Feb 21, 2012
Phalgun Shukla Pratipada, Kaliyug Varsha 5113
By Chandrahas Choudhury
Almost 120 years ago, on Sept. 11, 1893, a young Indian man, clad in saffron robes, stood up at a massive gathering in Chicago and delivered one of the most rousing and frequently quoted speeches of modern religious history. The speaker’s name was Narendranath Datta, but in India he went by Swami Vivekananda, and this is how he is now remembered. The event was the first-ever World Parliament of Religions, a visionary attempt to start a global dialogue among people of all faiths.
Vivekananda’s speech, and his subsequent work in the U.S. promoting the school of Hinduism called Vedanta, made him the first Indian to significantly impact the American cultural consciousness. Touring the country widely after his Chicago speech, Vivekananda opened a view in America of Hinduism, and Indian civilization, as something much more complex and vigorous than had been granted so far. As the commemorative plaque in Vivekananda’s honor installed in 1995 at the Art Institute of Chicago, where Vivekananda made his speech, says, “His unprecedented success (at the Parliament) opened the way for the dialogue between Eastern and Western religions.”
Although the conference was called the World Parliament of Religions, it was in truth hastily conceived as an adjunct to the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893, celebrating the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the Americas. It was attended mostly by American Christians, who also did most of the speaking. The participation of Muslims was small, and Vivekananda himself came to the conference as the sole representative of Hinduism. What did Vivekananda say that has endured when so much else of what was transacted at the event has faded away? Indeed, it has perhaps not just endured, but may be even more relevant to our current moment in history than it was to its own.
Briefly, Vivekananda spoke not just — as he was expected to do — about the splendor of his own religion, Hinduism, but also about the need for people in a globalizing world to accept that no single religious tradition had a monopoly over religious truth. He declared:
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. I am proud to belong to a nation which has sheltered the persecuted and the refugees of all religions and all nations of the earth. [...]
I will quote to you, brethren, a few lines from a hymn which I remember to have repeated from my earliest boyhood, which is every day repeated by millions of human beings: “As the different streams having their sources in different paths which men take through different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee.” [...]
The present convention, which is one of the most august assemblies ever held, is in itself a vindication, a declaration to the world of the wonderful doctrine preached in the Gita: “Whosoever comes to Me, through whatsoever form, I reach him; all men are struggling through paths which in the end lead to me.” Sectarianism, bigotry, and its horrible descendant, fanaticism, have long possessed this beautiful earth. They have filled the earth with violence, drenched it often and often with human blood, destroyed civilization and sent whole nations to despair. Had it not been for these horrible demons, human society would be far more advanced than it is now.
Or, to put it another way, Vivekananda put before his American, mainly Christian, audience the question that cannot be avoided by both religious and secular thinkers all around the world today after the fading away of the illusion, briefly held towards the close of the 20th century, that we live in a post-religious world. The question is about what it means, as a person of faith, to think about other religions and the deeply held beliefs of others. Is the faith of another to be thought of, publicly or privately, as something inferior to one’s own, or even of no validity altogether? Is it to be “tolerated” as somebody else’s point of view, as a concession to diversity? Accepted as the equal of one’s own faith? But how would that attitude then co-exist with one’s own professed religious commitment? Is not to participate in the life of another faith to diminish one’s own? And how can such participation or empathy be distinguished from a flabby relativism, an attitude of religious laissez-faire?
Almost as important as what we believe, Vivekananda suggested, is what we believe about what others believe. As the nations of the world grow ever more multi-religious, the attitude we take in all honesty toward the religious Other becomes an ever more urgent question, even in — perhaps especially in — countries committed to religious liberty such as India and the U.S. Again, this question is especially relevant within the doctrine and practice of the great monotheistic traditions, but no one can dispute that even a more pluralistic tradition, like Hinduism, has today fallen prey in its interfaith attitudes to the temptations of monotheistic arrogance.
As the efforts to mark Vivekananda’s birth gather steam, Chicago, as much as any site in India, has emerged as a center of the movement. Last month the Indian government announced that it would provide a grant of $1.5 million to the University of Chicago to establish a Vivekananda Chair for Indian studies. The prime minister of India, Manmohan Singh, has, meanwhile, added to his onerous list of duties by taking up the post of chairman of the National Committee for the Celebration of the 150th Birth Anniversary of Swami Vivekananda. The minutes of the committee’s first meeting reported that:
The Chairman recalled that Swami Vivekananda’s famous lecture at the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago on 11th September 1893 was a shining moment in India’s cultural history. As the State of Chicago perhaps did not allow memorials of people who were not American citizens, we have to ponder on some other way of commemorating this event, at the place where it happened. The Indian American community could be urged to find creative ways of doing so.
Perhaps the prime minister need not have sounded so gloomy, or have left so much upon the shoulders of “the Indian American community.” Meanwhile, The Telegraph reported that Vivekananda and the cinema were going to come together at long last:
The Ramakrishna Math and Mission [of India] will produce a biopic on Swami Vivekananda to mark the 150th birth anniversary of the monk. A committee set up to oversee the project is looking for a renowned director and a major production house from across the globe for the film, which the mission authorities want to release before Swamiji’s 150th birthday on January 12, 2013. [...]
“We have suggested that the film be made on a grand scale, like that of Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi,” said [film director] Goutam Ghose. “There should be an international collaboration for the project and I have suggested the name of Bernardo Bertolucci for director,” added the maker of Moner Manush.
Source: Bloomberg
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