Newsgroups: soc.culture.indian,soc.culture.bangladesh,soc.culture.nepal,soc.culture.pakistan
Subject: Vivekananda admonishes Indians
From: bhatnagr@ucunix.san.uc.edu (Raj Bhatnagar)
Date: Thu, 9 Apr 92 19:24:20 GMT
Organization: Univ. of Cincinnati

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It was in August 1893 that Vivekananda from Indian subcontinent 
became a celebrity in USA - due mainly to his speeches at the 
Parliament of Religions held in Chicago in 1893 - and due also 
to his other lectures etc. in US expounding Indian philosophy. 

Next year will mark the hundredth year since those events.

Excerpted below is a part of a letter he wrote from Japan, on his
way to the US, to his ashram-mates in Madras. This excerpt is taken
from his Collected Works, published by the Advaita Ashram, Calcutta.
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                                            Oriental Hotel
                                              Yokohama.
                                            10th July, 1893.

Dear Alasinga, Balaji, G. G., banking Corporation, and
     all my Madras friends,

 .....................................................
 ...........  I can not write what I have in mind about
 the Japanese in one short letter. Only I want that 
 numbers of our young men should pay a visit to Japan
 and China every year. Especially to the Japanese, India
 is still the dreamland of everything high and good. And
 you, what are you? . . . talking twaddle all your lives,
 vain talkers, what are you? Come see these people, and
 then go and hide your faces in shame. A race of dotards,
 you lose your caste if you come out [of India]! Sitting 
 down these hundreds of years with an ever increasing load 
 of crystallized superstition on your heads, for hundreds 
 of years spending all your energy upon discussing the
 touchableness or untouchableness of this food or that, 
 with all humanity crushed out of you by the continuous
 social tyranny of ages - what are you? And what are you 
 doing now? . . . promenading the sea-shores with books in 
 your hands - repeating undigested stray bits of European
 brainwork, and the whole soul bent upon getting a thirty
 rupee clerkship, or at best becoming a lawyer - the height
 of young India's ambition - and every student with a whole
 brood of hungry children cackling at his feet and asking for 
 bread! Is there not water enough in the sea to drown you,
 books, gowns, university diplomas and all?

    Come, be men! Kick out the priests who are always against 
 progress, because they would never mend, their hearts would 
 never become big. They are the offspring of the centuries
 of superstition and tyranny. Root out priestcraft first.
 Come, be men! Come out of your narrow holes and have a look 
 abroad. See how nations are on the march! Do you love man?
 Do you love your country? Then come, let us struggle for
 higher and better things; . . . . . . . .The English 
 Government has been the instrument, brought over here by
 the Lord, to break your crystallized civilization, . . . .

 . . . How many men . . . to struggle unto life and death 
 to bring about a new state of things - sympathy for the poor, 
 and bread to their hungry mouths, enlightenment to the people 
 at large - and struggle unto death to make men of them who 
 have been brought to the level of beasts, by the tyranny of 
 your forefathers?

                                               Yours etc.,
                                              Vivekananda


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Collected works, Vol . 5, pp. 10-11.

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---raj

Newsgroups: soc.culture.indian