Swami Vivekananda (The Master Builder of Our Nation)

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SHARING FOOD WITH A COBBLER

When Swamiji was in Khetri for the first time, streams of visitors and questioners surrounded him day and night, leaving him no time to take food or get some rest. For three days and nights he went on instructing the eager crowd. So great was his kindness that he would not turn away anyone. On the third day, a cobbler taking pity on him approached him. Swamiji asked him to give him some food. At Swamiji's insistence, though afraid of the consequences as he was from a low caste, the cobbler readily shared his food with the august sadhu. Later, on Swamiji's recommendation, the highly pleased Maharaja of Khetri rewarded the cobbler and kept him 'above wants' for the rest of life.

 

LESSON FROM A DANCING GIRL

Khetri was the scene where Swamiji learned another great lesson of his life. One day, as was the royal custom, the Maharaja had arranged for a dance recital in his court, after dinner. As a parivrajaka, Swamiji thought it was unbecoming of him to attend the performance and so he retired to his room. The dancing girl was hurt by Swamiji's indifference and sang a song with the meaning that the intrinsic worth of iron in idol at the temple and in the butcher's knife was the same. But the place and their situations made them appear different. As the refrains of this meaningful music reached Swamiji's ears, a flood of repentance came over him as to how, he, a sanyasi a realised person, could fail to see the same divinity in the dancing girl. Immediately, Swamiji rushed back to the hall, to watch the dance and blessed the girl much to her happiness.

 

Come of the most noteworthy observation of Swamiji of India were made during these wanderings when he came face to face with the real India. They reveal Swamiji's passionate love for the country and his zeal for her regeneration.

 

THE NATIONAL SIN

Neglect of the masses, he considered as a national sin. He attributed our perverted interpretation of religion as the cause for the downfall of our nation. Though great temples had been built with best of intentions and most elaborate rituals have been devised, yet, the followers of religion had lost sight of the true significance and sacredness of it. He lamented, how, for over two hundred years, some of our spiritual leaders wasted their time discussing ways of eating, drinking and conducting rituals, losing sight of the higher ideals indicated by them. To him, such people were neither vedantists, nor pauranics nor tantriks. They were just 'touch-me-notists'. He said, "They converted our temple into a kitchen, our God into a cooking pot and the religion to 'don't touch me', I am holy". He observed that this may be due to the softening of the brains, which unable to conceive of the higher ideals any more and having lost its perceptiveness and strength of imagination, made the smallest excuse it can find about the rituals and remained engrossed in them.

 

LOVE FOR THE DOWNTRODDEN

Like his Guru Sri Ramakrishna, Naren was an inveterate enemy of untouchability. According to him India's doom was sealed on the day they invented the word "mlecha" (outcaste). It is worthy of note that in all his compassion and solicitude for the poor and downtrodden in the country there was no shade of chauvinism. Universal compassion and humanism were inborn with him. A clear expression of it came out in his famous words, "May I be born again and again and suffer thousands of miseries so that I may worship the only God that exists, the only God I believe in the sum total of the souls and above all my God the wicked, my God the afflicted, my God the poor of all races".

 

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