The Monk Who Took India to the World

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One of India's greatest leaders and a timelessly stellar example of Hinduism's fundamentally universalist essence is Swami Vivekananda whose rich life and legacy continues to fire our imaginations and uplift our collective consciousness. In this special publication "The Monk Who Took India to The World, we at The Hindu Group offer our tribute to this extraordinary visionary whose singular contribution was the uplifting of India in the world's imagination at a time when British colonialism held this country in its thrall.

If not for Swami Vivekananda's soul stirring speeches at the Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893 where he was hailed as a "Messenger of Indian Wisdom to the Western World", the world's imagination and curiosity would not have been sparked nor would the spotlight have shown so brightly on India's rich spiritual traditions and culture. It was certainly the vigorous interventions of this young monk who had sailed far from his shores to the United States and England to preach passionately his vision of Hinduism and thereby transmit his deep love for India, that triggered the philosophical and academic interest in India's spiritual traditions and its historical trajectory in the West, that persists today. Swami Vivekananda was an early trail blazer for other Orient lists scholars like Max Muller and Romain Rolland who helped build an imagination of the Indian nation that helped raised India's national consciousness.

As the foremost disciple of Sri Ramakrishna of Dakshineshwar, Swami Vivekananda founded the Ramakrishna Mission with the determination to "set in motion a machinery which will bring noblest ideas to the doorstep of even the poorest and the meanest". He saw it as his mission to travel all over India to preach a Hinduism that was compassionate and grounded in humanitarian concern for the deprived masses. True to his calling as a parivrajaka, a wandering monk, he made it a point to tour all of India yet he had a special affection for the South and Madras in particular, where he had attracted numerous devoted disciples eager to carry out his mission and who indeed primarily raised funds for his trip to Chicago.

The Hindu newspaper which was started in 1878 and headquartered in Madras was thereby in a unique position to follow closely the activities and teachings of the great Swami. As the inheritor of this distinguished legacy, The Hindu Group is privileged to have in its archives a wealth of reports and anecdotes about Swami Vivekananda. We present here in curate form a selection of articles and interviews from The Hindu's archives that offer fresh perspectives of the extraordinary life of this great son of India. It is in the pages of The Hindu that we get firsthand accounts of the Swami's activities particularly in Madras.

For instance, in 1893 Swami Vivekananda arrived in Madras, travelling from Rameswaram. "Soon word spread through the city that a remarkable English speaking sannyasi has come" Since the young monk spent a lot of his time in Madras attracting a wide circle of admirers and seekers, The Hindu newspaper was able to report at close quarters his life and mission. His eclectic and erudite grasp of philosophy had his Madras audiences "amazed". "One day he would speak of Valmiki, Kalidasa and Bhavabhuti in almost the same breath as Homer and Virgil, Shakespeare and Byron; the next day it would be about the Trojans and Pandavas, Helen and Draupadi".

Culled from the pages of The Hindu newspaper in the 19th century, this book has several anecdotes on the Swami's typical sojourn in Madras which included discourses by the Swami on the Gita in the Ice House on the Marina beach. The son of one of Swami Vivekananda's close disciples noted that when the Swami visited their house "he would ask my mother to give him dhal soup with plenty of jeerakam (cumin seeds) in it and fried vadam and appalams". It is vignettes such as these that enliven this special book and make it different from a traditional "life and times" account of the Swami.

**Contents and Sample Pages**