Having just celebrated Tagores 150th birth anniversary,we now have Swami Vivekanandas to celebrate. Both were sons of Bengal but had very different visions of India. Vivekananda became a star after his appearance at the Chicago Congress of World Religions; perhaps the first global star India had in modern times. He was not only a brilliant speaker on Hinduism,but looked the part of a holy man. With his stunning good looks and voice,he also dressed in saffron,which has now become a uniform for swamis.
Tagore on the other hand was brought up in the Brahmo Samaj tradition. He too struck the English society of early 20th century as an Indian mystic bringing Asias message to the world. But his religion was universalist. Whats more is that he was not a saint but a superb novelist,short story writer,playwright,painter and a great musician. Yet,much of him is now forgotten. He is not read in the West or even India. Ask any Indian what they know of Tagore and they will mutter,Where the mind is without fear. No one reads Vivekananda much either. The edition of his Complete Works is badly printed and unedited. His disciples may worship him but they do not value him. They obviously do not read him. But Vivekananda is one of those figures of early modern India whom the secularists accept as much as the fans of Hindutva do. That is probably because neither of the camps read him. Yet,he is central to the story of modern India. Vivekananda is most interesting not when he is expounding the Gita,but when he is examining modern Indian society. Thus,he wrote to an Indian friend in 1894,…Religion has no business to formulate social laws and insist on the difference between beings…. Then again,Social laws were created by economic conditions under the sanction of religion. The terrible mistake of religion was to interfere in social matters. Vivekanandas nationalism was tough. As he writes in his The Mission of the Vedanta ,he has to tell his fellow Indians some harsh truths. …When one of our fellows is murdered or ill-treated by an Englishman,howls go up all over the country. Who is responsible? And the answer comes (from introspection to him) every time: Not the English; no,they are not responsible; it is we who are responsible for our misery and all our degradation…Our aristocratic ancestors went on treading the common masses of our country underfoot,till they become helpless,till under this torment the poor people nearly forget that they were humans.
