Resources for all concerned with culture of authoritarianism in society, banalisation of communalism, (also chauvinism, parochialism and identity politics) rise of the far right in India (and with occasional information on other countries of South Asia and beyond)
Role model: How Vivekananda laid the foundation for India’s politics of sectarianism
The power of the Swami’s words is a double-edged sword
The reality distortion field created by Narendra Modi is so
strong it leaves journalists incapable of simple arithmetic. There’s no
other explanation for why websites and newspapers
recycled Modi’s contention that September 11, 2017, marked the 125th
anniversary of the speech Swami Vivekananda delivered at the parliament
of religions in Chicago on September 11, 1893, although subtracting 1893
from 2017 gives you 124.
Narendranath Datta, like his
near-namesake who now serves as India’s Prime Minister, wasn’t a
stickler for historical truth. Near the beginning of that famed Chicago
address he said, “I thank you in the name of the most ancient order of
monks in the world; I thank you in the name of the mother of religions.”
The most ancient order of monks? Now, what would that be? There
is no organisation of which Vivekananda could have been a member that
would classify among the world’s oldest. The order of monks to which he
belonged was the one he founded himself, the Ramakrishna Order. Given
that he established it four years after Chicago’s Columbian Exposition,
it would have been more accurate for him to greet the audience on behalf
of the youngest order of monks in the world, one still in the womb.
He
followed up one historical fallacy with a second, the idea of Hinduism
as the mother of religions. There was no strong evidence for this in
1893, and the idea has been comprehensively discredited since. Yet the
chorus of “We are the oldest”, and, “We were the first” has only grown
louder. Some kind of prepotence is measured out in years, to paraphrase a
Beatles’ line.
There are other ways in which the two Narendras
resemble each other. Like the foreign visits of Modi, Vivekananda’s
speeches in the United States and other lands, well received as they
were, created a far bigger impact at home than abroad. Like Modi,
Vivekananda was a charismatic orator. Like Modi, he was attentive to his
image and enthusiastic about being photographed. Everywhere he went,
whether to Madras or London, he spent time in photo studios, posing in a
variety of stances and costumes. Every change of headgear and
hairstyle, from turban to high cap, from long hair with a centre part to
the close crop of a mendicant, was recorded by the camera. I doubt if
there’s any other Indian from the 19th century for whom we have such a
wealth of portraits.
An interesting contrast to Vivekananda’s
attitude was Gandhi’s method of tackling cameras. While he was not
averse to being photographed, Gandhi avoided the unnaturalness of the
pose by refusing to look into the lens. It’s remarkable, considering how
many pictures there are of Gandhi, how few have him looking straight at
the viewer. In two astonishing frames captured during the second Round
Table Conference in London in 1931, everybody in the crowded room,
including BR Ambedkar, has followed the photographer’s order to look
first one way and then the other, while Gandhi alone looks entirely
uninterested in the archival record. Gandhi and Vivekananda are the two
thinkers Modi quotes most consistently, and in this respect as in
virtually every other, he is closer to Vivekananda than to his
fellow-Gujarati. The Second Round Table Conference.
Vivekananda’s views
I
have not pointed to Vivekananda’s fondness for his portraits in order
to denigrate him. His physical appearance, like Modi’s, was far more
impressive than that of Gandhi, so a little vanity is understandable.
Few who read Vivekananda’s compelling Collected Works can fail
to be fascinated by his mind and personality. His essays and letters are
packed with insight, vivid description, honest introspection, and acute
intelligence. They reveal vulnerabilities and dramatise his struggles
with personal and philosophical demons.
Bengali friends tell me he
wrote even more skilfully in his mother tongue than he did in English,
which is saying a lot. The institution he established, the Ramakrishna
Mission, has stayed true to its goals and kept up its worthy work for
over a century, although he could guide it for just four years before
his premature death.
The power of Vivekananda’s words, however,
is a double-edged sword. When his thoughts are misguided, they become
that much more dangerous. His disturbing view of Indian history is
illustrated by a letter
he wrote to his benefactor Ajit Singh, the Raja of Khetri, the man who
funded his trip to Chicago and advised him to wear the robe and turban
that became such a sensation.
In Vivekananda’s view, “the Hindu
nation” or “the Hindu race” suffered, “a thousand years of slavery and
degradation”, “at the feet of foreign conquerors”, “savages from Central
Asia”. The idea of the Middle Ages as an era of Hindu slavery is a
central tenet of Hindutva, and ignores developments in architecture,
mathematics, the arts and music in those centuries, not to mention the
Bhakti movement that swept East and North India, and the many
contributions Muslims made to the nation’s cultural wealth. BJP leaders
harp constantly on the thousands years of slavery theme, and I wasn’t
surprised it featured in Modi’s tribute.
What chance is there for
a tolerant polity to emerge from such a relentlessly negative account
of the encounter between Islam and religions of Indian origin?
In
his Chicago speech, Vivekananda said, “I am proud to belong to a
religion which has taught the world both tolerance and universal
acceptance. We believe not only in universal toleration but we accept
all religions as true.”
The assertion that Hinduism taught the
world tolerance is as dubious as the one nominating it mother to all
religions. As for the truth of all religions, Vivekananda replaced the
old distinction between true and false with one drawn from secular ideas
of evolution and progress in society, a hierarchy of superiority and
inferiority. Just as societies could not be deemed true or false but
could be labelled undeveloped or developed, Vivekananda’s hierarchy
placed Advaita Vedanta at the peak. In his scheme, all belief systems
were equal, but some were more equal than others.
Contribution to Hindutva
Although he didn’t commit gross excesses of Raving Loony Hindutva History
in the manner of Dayanand Saraswati, he did disseminate the false view
that Hinduism was at its root deeply scientific. Buoyed by a meeting
with the spiritually-inclined engineering genius Nikola Tesla, he wrote,
“Mr Tesla thinks
he can demonstrate mathematically that force and matter are reducible to
potential energy…In that case the Vedantic cosmology will be placed on
the surest of foundations. I am working a good deal now upon the
cosmology and eschatology of the Vedanta. I clearly see their perfect
union with modern science, and the elucidation of the one will be
followed by that of the other.”
Vivekananda claimed
that Hinduism was the originary faith; that it was uniquely tolerant;
that it led to a nation that was uniquely committed to peace; and that
it was congruent with science. These are all demonstrably false claims.
Add to it his opinion that rule by Muslim kings meant servility and
slavery for Hindus, and it is fair to conclude he either engendered or
added his influential voice to most of the bedrock beliefs of Hindutva
today.
In his brief Chicago address, Vivekananda lamented the fact
that “sectarianism, bigotry, and its horrible descendant, fanaticism,
have long possessed this beautiful earth.” Paradoxically, he laid much
of the ideological foundation for the politics of sectarianism and
bigotry in modern India. It is peculiarly appropriate that his
celebrated speech on tolerance would be the subject of a nationally
televised tribute by the man who represents the most dangerous strain of
intolerance in India today.