A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

440 THE MISSION OF THE VEDANTA.country; I read and I weep, and the next momentcomes to my mind the question who is responsible for it all.As a Vedantist I cannot but put that question to myself.The Hindu is a man of introspection, he wants to see thingsin and through himself, through the subjective vision.I, therefore, ask myself who is responsible, and the answercomesevery time, not the English, no, they are not responsible/ : t is we who are responsible for all our miseryand all our degradation, and we alone ar<?responsible*-.Our aristocratic ancestors went on treading the commonmasses of our country under foot, tillthey became helpless,till under this torment the poor, poor people nearly forgotthat they were human beings. They have been compelledto be merely hewers of wood and drawers of water forcenturies, so much so that theyare made to believe thatthey are born as slaves, born as hewers of wood anddrawers of water. And ifanybody says a kind word forthem, with all our boasted education of modern times, Ioften find our men shrink at once from the duty of liftingup the downtrodden. Not only so, but I also find thatall sorts of most demoniacal and brutal arguments, culledfrom the crude ideas ofhereditarytransmission and othersuch gibberish from the "Western world, are brought forward in order to brutalise and tyrannise over the poor allthe more. In the Parliamknt of Religions in Americathere came among others a young man, a Negro born, areal African Negro, and he made a beautiful speech. Ibecame interested in the young man, and now and thentalked to him, but could learn nothing about him. Butone day in England I met some Americans, and this iswhat they told me that this boy was the son of a Negrochief in the heart of Africa, and that one day another chiefbecame angry with the father of this boy and murdered