Some days when he could not produce any response, even after a severe beating, he was very sorrowful.¹
The trance period passed away, ending in a serious illness, but Rāmakṛishṇa recovered.
He next sought to attain the Vaishṇava ideal of love for God. The method by which he tried to rouse the right feelings was to imagine he was some one of the great devotees of the old stories. For example, he imagined himself Rādhā, Kṛishṇa’s cowherd mistress, wore woman’s attire, spoke like a woman, and lived among the women of his own family, until he experienced something like her passionate love for Kṛishṇa. After some time he felt he had attained his ideal: he saw the beautiful form of Kṛishṇa in a trance, and was satisfied.
The twelve years of storm and stress had passed. He was at peace. It was the year 1871. His wife, who was now eighteen years of age, and had heard of his fame, came to see him. Rāmakṛishṇa explained that he could never be a husband to her. She replied that she was quite satisfied to live with him on his own terms, if he would only enlighten her mind, and enable her to see and serve God. So she took up her residence in the temple, and became one of his most devoted pupils. She survived him, and spoke in the warmest way of him afterwards. She revered him as a divine being.
The next impulse that came to him was to conquer his own feelings in matters of caste. Since he was a sannyāsī, he had no caste of his own left, according to the rules of his religion; yet the prejudices and instinctive feelings of his Brāhman birth remained; and he felt he must overcome his natural abhorrence of low-caste people. One of his disciples describes what he did :
In order, then, that he might stand above none, our Brahmin sought to identify himself with the Chandāla, by doing his work. He is the street-cleaner, and the scavenger, touched by no one; and so, in the night, this man possessed himself of his brooms and utensils, and entering those hidden offices of the temple which it was the duty of pariahs to cleanse, he knelt down, and did the work of purification with his own hands, wiping the place with his hair! Nor was this the only abasement that he imposed upon himself. The temple gave food daily to many beggars, and amongst these were Mahommedans, outcasts, and people of no character. Waiting till all had finished eating, our Brahmin would collect the green leaves that had formed their plates, would gather together the broken fragments of food that they had left, would even eat from amongst their rejected morsels, and would finally cleanse the place where all sorts and conditions of men had had their meal.¹
He was next seized by the desire to know and understand other religions. Here are two quotations which tell how he proceeded:
He found a Mahommedan saint and went to live with him; he underwent the discipline prescribed by him, became a Mahommedan for the time being, lived like a Mahommedan, dressed like a Mahommedan, and did everything laid down in their codes.²
He had seen Jesus in a vision, and for three days he could think of nothing and speak of nothing but Jesus and His love.¹
The result was that he came to the conclusion that all religions were true, that they were simply various paths leading to the same goal.
- People now began to visit him. One of his chief friends was a paṇḍit, named Vaishṇava Charan, who often went to see him, and now and then brought him to Calcutta.² Dayānanda Sarasvatī met him during the time which he spent in Calcutta at the end of 1872 and the beginning of 1873.³ About the year 1875, Keshab Chandra Sen made his acquaintance,⁴ and became deeply interested in him. He talked about him to his friends, and also wrote about him. In consequence, educated men from Calcutta began to go to the temple to see Rāmakṛishṇa. From this time onward, he made the acquaintance of those young men who became his devoted disciples, and carried on his work after his death. Many famous Indians went to see him, and to listen to his brilliant conversation.⁵ For seven years, from 1879 to his death in 1886, he talked almost incessantly. He wrote nothing, but his disciples took down his sayings in Bengali; and several collections of them have been published. The most convenient collection is that contained in Max Müller’s Rāmakṛishṇa. The Gospel of Śrī Rāmakṛishṇa, written by Prof. M. N. Gupta, one of his disciples, consists of a brief introduction, containing the merest outline of his life, and a description of the temple precincts where he lived, and then 350 pages of conversations with friends and disciples. A good deal of the language is modelled on the language of the Gospels.
According to his most famous disciple, Narendra Nath Dutt, usually called Svāmī Vivekānanda, he had two types of conversation, as may be seen from the following paragraph:¹
Images RĀMAKRISHṆA PARAMAHAMSA SVĀMĪ VIVEKĀNANDA MADAME BLAVATSKY MRS. BESANT
He was a wonderful mixture of God and man. In his ordinary state he would talk of himself as servant of all men and women. He looked upon them all as God. He himself would never be addressed as Guru, or teacher. Never would he claim for himself any high position. He would touch the ground reverently where his disciples had trodden. But every now and then strange fits of God-consciousness came upon him. He then spoke of himself as being able to do and know everything. He spoke as if he had the power of giving anything to anybody. He would speak of himself as the same soul that had been born before as Rama, as Krishna, as Jesus, or as Buddha, born again as Ramakrishna. He told Mathuranatha long before anybody knew him, that he had many disciples who would come to him shortly, and he knew all of them. He said that he was free from all eternity, and the practices and struggles after religion which he went through were only meant to show the people the way to salvation. He had done all for them alone. He would say he was a Nitya-mukta, or eternally free, and an incarnation of God Himself.
- The character of Rāmakṛishṇa was singularly simple. He seemed to be capable of only a single motive, namely, a passion for God. That ruled and filled him. So completely did it dominate him that many regarded him as a useless, ineffective man, while others said he was mad. His idea of God seems crude and thin to a Christian; yet it had mastered him; and, when we follow that clue, every detail of his character and life falls into place. For this end he became a sannyāsī, renouncing caste, marriage, property, money. In order that his renunciation might be utterly real, he put himself through a tremendous discipline of repression, until his hatred of money had become so instinctive that his body would shrink back convulsively if he were touched with a coin, when asleep;² and he had so conquered the sex instinct that every woman was to him a mother. On this latter point P. C. Mozoomdar,¹ the Brāhma, says :
For long years, therefore, he says, he made the utmost efforts to be delivered from the influence of women. His heart-rending supplications and prayers for such deliverance sometimes uttered aloud in his retreat on the river-side, brought crowds of people who bitterly cried when he cried, and could not help blessing him and wishing him success with their whole hearts.
This same passion for God, taken along with the Hindu idea of God, will explain also the more curious and eccentric points of his character. One of his own sayings is :
A true devotee who has drunk deep of the Divine Love is like a veritable drunkard, and, as such, cannot always observe the rules of propriety.²
It is from this point of view that we can understand another of Mozoomdar’s statements about him :
His speech at times was abominably filthy.³
He believed God in His true essence to be impersonal, unknowable, beyond the reach of man. On the other hand, every human being, indeed everything that is, is a manifestation of God. Everything that happens is, in a sense, done by Him :
God tells the thief to go and steal, and at the same time warns the householder against the thief.⁴
God is thus so truly all that is, that in Him moral distinctions become obliterated.⁵ Here we get a glimpse of the radical distinction between Christianity and Hinduism. Another point in his conduct will enable us to understand still more clearly. Since every human being is a manifestation of God, if Rāmakṛiṣhṇa happened to meet an unfortunate, he would bow down before her in adoration. Contrast with this the mind of Christ, who loved the unfortunate as a child of God, but could not be content, unless she came to repentance.
Image: RAMAKRISHNA TEACHING KESHAB THE HARMONY OF ALL RELIGIONS
Like every ordinary Hindu, Rāmakṛiṣhṇa regarded all deities as manifestations of the impersonal Supreme. He recognizes the goddess Kālī as one of the chief manifestations of God. She was to him the divine mother of the universe, and he worshipped her more than any other divinity. He worshipped her by means of idols; for he implicitly believed the Hindu doctrine, that the divinity fills every one of his own idols with his presence.¹ He also held the ordinary Hindu idea of the guru. Here is one of his sayings:
The disciple should never criticise his own Guru. He must implicitly obey whatever his Guru says. Says a Bengali couplet:
Though my Guru may visit tavern and still, My Guru is holy Rai Nityānanda still.²
He was thus a true Hindu, and was ready at any moment to defend the whole of Hinduism.
Thus far Rāmakṛiṣhṇa was simply a very devoted Hindu. Had there been nothing more in him, he might have lived at any time during the last two thousand years. There have been multitudes of men like him in India. But the living forces which are making the new India pressed in upon him from every side. Though he had no English education, the new thought came to him by many channels. Christianity was demanding acceptance from Hindus, claiming to be the one religion for the whole world, urging its ethics on all men. Islam was also present, but far less active. What was his response to the situation? He declared that all religions were true, that in their inner essence they were identical, and that each man should remain in the religion in which he had been born:
A truly religious man should think that other religions also are paths leading to the truth.¹
Every man should follow his own religion. A Christian should follow Christianity, a Mohammedan should follow Mohammedanism, and so on. For the Hindus the ancient path, the path of the Aryan Rishis, is the best.²
One of Rāmakṛishṇa’s disciples, a wealthy Calcutta man, named Surendranath Mitter, was keenly interested in the result produced on Keshab Chandra Sen by his master’s teaching on this point,³ and employed a painter to produce a symbolical picture, embodying the idea of the harmony of all religions and of the part played by Rāmakṛishṇa in introducing it to Keshab.⁴ I have not been able to discover with certainty when the picture was painted, but it was already in existence on the 27th of October, 1882.⁵ When it was shewn to Keshab, he exclaimed, “Blessed is the man who conceived the idea of this picture.” At a later date the picture was reproduced and published as a supplement to Unity and the Minister, a weekly paper representing one of the sub-divisions into which the Church of the New Dispensation split up after the great leader’s death. This picture is reproduced here. In the background are a Christian church, a Muḥammadan mosque, and a Hindu temple. In front of the church stand Keshab and Rāmakṛishṇa, Keshab carrying the symbol of the New Dispensation described above,⁶ and Rāmakṛishṇa calling Keshab’s attention to the group of figures arranged in front of the mosque and the temple. In the middle of this group Christ and Chaitanya, a Bengali religious leader of the sixteenth century,⁷ are represented dancing together, while a Muslim, a Confucian, a Sikh, a Parsee, an Anglican clergyman and various Hindus stand round them, each carrying some symbol of his faith. It seems to me that nothing could be more fitting (for I am writing in Oxford and the subject is most apposite) than to dedicate this interesting piece of theological art to the versatile author of Reunion All Round.
It was his teaching on the religions that laid hold of his disciples. He impressed all who came in contact with him as a most sincere soul, a God-intoxicated man ; but what distinguished his message from the teaching of others was his defence of everything Hindu and his theory that all religions are true. This gave his teaching a universalistic turn, and provided the ordinary Hindu with a defence which he could use to meet Christian criticism and the Brāhma Samāj.
His personal influence over all who came within his range was very remarkable. Mozoomdar says:
My mind is still floating in the luminous atmosphere which that wonderful man diffuses around him whenever and wherever he goes. My mind is not yet disenchanted of the mysterious and indefinable pathos which he pours into it whenever he meets me.¹
Over his personal disciples he exercised a still more wonderful power. Their love and reverence for him was boundless. They worshipped him. Vivekānanda once remarked to a well-known Calcutta citizen of high character, Dr. Sircar:
We look upon the Master as a Person who is like God.² We offer to Him worship bordering on divine worship.³
Here we have ancient Hindu guru-worship checked in Vivekānanda’s mind by the Christian teaching he had got in his college course. Apart from Christian influence, he would have said, “He is God, and we worship him as God.”
The picture given of him by his disciples is very pleasing and very vivid; yet there are not many personal traits to notice. Though he was a sannyāsī, he dressed like an ordinary Bengali, and lived like one.¹ Mozoomdar in describing him uses the words:
a child-like tenderness, a profound visible humbleness, an unspeakable sweetness of expression and a smile that I have seen on no other face that I can remember.²
He knew no Sanskrit and scarcely any English. His disciples would smile when he used the English words, “Thank you.” Indeed he had no scholarly knowledge even of Bengali.³ But his conversation was full of quaint, good sense, expressed in vivid homely phrases, and lighted up here and there with a broad kindly humour. He was fond of certain short alliterative phrases, which he had coined,⁴ expressive of his main religious ideas, such as:
Nāham, nāham: Tuhu, tuhu.
that is, “Not I, not I, Thou, Thou.” He was no formal teacher. Indeed he used to say, “I am nobody’s teacher: I am everybody’s disciple.“⁵ He was a conversationalist, pouring out his riches like Samuel Johnson.
- After Rāmakṛishṇa’s death,⁶ his chief disciples decided that they must devote their lives to the spread of his teaching. So a group of them renounced the world and became sannyāsīs. Amongst these by far the most prominent has been Narenda Nath Datta, who took the name Vivekānanda, when he became a sannyāsī. Svāmī is a title of respect given to any sannyāsī. He was a Bengali, belonging to Calcutta, a Kāyastha by caste, born on the 9th of January, 1862.⁷ He received a good English education, taking his degree from a Mission College in Calcutta, and distinguishing himself in philosophy. As a student, he came a good deal under the influence of the Brāhma Samāj. He had a fine voice, and wherever he went was in great request for the singing of Bengali hymns. After taking his degree, he began the study of law; but, early in 1882, an uncle took him to see Rāmakṛishṇa; and that moment became the turning-point in his life.
From the first Rāmakṛishṇa singled him out as one destined to do great things for God, and gave him a great deal of attention. On his master’s death he became a sannyāsī, as we have said, and then spent some six years in retirement on the Himalayas, doubtless studying and thinking about many things. Among other places he is said to have visited Tibet, in order to study Buddhism. In 1892 he emerged from his retirement, and toured all down the western coast of India, going as far south as Trevandrum, whence he turned north again and went to Madras. Preparations were being made at that time for holding the Parliament of Religions in Chicago. Some friends in Madras proposed that Vivekānanda should be sent to the Parliament to represent Hinduism. Funds were collected, and he travelled to America by way of Japan.
The gathering was held in September, 1893; and Vivekānanda made a great impression, partly by his eloquence, partly by his striking figure and picturesque dress, but mainly by his new, unheard-of presentation of Hinduism. We shall deal with his thought later; so that we need not delay over it here. The following quotations from American papers show how far those who were most deeply influenced by the Svāmī went :
He is an orator by divine right, and his strong, intelligent face in its picturesque setting of yellow and orange was hardly less interesting than those earnest words, and the rich, rhythmical utterance he gave them.¹
Vivekananda is undoubtedly the greatest figure in the Parliament of Religions. After hearing him we feel how foolish it is to send missionaries to this learned nation.¹
He stayed some time in America, lecturing and founding Vedānta societies in several places. Two American disciples joined him, Madame Louise, who became Svāmī Abhayānanda, and Mr. Sandsberg, who became Svāmī Kṛipānanda. From America he crossed to England, where he was joined by his most notable disciple, Miss Margaret Noble, who took the name Sister Niveditā (i.e. dedicated).
In January, 1897, the Svāmī arrived in Colombo with his small group of Western disciples, and from there made a triumphal progress all the way up through India. He was everywhere acclaimed by vast audiences of Hindus as the Saviour of the ancient faith; and it was generally believed that America and England were being rapidly converted to Hinduism. There was no limit to the thousands of disciples with which the Svāmī was credited.
He at once set about organizing regular work. Two monasteries were opened, one at Belur, near Calcutta, the other at Mayavati on the Himalayas, near Almora. These monasteries are meant to receive young men who have become sannyāsīs of the Rāmakṛishṇa Mission, as it is called, and to give them a training for their work. The monastery at Belur near Calcutta is the headquarters of all the work. The same year one of the most outstanding features of the Rāmakṛishṇa Mission, its philanthropic activity, was started. There was widespread famine in India then; and Vivekānanda was able to gather money, and to organize a number of enthusiastic followers at several centres for the relief of the famine-stricken.
But in 1898 Vivekānanda’s health gave way, and he was advised to go to Britain and America for a change. He and Sister Niveditā sailed together. He spent but a short time in England, and went on to America. The climate of California helped his strength a good deal, and he soon began work again. It was at this time that the Vedānta Society was founded in San Francisco, and also the Sānti Āśrama, the Peace Retreat. He went to New York, and founded the Vedānta society there. It was then arranged that he should attend the Congress of Religions, which was to be held in Paris in 1900. After attending the Congress, he returned to India, but in very poor health.
Yet he could not be still; and, during the next two years, he organized a good deal of fresh work. A third monastery was founded, in Madras; and centres of philanthropic effort were formed in Madras, Benares and in the Murshidabad district of Bengal. He was deeply impressed with the need of work and self-sacrifice. He would not deliver lectures, but did all he could to set men to work.[^1] He passed away rather unexpectedly on the 4th of July, 1902, at the early age of forty.
We may grasp his message most distinctly, if we take it in four parts.
A. All religions are true and good; and, therefore, every man ought to remain in his own religion.
B. God is impersonal, unknowable, non-moral. He is manifested in the whole world, in all men, in all gods and in all incarnations. The human soul is truly divine. All men are saints. It is a calumny and a sin to say that any human being can be guilty of sin. Idolatry is a very healthy and spiritual form of worship. Every particle of Hinduism is of value and must be retained. The reformers are mistaken. In trying to uproot the weeds, they are tearing up the precious wheat also:
The old ideas may be all superstition, but within these masses of superstition are nuggets of gold and truth. Have you discovered means by which to keep that gold alone, without any of the dross?¹
C. Hindu civilization, since it springs from the oldest and noblest of religions, is good, beautiful and spiritual in every part. The foreigner fails altogether to understand it. All the criticism of European scholars is erroneous, and everything that missionaries say on the subject is wickedly slanderous. The Hindu nation is a spiritual nation. It has taught the world in the past, and will yet teach the whole world again.
D. European nations and Western civilization are gross, material, selfish and sensual; and therefore their influence is most seriously degrading to the Hindu. It is of the utmost importance that every Hindu should do all in his power to defend his religion and civilization, and save Hindu society from the poison of Western influence. Yet the Hindu requires to use Western methods and Western education. Nay, the Hindu must even give up his vegetarianism, and become a meat-eater, it may be a beef-eater, in order to become strong, and build up a powerful civilization once more on the soil of India.
Vivekānanda has no historical conscience whatsoever. He is ready to re-write the whole history of antiquity in a paragraph, to demonstrate in a sentence that China, in the East, and Greece and Rome, in the West, owed all their philosophical acumen and every spiritual thought they had to the teachers of ancient India. He learned the appeal to history from his Western education; but there is not the faintest reflection in his writings of the accuracy and careful research which are the very life-breath of modern scholarship.
He exercised a fine influence on young India in one direction. He summoned his fellow-countrymen to stand on their own feet, to trust themselves and to play the man; and his words were not without fruit.
It is striking to note the harvest that appeared in Vivekānanda from the seed sown by his master Rāmakṛishṇa. The latter dropped every moral restriction when thinking of God and his manifestations. Vivekānanda frankly drew the natural inference: “sin is impossible; there is no such thing as human responsibility; man can do no wrong.” Rāmakṛishṇa’s indiscriminate acceptance and uncritical defence of everything Hindu expanded in his disciple into unbounded laudation of everything Indian; and, while Vivekānanda himself bears witness that his master was genial and kindly, and condemned no one, the disciple, not unnaturally, was led by his unmixed praise of everything Hindu to the most violent and unjust condemnation of everything Western.
The final outcome of Vivekānanda’s teaching will be discussed in another connection.¹
Vivekānanda’s English disciple, Sister Niveditā, settled in a small Hindu house in the northern part of Calcutta, and lived there a life of simple service for several years, visiting the Hindu homes around about her, conducting a school for girls in her own house, and leading young Hindus into practical service. She was a woman of deep romantic feeling and of considerable literary power. She readily picked up her master’s method of glorifying Hinduism and Hindu life, and far exceeded him. Her chief work, The Web of Indian Life, shows, on the one hand, most remarkable sympathy with both the ideals and the actualities of Hindu life, and proves to every capable reader what a priceless help towards interpretation sympathy is, but, on the other hand, contains such exaggerated language in praise of Hindu customs and institutions, that many orthodox Hindus have protested against the book as altogether untrustworthy and as thoroughly unhealthy read-ing for young Hindus themselves. Yet Sister Niveditā had her reward. Though her book is unwise, she loved the Hindu people and served them; and they gave her their love. At her death, in October, 1911, there was an extraordinary outburst of feeling in the Hindu community of Bengal.
The work of the Rāmakṛishṇa Mission[^1] has grown slowly since Vivekānanda’s death. There have been no such results as one would have expected to spring from the unbounded enthusiasm with which the Svāmī was welcomed, when he returned from America. He summoned his countrymen to practical service, to self-sacrificing work for India. Had the myriads who acclaimed him really responded to his call, the work would soon have attained very great dimensions; but the truth is that ancient Hinduism does not teach the duty of service at all, and that all that the average educated Hindu wants is to get somebody to assure him that Hinduism is as good as Christianity, and that he does not need to become a Christian. Having heard this, amidst the flare of trumpets with which Vivekānanda returned from America, the average man gave a sigh of relief, and returned to his vegetating life as an ordinary Hindu. Vivekānanda’s call to self-sacrificing service was just another of those troublesome appeals which they had heard over and over again from the missionaries and the Brāhma leaders; and they paid no more attention to it. Only a few responded; and these continue to carry on the work. There are now five monasteries, Belur, near Calcutta, Benares, Allahabad, Mayavati, on the Himalayas, and Bangalore. These institutions are meant for the residence and training of sannyāsīs. The whole mission is governed from the Belur monastery. At Benares, Hardwar, Allahabad and Brindaban, the four chief centres of Hindu pilgrimage, permanent charitable institutions, called Sevāśrams, Homes of Service, have grown up. Care for the poor and medical relief are their chief activities. Educational work is also attempted in a few places; and the mission is sensitive to need and ready to help, when distress arises through famine, plague or flood. There is a desire in the mission to build up a large educational activity, but this has not yet been found possible. Vivekānanda wished to combine Western and Hindu education.
The founder of the Ramakrishna Mission, Svāmħ Vivekānanda, had his own ideal of national education. For, to him, as is evident from his Indian utterances, the national ideal was a thing already realized within. It is claimed by many, like the late Sister Nivedita, that he was the first representative of the synthetic culture which India must evolve, if she is to live.¹
Vivekānanda’s influence still lives in America. There are societies that teach Hinduism in various ways in New York, Boston, Washington, Pittsburg and San Francisco. His influence seems to be far stronger in San Francisco than anywhere else. There is a picturesque Hindu Temple there, in which classes are held and addresses given, and the literature of the mission sold. They have a little monthly magazine, called the Voice of Freedom. Two Svāmħs are in charge. There are three lectures every Sunday; and classes for the study of the Għtā, the Upanishads and Yoga are held on week days.
Vivekānanda started several magazines, which are still published in India. The Brahmavādin, which is published in Madras, and the Prabuddha Bhārata, which is published at Mayavati in the Himalayas, are both in English, and contain a good deal of useful matter on Hindu philosophy. A Bengali monthly, named Udbodhan, is published in Calcutta. Books written by Vivekānanda during his lifetime, and a few others, published by other members of the mission since then, are sold in the various centres.
LITERATURE. — LIFE: Rāmakṛishṇa, His Life and Sayings, by F. Max Müller, London, Longmans, 1910, 5s. (This book contains the best biography, and also a collection of his sayings.) Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, according to M. (i.e. Prof. M. N. Gupta), Part I, Madras, Ramakrishna Mission, 1912, Rs. 2–8. (A picture of Rāmakṛishṇa’s life with his disciples and his teaching: see above, p. 194.) My Master (a lecture), by Swami Vivekananda, Calcutta, Udbodhan Office, 1911, 8 as. VIVEKĀNANDA: Swami Vivekananda, His Life and Teachings, Madras, Natesan, 4 as. Speeches and Writings of Swami Vivekananda. Madras, Natesan, Rs. 2. NIVEDITĀ: Sister Nivedita, A Sketch of her Life and Her Services to India, Madras, Natesan, 4 as. The Web of Indian Life, by Sister Nivedita, London, Heinemann, 5s. An account of the Rāmakṛishṇa Mission appeared in the Hindu Patriot of October, 1912.