Swami Vivekananda, the legendary Monk and evergreen leader of Youth

Swami Vivekananda was not just a traditional monk or sage of India, as many of us remember about him, but was an investigative spiritual seeker at first, who later turned out to be a great modern sage of India.

His works are complete of powerful thoughts, great spiritual wisdom and yet practical to be put to use by the modern people who live in this scientific age, for transforming their chaotic materialistic lifestyles by imbibing the very basic human need - the spiritual wisdom - in all the activities they do in their routine life.

He commented very seriously all the orthodox approaches of the so-called higher castes who were least bothered about the genuine spirituality in those times and were rather interested in castes, creeds, cults, fighting on the differences in their chosen methodologies and much above all of these, their lack of will power to dethrone an enemy, with a bunch of deceitful people, who had fully controlled their motherland and the millions of countrymen as slaves with an iron fist.

He had strongly advised for the need of syncretism among all the religions. He was perhaps the first monk to say, "If anyone thinks that their religion should only exist exclusive of all other religions, it is foolish and just not possible."

He was a great explorer of everything he came across in his life including spirituality. He questioned many and he asked many the questions about God and when he was not satisfied he simply left all that stuff which was beyond logic and reasoning. He never used to accept something just because it was a belief. He needed the evidences for everything.

His quest to find the truth finally led him to find a great Guru in Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and eventually a monk was created out of Narendranath and was revered thereafter by whole of India as Swami Vivekananda.

He was a genius in terms of memory, an expert in logic and reasoning, and was perfect in his understanding of spirituality, the Advaita Vedanta philosophy of ancient India. It is world renowned fact that he opened the flood gates of dormant ancient Indian philosophy to the western world while by that time India was a poor country of 30 million beggars, due to the poverty stricken, weak-minded, largely illiterate and dejected souls of India.

From the inspirational and lifestyle points of view, it is not exaggeration to say that if Swami Vivekananda's complete works could be introduced as the syllabus of the primary school in India, we could have a whole new generation of Indians in a decade who would strive for the development of their motherland, first developing themselves as visionaries for the good of mankind.

Due to the current political situation in India and due to the illiterate masses being influenced by the fundamentalists (bad term in use today, as these fundamentalists don't even know the fundamentals!) of almost all the religions, at the outset, everyone would protest that this kind of idea (even terming it weird) to make the children read Swami Vivekananda's works is saffronising (another stupidity and invention by Indian politicians) of Indian education.

These are indeed the weirdest times of modern India where some religious clerics urge the people to stop wearing jeans, stop watching telivision, order to stop manifacturing firecrackers, while the same religious heads go into hibernation when there are terror strikes and no one calls for a ban on bombs, smuggled weapons, etc. This is the height of religious hypocrisy!

And India today needs a revival to go back to its old, good and prosperous ways, and there is a way!

If saffronising of Indian education is aimed at developing individuals who think and question to find out the truth, to discard the outdated beliefs, who love their country, who revere their masters, who develop tolerance for other religions, who don't preach anymore that the messenger of their religion only is correct and all others are wrong, then it is better if we saffronise the education system instead of making it pale, with no color to observe!

12th January marks the birth anniversary of Swami Vivekananda, who should be an inspiration to all the Youth of India, his books are available in all the cities, towns and even in some villages of India in many different Indian regional languages, and it is a pity that the Youth of India today don't take the example of Swami Vivekananda but bow down to some of the incompetent, coward politicians who kept India illiterate and under the control of few power-hungry selfish families, and who made the majority of masses of India live like frogs in a well for decades with low self esteem, lower aspirations and lowest character with respect to the great culture of ancient India!

The great souls like Swamy Vivekananda are so wise and they knew that the sufferings of the people are based on their past actions and if they deserved them they should experience them. But the same great people are kind enough that, if the people realise the higher goals of life and if the people are ambitious about positive change and spiritual upliftment, they had left behind their legacy along with their great works in the form of books, to serve those who deserve that help.

People don't even spend an insignificant amount of money to buy such books and try to improve themselves but spend so much on liquor, drugs, cigarettes and many other stupid stuff, thanks to the blind faith on their beloved politicians due to their caste, religion, region, corruption and any other silly reason.

The so called youth leaders are to be abandoned at the earliest as they are not leaders at all. A person who inspires and lets others grow by themselves just guiding them in the right way is a leader, and not a person who becomes a hindrance to the growth of his fellowmen.

And Swami Vivekananda was a great monk, leader, patriot, and a modern face of revived Hinduism. Hinduism by definition is Indianism. Because in Sanskrit it was Sindhu river which was for Persians the Hindu river, and for the English it was Indus river.

And we as ViprasCraft editors being the people inspired by the works of Swami Vivekananda, salute him and to our motherland India for having given to us a link of nationality common with Swami Vivekananda and an identity to proudly say,

"We belong to a country which has produced the noble souls like Swami Vivekananda in the recent centuries who inspired the greats like Mahatma Gandhi, Netaji Subash Chandrabose who finally achieved their goal collectively to pave the way for a free India which was also the call to the nation by Swami Vivekananda."

ViprasCraft recommends to their readers, the "Complete works of Swami Vivekananda" and all other booklets published by Advaita Ashrama.

Vandemaataram! Jai Hind!