October 2011 - Advaita Ashrama

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wicked, my God the miserable, my God the
poor of all races, of all species, is the special object
of my worship (5.136–7).
Swami Vivekananda brought the highest
teachings of the Vedas to India’s masses and to
the world. Throughout India his call resounded:
‘Arise! Awake! And stop not till the goal is
reached.’ In 1897 he delivered in Madras his
powerful lecture ‘The Future of India’. Regarding
that great event Romain Rolland wrote years
later: ‘From that day, the awakening of the torpid
Colossus began. If the generation that followed,
saw, three years after Vivekananda’s death, the
revolt of Bengal, the prelude to the great movement
of Tilak and Gandhi … it is due to the initial
shock, to the mighty “Lazarus, come forth!”
of the message from Madras.’ 25
He had great hope for the future generations
of India. Her true servants and teachers would
emerge from their poverty and rural isolation
to build her anew. Sometime in 1900 Swamiji
writes in his ‘Memoirs of European Travel ’:
Let her [India] arise—out of the peasant’s cottage,
grasping the plough; out of the huts of the
fisherman, the cobbler, and the sweeper. Let her
spring from the grocer’s shop, from beside the
oven of the fritter-seller. Let her emanate from
the factory, from marts, and from markets. Let
her emerge from groves and forests, from hills
and mountains. These common people have
suffered oppression for thousands of years—
suffered it without murmur, and as a result have
got a wonderful fortitude. They have suffered
eternal misery, which has given them unflinching
vitality. Living on a handful of grain, they
can convulse the world; give them only half a
piece of bread, and the whole world will not
be big enough to contain their energy; they are
endowed with … inexhaustible vitality. … And,
besides, they have got the wonderful strength
that comes of a pure and moral life, which is not
Prabuddha Bharata
to be found anywhere else in the world. Such
peacefulness and contentment, such love, such
power of silent and incessant work, and such
manifestation of lion’s strength in times of action—where
else will you find these! 26
By 1902, the year of Swamiji’s mahasamadhi,
the world began to witness the awakening of
India in response to his call.
Great and far-reaching was the effect of
Swamiji’s feeling for the poor and afflicted. In
April 1898 he was in Darjeeling. Returning there
after visiting the snowy region of Sandukphu
he suffered an attack of fever accompanied by
coughing and a bad cold. He was well on the way
to recovery when he received news of the plague
in Calcutta. The shock put him in a grave mood
and his health declined. Akhandananda remembered
the incident:
Swamiji had been such a jolly person. Suddenly
one morning I found that he had become serious.
The whole day he did not eat anything,
nor did he talk with anybody. The doctor was
immediately called, but could not diagnose the
disease. He [the Swami] sat the whole day with
his head on a pillow. Then I heard that in Calcutta
three-fourths of the population had left
the metropolis owing to the plague epidemic.
That’s why Swamiji had become so serious. The
Swami said at that time, ‘We have to serve them,
even though we are required to sell everything.
We were only wandering monks living under a
tree. We shall stay under a tree.’ 27
In April and May 1898 the Ramakrishna Mission
rallied their resources to alleviate the terrible
effects of that year’s plague in Calcutta.
Despite being ill, on 3 May 1898 Swamiji returned
to Calcutta with a full heart to head the
massive relief work. The monks were daunted by
the lack of funds, which had already been used
to purchase land for building the new Math
at Belur, the treasured future home of their
PB October 2011