LIFE HISROY (FIRST PARA)

Swami Vivekananda was born Narendranath Dutta, son of a well known

lawyer of Calcutta, Biswanath Dutta, and a very intelligent and pious lady,
Bhuvaneshwari Devi, in the year 1863. Naren learnt the epics and Puranas from his
mother. Naren was an all rounder. He could sing, was good at sports, had a ready
wit, his range of knowledge was extensive, had a rational frame of mind and he
loved to help people.

He was a natural leader. He was a student of philosophy and the story of God very
much haunted his mind. It was in Sri Ramakrishna he found his guru. Vivekananda
travelled extensively through India. He was shocked to see the conditions of rural
India- people ignorant, superstitious, half-starved, and victims of caste-tyranny.

AIM (THIRD PARA)

. He was the first religious leader in India to understand and openly

declare that the real cause of India’s downfall was the neglect of the
masses. The immediate need was to provide food and other bare
necessities of life to the hungry millions. For this they should be
taught improved methods of agriculture, village industries, etc. It was
in this context that Vivekananda grasped the crux of the problem of
poverty in India (which had escaped the attention of social reformers of
his days): owing to centuries of oppression, the downtrodden masses
had lost faith in their capacity to improve their lot. It was first of all
necessary to infuse into their minds faith in themselves.

His contribution

y: One main contribution that Swami Vivekananda made to

Hinduism was to give it a proper identity, a

totality, a wholeness. Before Swamiji came

on the scene, there were only several sects,

each more or less independent, each claiming superiority over the
others. There was no

clear understanding of Hinduism as the common ground of all these

sects. ’ It was Swami

Vivekananda who showed for the first time

that Hinduism as a whole has certain basic

concepts which are common to all the sects.

These basic concepts give Hinduism its

distinctive identity.