I did this review of Vivekananda as Turning Point (published by Advaita Ashrama) for the Golpark Bulletin in June 2013. Swaraj da, the co-editor of this Bulletin had asked me to.  Swami Prabhanandaji Maharaj had liked it very much. So I thought I would publish it in my blog.

 Vivekananda as The Turning Point: The Rise of a New Spiritual Wave

Advaita Ashrama published (January 2013), and Swami Suddhidananda edited, Vivekananda as The Turning Point, is comprehensive and interesting,  with a wide range of essays that look at different aspects of Swami Vivekananda’s many splendoured personality, his impact during his times,  his continued relevance and the scope of his ideas for the future. Although most of the essays were competent, some especially stood out for this particular reviewer.  They are those by Swamis Prabhananda, Bhajanananda, Chetanananda, Atmajnananda,  Pravrajiksa Brahmaprana and Vrajaprana, Asim Chaudhuri, Jayasree Mukherjee, Vikramjit Banerjee, Sukalyan Sengupta and Makarand Paranjappe,  Arun Kr. Biswas,   Kiran Prasad,  Rajiv Malhotra, Gopal Stavig and Arpita Mitra.  Some essays though well meaning in content, would have benefited from a tighter organization and more critical focus and analysis. Some essays were needlessly repetitive, offering little divergence from each other and while explicating Swamiji’s ideas in detail, remained diffusive in structure and failed to point out how such ideas may be made relevant or effective within contemporary contexts in practical, realistic and effective terms.

The first group of essays under the section “Looking Into the Past” are all consistently well argued and cohesively structured. Swami Prabhananda’s  focus on the Parliament of Religions of 1893, as a turning point of the East-West encounter, where the West came up short against in C.E.M Joad’s terms the “counter attack from the East,” is interesting because it was this same Parliament that  transformed Vivekananda  from an unknown Indian to a world personality, and began his “world mission.” Pravrajika Vrajaprana although tentative about how recognized and remembered Swami Vivekananda is in America today, nonetheless pointed out that Hindu ideas of reincarnation and redemption through Karmic evolution are now providing frameworks for mega hit films like Cloud Atlas, and that a leading article in Newsweek in recent times read, “ We are all Hindus now.” These signs she argues, may be read as assimilation of Vivekananda’s ideas over time in America, although Americans in general remain unaware of the source. She simultaneously points out that Swamiji himself would not be interested in recognition as long as his ideas were effective. Jayasree Mukherjee’s cogently argued essay brings to light certain interesting historical facts like Swamiji’s meeting with Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Bagha Jatin, Aswini Kumar Dutta, “a noted extremist leader of Barisal” Hemchandra Ghosh (noted revolutionary of Bengal), Desukar, and also Sir Hiram Maxim, a noted gunmaker. Mukherjee also quotes Bhupendranath Dutta’s statement that Swamiji had once said that what Bengal needs is “a bomb and bomb alone.”  Again, Mukherjee is right on target in saying that Ramachandra Guha’s omission of Vivekananda from his recent Makers of Modern India is a serious and critical academic flaw.

 In Vikramjit Banerjee’s excellent essay, noteworthy for its chiseled argumentation and lack of diffusiveness, the writer disagreeing with those who call Vivekananda a socialist, says that he was a “radical traditionalist” who was “apolitical” by choice, although his heart beat passionately for the millions of downtrodden and oppressed people in India, and who urgently called out for the abolition of the culture of “don’t—touchism.” Banerjee is right in pointing out that although not strictly a socialist, what Swamiji was against was a culture of “privilege.” In citing how Swamiji is still relevant in terms of the ruling of the Supreme Court in recent times, he refers to Akhil Bharatiya Shoshit Karmachari Sangh (Railway) v. Union of India, in reference to which Justice Krishna Iyer said, “Swami Vivekananda Shudra Raj and refuted the incapabilities of the groaning untouchables.” Banerjee also cites other cases like State of Karnataka v. Appa Balu Ingale, Shastri Yagna Purushdasji v. Muldas Bhundardas Vaishya, where too Swami Vivkenanda has been quoted. Banerjee points out how Swamiji had a profound influence on the thinking of Rishi Aurobindo, Rajagopalacharya, Netaji, Bhupendranath Dutta, Indira Gandhi and Golwalkar.       

Within the section “Looking Into the Present and Future,” the repetition and recurrence of ideas  and the diffusiveness of essays, is obvious. Some essays however, are excellently argued. Swami Bhajanananda’s concise essay, “Swami Vivekananda and the Awakening of India in the 21^st Century” puts forward the idea that the 21^st century is characterized by certain mega trends. It is a Knowledge Society which is reaping the benefits in increased communication between different segments of society through outstanding progress in information and electronic technology, it is a society characterized by “Neo Humanism” which pays attention to marginalized groups, it is an age that is witnessing the rise of “secular spirituality” through spiritual gurus like Deepak Chopra, Eckhart Tolle and Wyne Dyer. Swami Bhajanananda locates the rise of “secular spirituality” to Sri Ramakrishna and Swami who establishes Vivekananda.  Another forceful and meaningful essay in this group is that by  Kiran Prasad who quoting  current statistics establishes how the existence of “250 million people living under the poverty line,” and “6000 children who die every day from malnourishment” point to the fact that Swamiji’s message that the poor and the afflicted be served keeping in mind the inherent divinity of all human beings, has not been realized either at the level of concerted national policy or at the level of individual altruism. Deoki Nandan Gautam, T.N Chaturvedi and Satish Kapoor although exploring in detail facets of Vivekananda’s thoughts pertaining to state, socio-economics and  education,  fail to point out how India’s inability to achieve the humane directions of Swamiji’s thoughts may be given practical remedies within modern or contemporary contexts.

  In this same section, Anil Baran Ray and Sukanya Ray posit Swamiji’s ideal of complete human development and see the establishment of the United Nations Development Programme, the work of Paul Steeten, Mahbubul Haq and Amartya Sen as realizations of this vision.  Arun Kumar Biswas, who claims  that Swamiji as a Vedantic Socialist, posits how the socio-economic aspects of Vedanta which Vivekananda preached, may  also be found in  the Buddhist text Chakkavatti-Sihanada-Suttantii. Biswas advocates a John Needham style syncretic education that would pay attention to “science” “spirituality” and “socialism,” as the only way for a complete upliftment of society in general”. Sivaramakrishna points out that what the youth of today are asking vis a vis Swamiji’s contribution to moulding youth culture is “We would like to know and act on what is knowable and actable.” Anjana Gangopadhyay’s article bears the imprint of her thorough reading of Swamiji’s views on women, but lacks critical reflection on how Swamiji’s pronouncement that Sita like patience and suffering were the hallmarks of the Indian woman’s positionality, and that Indian women would work out their own salvation, needed to be contextualized within contemporary Indian contexts, keeping in mind factors such as class, urban or rural location, and the coordinates that they generated. It is not enough to simply cite the establishment and development of the Sri Sarada Math as a culmination of Swamiji’s vision for women.  

Sukalyan Sengupta and Makarand Paranjappe’s essay, “ Swami Vivekananda and the Integration of Science and Spirituality in the Future,” raises the interesting question whether Swami Vivekananda may be viewed as a scientist or not. They cite the example of Stephen Jay Gould who speaks of the different “magisteria” of Science and Spirituality and advocates mutual respect between these two fields that cannot overlap. But scientist Richard Dawkins considers Gould’s position as “politicial ploy” and posits that such an ideas is “empty” and that religion is based on “fixed false belief.” They also point out that although Swamiji passed away before Einstein’s Theory of Relativity became the new way to talk about the cosmos, he did interchange a letter with Nicolas Tesla and in all likelihood Tesla attended Swamiji’s lectures in  January-- February of 1896, at Hardman Hall or Madison Square Garden, New York. Later when Tesla speaks about the cosmos, he uses the terms “Akasha” and “Prana” which Swami Vivekananda had used to explain the “infinite omnipresent material,” and the “infinite omnipresent manifesting power.” Sengupta and Paranjappe point out that although it may not be possible to accommodate Swamiji within the domain of strictly scientific methodology and principle, it is possible that within Indian contexts, he  perhaps contributed  in unacknowledged ways to the establishment of the Indian Institute of Science, and the promotion of scientific research in India.  In a letter Jamsetji Tata wrote to him in 1898 in this regard,  five years after having met him on the steamship Empress of India, while both were going to the U.S., the former says, “ I know not who would make a more fitting general of such a campaign than Vivekananda.”   

  One of the best essays in this section is that by Asim Chaudhuri, where the writer includes a heart-warming and moving example of Swami Vivekananda’s outstanding egalitarianism and disdain of  privilege, when he cites the incident of how Swamiji cordially shook the hands of a black porter who had come forward to congratulate Swamiji  thinking him to be a fellow black, and when a Western disciple later asked Swamiji why he had kept quiet about his race, Swamiji had replied, “ Rise at the expense of another. I did not come to earth for that.”   

The essays in the section “Vivekananda’s Personality,” are all good, but those  that seemed most outstanding were Pravrajika Brahamaprana’s moving exploration of Swamiji’s Buddha like personality and his carrying out of the Boddhisattva ideal, and the ones by Swami Chetanananda, and Swami Atmajnanananda.  In “With Swamiji in India: J.J. Goodwin’s Letters from India about Vivekananda,” we commend Swami Chetanananda’s archival work in revealing hitherto unknown letters of J. J. Goodwin to Josephine Mcleod and Sarah Bull. These letters move us deeply in providing insights as they do into the personality of Swami Vivekanada and Goodwin’s perception of him as Divine and his joy that the Swami had accepted him as a Brahmachari.  In the other entitled, “Thus Have I Heard” also bears the mark of genuine historical research in uncovering and making known of what he had heard about Swami Vivekananda, from various sadhus and lay people, an instance being Mohanlal Shah’s reminiscences in 1970, when the latter described how while working for the Prabuddha Bharata, he had composed Swamiji’s articles “Aryans and Tamilians” and “Stray Remarks on Theosophy” and had taken the proofs to Swamiji. Swami Atmajnanananda speaks because it describes how he a young traveler from the West,  to India at age twenty-four, was arrested by the force of Swami Vivekananda’s “personality” compounded as it was of his great intellect and  enormous compassion, combining in him what Swamiji himself considered the ideal, “the intellect of Shankara with the heart of the Buddha.” Swamis Sunirmalananda, Brahmeshananda speak respectively about how Vivekananda like Sri Ramakrishna (the image maker) did not turn away from even the most depraved and fallen, Swami  Brahmeshananda speaks about how Swamiji was a perfect yogi with remarkable powers of concentration, prodigious memory and  detachment. At this juncture the reviewer would like to add that given modern discursive expectations, essays with a historical focus acquire greater readability and  therefore score over those which are more generalized.

 The section “Vivekananda’s Teachings,” although, carrying sincere articles by both Swami Tathagathananda and M. Lakshmi Kumari, simply becomes repetitive and both articles may have been accommodated in another section of the book, by cutting down the length of other articles, which too directly or indirectly, bring in the question of Swamiji’s teachings. 

 Coming now to the final section of the book which is entitled, “Vivekananda’s Ideas,” all three essays are good, but Rajiv Malhotra’s is outstanding. In this richly informative, tightly woven and argumentatively pinpointed essay Rajiv Malhotra speaks of how Swami Vivekananda had spoken about “involution” preceding “evolution,” which is a concept borrowed from Samkhya philosophy and which posits that matter, even in its most gross form is conscious. Hence the fact that matter evolves into higher and higher states of consciousness (evolution) is not surprising. Malhotra offers another very interesting fact for all those who are interested in the history of Ideas. That is, William James, the Harvard philosopher and author of the much celebrated Varieties of Religious Experience was deeply influenced by Swami Vivekananda’s reading of the mind (via Patanjali and others), and expressly acknowledged the Swami’s influence in moulding his psychological theories. Yet, when in 2002 the centenary edition of this book was launched, not a single reference to Vivekananda was made. What is so surprising in this the reviewer asks well acquainted as we are, with the appropriative nature of many western enterprises. Gopal Stavig and Arpita Mitra both offer well argued essays on “Vivekananda’s Groundbreaking Ideas for India and the World,” and “Vivekananda and the Revival of the Universal Religion.”

Finally, some words for the editing of this book. From all points of view the editing of a huge compilation like Vivekananda as the Turning Point, required prodigious attention to detail, planning, and a spirit of dedication to work that Swamiji himself constantly emphasized. It also remains a testimony to the editor’s devotion to the great Swami himself. However, in the opinion of this reviewer, many of the essays needed to be cut down in size, saved from needless repetition and   meandering structure and diffuseness of argumentation. One must keep in mind that any publication should be able to withstand  critical scrutiny which demands methodological rigour and the objective assessment of essays for a significant publication such as this one, brought out on the 150^th birth anniversary of “Turning Point” Vivekananda.