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This is an archive article published on January 12, 2024
What is National Youth Day?
Swami Vivekananda's birth anniversary: Why we celebrate National Youth Day, the theme of this year's National Youth Festival, and more.
As one of India’s leading thinkers who rediscovered Indian philosophy through ancient Hindu scriptures, Swami Vivekananda represented India and Hinduism at the Parliament of the World’s Religions in 1893. (File Photo)
India is celebrating the National Youth Day today in honour of Swami Vivekananda, whose birth anniversary falls on January 12. Since 1984, the nation has marked the day by urging the youth to live up to the values, principles and beliefs that Vivekananda embraced.
As a part of National Youth Day celebrations, India organises an annual National Youth Festival from January 12 to 16. The theme of this year’s festival is “Viksit Bharat@ 2047: Yuva ke liye, yuva ke dwara”, as per a Press Trust of India report.
A true luminary
Swami Vivekananda is considered one of the great Indian monks who enlightened the Western world about Hinduism. As a disciple of Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa, he pushed for national integration in colonial India and is credited with reviving Hinduism in the nation.
In his famous speech in Chicago at the World’s Parliament of Religions in 1893, Vivekananda rallied the world against sectarianism, bigotry and fanaticism, saying, “… I fervently hope that the bell that tolled this morning in honour of this convention may be the death-knell of all fanaticism, of all persecutions with the sword or with the pen, and of all uncharitable feelings between persons wending their way to the same goal.”
Key quotes from Swami Vivekananda
📌 Arise! Awake! and stop not until the goal is reached.
📌 “Whatever you are doing, put your whole mind on it. If you are shooting, your mind should be only on the target. Then you will never miss. If you are learning your lessons, think only of the lesson. In India boys and girls are taught to do this.”
📌 “The goal of mankind is knowledge … Now this knowledge is inherent in man. No knowledge comes from outside: it is all inside. What we say a man ‘knows’, should, in strict psychological language, be what he ‘discovers’ or ‘unveils’; what man ‘learns’ is really what he discovers by taking the cover off his own soul, which is a mine of infinite knowledge.”
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📌 “It is our own mental attitude which makes the world what it is for us. Our thought make things beautiful, our thoughts make things ugly. The whole world is in our own minds. Learn to see things in the proper light. First, believe in this world…”
📌 “To worship God even for the sake of salvation or any other reward is equally degenerate. Love knows no reward. Give your love unto to God, but do not ask anything in return even from Him through pray.”
📌 “We are responsible for what we are, and whatever we wish ourselves to be, we have the power to make ourselves. If what we are now has been the result of our own past actions, it certainly follows that whatever we wish to be in future can be produced by our present actions; so we have to know how to act.”
📌 You cannot believe in God until you believe in yourself.
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