JAGADISH CHANDRA BOSE

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“What a void this makes! What great things were accomplished in these few years! How one man could have done it all! And how all is stilled now. And yet, when one is tired and weary, it is best that he should rest. I seem to see him just as I saw him in Paris two years ago…the strong man with the large hope, everything large about him.

I cannot tell you what a great sadness has come. I wish we could see beyond it. Our thoughts are in India with those who are suffering July 9th 1902.

It seems to me that nothing is lost and all the great thoughts and work and service and hope remain embodied in and about the place which gave them birth. All our life is but an echo of a few great moments, an echo which reverberates through all time. … That great soul is released; his heroic deeds on this earth are over. Can we realize what that work has been—how one man did all this ? When one is tired it is best that he should sleep, but his deeds and teachings will walk the earth and waken and strengthen.”

Jagadish Chandra Bose (1858-1937)

Jagadish Chandra Bose was a Bengali Physicist and Science fiction writer, who pioneered the investigation of radio and microwave optics, made extremely significant contributions to plant science, and laid the foundations of experimental science in the Indian subcontinent. He is considered the father of radio science.

INDIRA GANDHI

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“I had had the good fortune to know about the life and teachings of Swami Vivekananda as well as about the activities of the Ramakrishna Mission. My parents and specially my mother were very close with the Ramakrishna Mission. And I must say that the teachings of Vivekananda had inspired all the members of the Nehru family both in their political activities and day-to-day lives.

Swamiji’s teachings, writings and speeches which appear on every page of his works, are indeed stimulant. Swamiji provides us courage, strength, and faith and teaches us how to be self- sufficient. These are the basic tenets of life which India needed most and which would be relevant for all time to come.

Swamiji has taught us that we are the inheritors of a glorious and sublime culture. He has at the same time shown us and analysed the root causes of our national malady. It was Swami Vivekananda who has given us the ways and means how to reconstruct a new India. Swamiji preached the message of universal brotherhood. And a single word which echoed and reached in all his speeches, was abhãþ i.e. fearlessness.”

Indira Gandhi (1917-1984)

Mrs Indira Gandhi was the first woman Prime Minister of Indian Republic. She was born in an illustrious Nehru family. She studied at Santiniketan in Bengal and then left for higher studies abroad. She returned to India after her studies at Oxford and then was involved in Indian politics. She toured extensively accompanying her father Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. Mrs Indira Gandhi became the Prime Minister of India for three consecutive terms from 1966 onwards. But she could not complete her fourth term from 1980 for her assassination in 1984. She proved her mettle as an able-bodied stateswoman during the 1965 Indo-Pak war. Nuclear weapons programme near the desert village of Pokhran was launched during her tenure in 1974. Mrs Indira Gandhi was awarded the Bhàrat Ratna in 1971.

CHAKRAVARTI RAJAGOPALACHARI

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 “Swami Vivekananda saved Hinduism and saved India. But for him we would have lost our religion and would not have gained our freedom. We therefore owe everything to Swami Vivekananda. May his faith, his courage and his wisdom ever inspire us so that we may keep safe the treasure we have received from him!”

Chakravarti Rajagopalachari (1879-1972)

Chakravarti Rajagopalachari was the first Indian to occupy the position of the Governor-General of India in 1948 and the last person to hold the position until India became a Republic in 1950.

Rajagopalachari remained in political life as a Minister of Home affairs in New Delhi in 1951 and the Chief Minister of the State of Madras from 1952-54. As a result of his differences with Nehru, he founded the ‘Swatantra Party’ in the mid 1950s.

He was popularly known as a man of reason and moderation rather than of ideology and populism. He was a powerful orator and writer in both Tamil and English, and among his lasting legacies are his translations of the two epics, the Ràmàyaõa and the Mahàbhàrata.

Indian Nationalist Leader. Closely associated with Gandhi (from 1918); served on Working Committee of Indian National Congress (1922-42); Chief Minister of Madras (1937-39, 1952-54); Governor General of India (1948-50); founder of conservative ‘Swatantra’ (Freedom Party, 1959).

BAL GANGADHAR TILAK

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“It is doubtful if there is any Hindu who does not know the name of Sri Vivekananda Swami. There has been extraordinary advancement of material science in the nineteenth century. Under the circumstances, to present the spiritual science prevailing in India for thousands of years by wonderful exposition and then to kindle admiration and respect among the Western scholars, and, at the same time, to create a sympathetic attitude for India, the mother of spiritual science, can only be an achievement of superhuman power. With English education, the flood of material science spread so fast that it required extraordinary courage and extraordinary genius to stand against that phenomenon and change its direction. Before Swami Vivekananda the Theosophical society began this work. But it is an undisputed fact that it was Swami Vivekananda who first held aloft the banner of Hinduism as a challenge against the material science of the West. … It was Swami Vivekananda who took on his shoulders this stupendous task of establishing the glory of Hinduism in different countries across the borders. And he, with his erudition, oratorical power, enthusiasm and inner force, laid that work upon a solid foundation. … Twelve centuries ago øaïkaràcàrya was the only great personality, who not only spoke of the purity of our religion, not only uttered in words that this religion was our strength and wealth, not only said that it was our sacred duty to preach this religion in the length and breadth of the world—but also brought all this into action. Swami Vivekananda is a person of that stature—who appeared towards the last half of the nineteenth century.”

Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1856-1920)

Born at Ratnagiri, Tilak was a frontline leader of the Indian Freedom Movement. He was widely acclaimed as ‘The Father of Indian Unrest’. Influenced by Swami Vivekananda and Swami Dayananda he did a great amount of study on Vedic Philosophy. He was a scholar in Sanskrit and Mathematics. His works include books like The Gãtà Rahasya and The Arctic Home in the Vedas.

ANNIE BESANT

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“A striking figure, clad in yellow and orange, shining like the sun of India in the midst of the heavy atmosphere of Chicago, a lion head, piercing eyes, mobile lips, movements swift and abrupt — such was my first impression of Swami Vivekananda, as I met him in one of the rooms set apart for the use of the delegates to the Parliament of Religions. Off the platform, his figure was instinct with pride of country, pride of race — the representative of the oldest of living religions, surrounded by curious gazers of nearly the youngest religion. India was not to be shamed before the hurrying arrogant West by this her envoy and her son. He brought her message, he spoke in her name, and the herald remembered the dignity of the royal land whence he came. Purposeful, virile, strong, he stood out, a man among men, able to hold his own.

On the platform another side came out. The dignity and the inborn sense of worth and power still were there, but all was subdued to the exquisite beauty of the spiritual message which he had brought, to the sublimity of that matchless truth of the East which is the heart and the life of India, the wondrous teaching of the Self. Enraptured, the huge multitude hung upon his words; not a syllable must be lost, not a cadence missed! ‘That man, a heathen!’ said one, as he came out of the great hall, and we send missionaries to his people! It would be more fitting that they should send missionaries to us!’ ”

 

Annie Besant (1847-1933)

Annie Besant was a half-Irish woman of boundless energy. Mrs Besant began social reform work in London and joined first the Fabion Society and then the Theosophical Society in 1889. She was elected President of the Theosophical Society in 1907 and held that position until her death. Her life in India began in 1893 with lecture tours and expressed her views through a weekly newspaper, New India. She founded the Home Rule League in 1916 and campaigned in London for constitutional reform.

She was elected President of the Indian National Congress in 1871. The Indian Boy Scouts Association, the Women’s Indian Association, the Society for the Promotion of National Education, and a National University of Adyar near Madras are all her gifts to India.

A. L. Basham

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“Even now a hundred years after the birth of Narendranath Datta, who later became Swami Vivekananda, it is very difficult to evaluate his importance in the scale of world history. It is certainly far greater than any Western historian or most Indian historians would have suggested at the time of his death. The passing of the years and the many stupendous and unexpected events which have occurred since then suggests that in centuries to come he will be remembered as one of the main moulders of the modern world, especially as far as Asia is concerned, and as one of the most significant figures in the whole history of Indian religion, comparable in importance to such great teachers as øaïkara and Ràmànuja, and definitely more important than the saints of local or regional significance such as Kabãr, Caitanya, and the many Nàyanmàrs and âlvàrs of South India.

I believe also that Vivekananda will always be remembered in the world’s history because he virtually initiated what the late Dr C. E. M. Joad once called ‘the counter-attack from the East’. Since the days of the Indian missionaries who travelled in South-East Asia and China preaching Buddhism and Hinduism more than a thousand years earlier, he was the first Indian religious teacher to make an impression outside India.”

 

A. L. Basham (1914-1986)

A famous Indologist. As a visiting professor invited by Britain, United States, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Recipient of De÷ikottama Award from Visva-Bharati University in 1985. Formerly Vivekananda Professor of the Calcutta Asiatic Society and the President of Ramakrishna Movement. The Wonder that was India is the most famous of his books.

A. D. Pusalker

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“Universally acclaimed as a pioneer in the field of national liberation in India, Swami Vivekananda was complex personality being a lover of humanity, a world teacher of religion, a great patriot, and a leader of the Indian people. Truly has he been regarded as a patriot-saint of modern India and an inspirer of her dormant consciousness, who instilled a freshness and vigour into it. He presented the rare combination of being patriot and a saint, in whom patriotism was deified into the highest saintship and loving service to fellow men into true worship.”

A. D. Pusalker (1905-1973)

Professor A. D. Pusalker was an Indologist and the Director and Curator, Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Poona. He did his MA in Sanskrit and obtained his PhD on Bhàùà.

He contributed profusely to the field of Indology namely Puràõas and Ancient Indian history and Culture.

He wrote about 100 research papers and edited first two volumes of Cultural Heritage of India (1957-59) published from the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture, Golpark, Kolkata. He was awarded a silver medal by the Asiatic Society of Bombay. The President of India awarded him certificate of Honour in 1971 in recognition of ‘his erudite Scholarship and enlightening contributions to Indological Studies’.

He has authored several books which include Eminent Indians, Indian Literature etc.

Are paranormal things real?

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(Selection from Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda Volume 6 – Conversations and Dialogues)

 

Swamiji: Once when travelling in the Himalayas I had to take up my abode for a night in a village of the hill-people. Hearing the beating of drums in the village some time after nightfall, I came to know upon inquiring of my host that one of the villagers had been possessed by a Devatâ or good spirit. To meet his importunate wishes and to satisfy my own curiosity, we went out to see what the matter really was. Reaching the spot, I found a great concourse of people. A tall man with long, bushy hair was pointed out to me, and I was told that person had got the Devata on him. I noticed an axe being heated in fire close by the man; and after a while, I found the red-hot thing being seized and applied to parts of his body and also to his hair! But wonder of wonders, no part of his body or hair thus branded with the red-hot axe was found to be burnt, and there was no expression of any pain in his face! I stood mute with surprise. The headman of the village, meanwhile, came up to me and said, “Mahârâj, please exorcise this man out of your mercy.” I felt myself in a nice fix, but moved to do something, I had to go near the possessed man. Once there, I felt a strong impulse to examine the axe rather closely, but the instant I touched it, I burnt my fingers, although the thing had been cooled down to blackness. The smarting made me restless and all my theories about the axe phenomenon were spirited away from my mind! However, smarting with the burn, I placed my hand on the head of the man and repeated for a short while the Japa. It was a matter of surprise to find that the man came round in ten or twelve minutes. Then oh, the gushing reverence the villagers showed to me! I was taken to be some wonderful man! But, all the same, I couldn’t make any head or tail of the whole business. So without a word one way or the other, I returned with my host to his hut. It was about midnight, and I went to bed. But what with the smarting burn in the hand and the impenetrable puzzle of the whole affair, I couldn’t have any sleep that night. Thinking of the burning axe failing to harm living human flesh, it occurred again and again to my mind, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

Disciple: But, could you later on ever explain the mystery, sir?

Swamiji: No. The event came back to me in passing just now, and so I related it to you.

He then resumed: But Shri Ramakrishna used to disparage these supernatural powers; his teaching was that one cannot attain to the supreme truth if the mind is diverted to the manifestation of these powers. The layman mind, however, is so weak that, not to speak of householders, even ninety per cent of the Sâdhus happen to be votaries of these powers. In the West, men are lost in wonderment if they come across such miracles. It is only because Shri Ramakrishna has mercifully made us understand the evil of these powers as being hindrances to real spirituality that we are able to take them at their proper value. Haven’t you noticed how for that reason the children of Shri Ramakrishna pay no heed to them?

Swami Yogananda said to Swamiji at this moment, “Well, why don’t you narrate to our Bângâl (Lit. A man from East Bengal, i.e. the disciple.) that incident of yours in Madras when you met the famous ghost-tamer?”

At the earnest entreaty of the disciple Swamiji was persuaded to give the following account of his experience:

Once while I was putting up at Manmatha Babu’s (Babu Manmatha Nath Bhattacharya, M.A., late Accountant General, Madras.) place, I dreamt one night that my mother had died. My mind became much distracted. Not to speak of corresponding with anybody at home, I used to send no letters in those days even to our Math. The dream being disclosed to Manmatha, he sent a wire to Calcutta to ascertain facts about the matter. For the dream had made my mind uneasy on the one hand, and on the other, our Madras friends, with all arrangements ready, were insisting on my departing for America immediately, and I felt rather unwilling to leave before getting any news of my mother. So Manmatha who discerned this state of my mind suggested our repairing to a man living some way off from town, who having acquired mystic powers over spirits could tell fortunes and read the past and the future of a man’s life. So at Manmatha’s request and to get rid of my mental suspense, I agreed to go to this man. Covering the distance partly by railway and partly on foot, we four of us — Manmatha, Alasinga, myself, and another — managed to reach the place, and what met our eyes there was a man with a ghoulish, haggard, soot-black appearance, sitting close to a cremation ground. His attendants used some jargon of South Indian dialect to explain to us that this was the man with perfect power over the ghosts. At first the man took absolutely no notice of us; and then, when we were about to retire from the place, he made a request for us to wait. Our Alasinga was acting as the interpreter, and he explained the requests to us. Next, the man commenced drawing some figures with a pencil, and presently I found him getting perfectly still in mental concentration. Then he began to give out my name, my genealogy, the history of my long line of forefathers and said that Shri Ramakrishna was keeping close to me all through my wanderings, intimating also to me good news about my mother. He also foretold that I would have to go very soon to far-off lands for preaching religion. Getting good news thus about my mother, we all travelled back to town, and after arrival received by wire from Calcutta the assurance of mother’s doing well.

Turning to Swami Yogananda, Swamiji remarked, “Everything that the man had foretold came to be fulfilled to the letter, call it some fortuitous concurrence or anything you will.”

Swami Yogananda said in reply, “It was because you would not believe all this before that this experience was necessary for you.”

Swamiji: Well, I am not a fool to believe anything and everything without direct proof. And coming into this realm of Mahâmâya, oh, the many magic mysteries I have come across alongside this bigger magic conjuration of a universe! Maya, it is all Maya! Goodness! What rubbish we have been talking so long this day! By thinking constantly of ghosts, men become ghosts themselves, while whoever repeats day and night, knowingly or unknowingly, “I am the eternal, pure, free, self-illumined Atman”, verily becomes the knower of Brahman.

Saying this, Swamiji affectionately turned to the disciple and said, “Don’t allow all that worthless nonsense to occupy your mind. Always discriminate between the real and the unreal, and devote yourself heart and soul to the attempt to realise the Atman. There is nothing higher than this knowledge of the Atman; all else is Maya, mere jugglery. The Atman is the one unchangeable Truth. This I have come to understand, and that is why I try to bring it home to you all.

 

The greatness of our motherland

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If there is any land on this earth that can lay claim to be the blessed Punyabhumi (holy land), to be the land to which all souls on this earth must come to account for Karma, the land to which every soul that is wending its way Godward must come to attain its last home, the land where humanity has attained its highest towards gentleness , towards generosity , towards purity , towards calmness , above all, the land of introspection and of spirituality – it is India.

Our sacred motherland is a land of religion and philosophy-the birth place of spiritual giants-the land of renunciation, where and where alone, from the most ancient to the most modern times, there has been the highest ideal of life open to man.

It is the same India which has withstood the shocks of centuries, of hundreds of foreign invasions, of hundreds of upheavals of manners and customs. It is the same land which stands firmer than any rock in the world, with its undying vigour, indestructible life. Its life is of the same nature of the soul, without beginning and without end, immortal, and we are the children of such a country.

When the real history of India will be unearthed, it will be proved that as in the matter of religion, so in fine arts, India is the primal guru of the whole world.

I discard the idea that India was ever passive. Nowhere has activity been more pronounced than in this blessed land of ours. And the great proof of this activity is that our most ancient and magnanimous race still lives, and at every decade in its glorious carrier seems to take on fresh youth-undying and imperishable.

India will be raised, not with the power of the flesh, but with power of the spirit; not with the flag of destruction, but with the flag of peace and love, the garb of the Sannyasin; not by the power of the wealth, but by the power of begging bowl. But one vision I see clear as life before me that the ancient Mother has awakened once more, sitting on here throne – rejuvenated, more glories than ever. Proclaim Her to all the world with the voice of peace and benediction. (IV.353)

I love my nation, I cannot see you degraded, weakened any more than you are now. Therefore I am bound for your sake and for truth’s to cry, “Hold!” and to raise my voice against this degradation of my race. Give up these weakening mysticisms and be strong… The truths of the Upanishads are before you. Take them up, live up to them, and the salvation of India will be at hand.

What a land! Whosoever stands in this sacred land, whether alien or a child of the soil, feels himself surrounded – unless his soul is degraded to the level of brute animals – by the living thoughts of the earth’s best and purest sons, who have been working to raise the animal to the divine through centuries, whose beginning history fails to trace. The very air is full of the pulsations of spirituality.

I was asked by an English friend on the eve of my departure, “Swami, how do you like now your motherland after four years experience of the luxurious, glorious, powerful West?” I could only answer, “India I loved before I came away. Now the very dust of India has become holy to me, the very air is now to me holy; it is now the holy land, the place of pilgrimage, the Tirtha.” (III.309)

Our life-blood is spirituality. If it flows clear, if it flows strong and pure and vigorous, everything is right; political, social, any other material defects, even the poverty of the land, will be cured if that blood is pure. (III.288)

The longest night seems to be passing away, the sorest trouble seems to be coming to an end at last, the seeming corpse appears to be awaking. She is awakening, this motherland of ours, from her deep long sleep. None can resist her anymore; never is she going to sleep anymore; no outward powers can hold her back anymore; for the infinite giant is rising to her feat. (III.145-146)