THE INDIAN RENAISSANCE AND SWAMI VIVEKANANDA

SAIKAT DAS (C.N.M.V)

I am grateful to the organizers for providing me an opportunity to present a
speech on Swami Vivekananda and therefore at the outset I would like to pay my
respect and homage to them. I am also honoured to have such a distinguished and
patronizing audience before me and thankful to them for their attention.
It is indeed a matter of great pride for me to speak on a man who taught us to
be proud of our country. It was Swami Vivekananda, the Cyclonic monk of the
East, who, in his Chicago Lectures, taught the world of the universal values
inherent in the Indian tradition and the inclusive spirit of Hinduism which, as it
flourished in the Indian soil, overcame its sectarian bounds and flowered into an all
encompassing womb mothering that spontaneous spirit of unity in all its diverse
manifestations.
This regeneration of the Indian spirit after ages of gloom was effected by what
is now known as the Indian Renaissance which first made its appearance in the
fertile soil of Bengal. Largely an offshoot of the British conquest of Bengal and the
subsequent introduction of the English language as the medium of instruction in
the Govt. sponsored education system which opened the horizon of European
knowledge to the Indian mind, the rebirth of the Indian psyche went through a
complex process of evolution to fully appreciate the historic role it was destined to
play in years to come culminating in the freedom of India from the yoke of the
foreign rule.
Hence it is very instructive and an intellectually and aesthetically
stimulating exercise to study the nature of the Indian Renaissance through the eyes
of one of its pioneers who at the same time was a product of it.
The Indian Renaissance has two distinct dimensions. One is of social
reformation and cultural awakening and the other is of the growth of the national
political consciousness which in its turn gave birth to the Indian freedom
movement. It is worthwhile to note in this context that the socio-cultural and
political reawakening in the Indian context and especially in that of Bengal did not
originate at the same time but one led to the other with the socio-cultural

phenomenon preceding its political counterpart. Hence the needs to contextualize

Vivekananda in the landscape of the Indian renaissance in order to fully appreciate
his historical role and his views with reference to the Indian Renaissance.
Swami Vivekananda was the last great figure belonging exclusively to the
socio-cultural domain of the Renaissance movement. Indeed he belonged to that
fateful hour of the Indian rebirth when the primary concern with the socio-cultural
reforms by the Renaissance Fathers was slowly but surely tilting towards the
growth of political consciousness and its attendant activities. In Gurudev
Rabindranath Tagore, Indias first Nobel laureate and a contemporary of the
Swami, we observe both these elements in full play.
Vivekananda is historically associated with the spiritual rebirth of India.
His religious reform movement under the aegis of his guru Ramakrishna
Paramahansa was not only directed towards modernizing the Sanatan Hindu
Dharma but also to endow it with a progressive spirit and an abiding character so
that our ancient religion could accommodate the spiritual need of the new Indian
society which was considerably anglicized at the intellectual level and
consequently imbued with the spirit of the Indian Renaissance.
Vivekananda was fully conscious of this historic role he was destined
to play. In his lectures in the West we find an exuberant expression of the
comprehensive scope of his spiritual appeal that was way beyond the dogma of any
sectarian order. Hence his Hinduism, more than having a religious connotation,
encapsulated those very universal values cherished by the Modern Man which has
to be traced to the Renaissance in Europe. In the garb of the Hindu Monk he was
the preacher of those very ideals that have their origin in very best of western
tradition. This explains his euphoric acceptance in the West especially in the
United States of America and the rather unfortunate rejection of him and his ideals
by the conservative section of his co-religionists. All his subsequent activities
whether the founding of the Belur Math, the functioning of his order of monks or
his further missions to the West bear testimony to this.
However, he was consciously unconscious of this fact.

This particular disposition on his part takes on a curious note as he

endeavoured to give a new lease of life to the ancient Indian tradition basing it on
the western precipice. He called for the amalgamation of all that is of enduring
value in the Orient and the Occident and constructed a new religion out of this
synthesis though he enveloped it with the Sanatan Hindu Dharma. However, when
his contemporaries tried to emulate the Western political ideologies and wanted to
put them into practice he was very skeptical about it. He would accept the West not
at its face value but with an Indian dimension added to it.
These contradictions in his attitudes can be explained by the complex
relationship that exists between the colonizer and the colonized. The colonized
cannot accept the fact that he has to borrow from his colonial master for his rebirth.
Rather he would deceive himself into thinking of the borrowed item as his own
invention. This proclivity of his originated from the acute identity crisis that he
suffered being the colonized.
Hence not by his pronouncements but by the course of his work that we
should make a proper assessment of his views on the Indian Renaissance. And here
while appreciating the pioneering role that he played in the religious reform
movement we should not be oblivious of its limitations and negative implications.
The emphasis on the religious reform movement originally intended to
create a strong nationalistic feeling was instrumental in churning up the Hindu
revivalist movement. This in its turn created tensions in this multi-cultural and
multi-religious fabric of the Indian society which were shrewdly exploited by the
British rulers for their own advantage at crucial moments of Indian history leading
to the cleavage of the Indian nationhood. The germs of Partition thus lay in the
exertions of the Swami though it was not possible for him to be aware of its later
day ramifications. In this sense Mr. Jinnah is truly his offspring however unwanted
he may be.
All said and done the study of Vivekananda and his role in the Indian
Renaissance is truly revealing of the complex dynamics of the Indian Renaissance
with all its glory and pitfalls since it shaped the course of South Asian sociopolitical and cultural history to a considerable extent.