The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda/Volume 3/Lectures from Colombo to Almora/Address of Welcome Presented at Calcutta and Reply
ADDRESS OF WELCOME PRESENTED AT CALCUTTA AND REPLY
On his arrival in Calcutta, the Swami Vivekananda was greeted with intense
enthusiasm, and the whole of his progress through the decorated streets of
the city was thronged with an immense crowd waiting to have a sight of him.
The official reception was held a week later, at the residence of the late
Raja Radha Kanta Deb Bahadur at Sobha Bazar, when Raja Benoy Krishna Deb
Bahadur took the chair. After a few brief introductory remarks from the
Chairman, the following address was read and presented to him, enclosed in a
silver casket:
TO SRIMAT VIVEKANANDA SWAMI
Dear Brother ,
We, the Hindu inhabitants of Calcutta and of several other places in Bengal,
offer you on your return to the land of your birth a hearty welcome. We do
so with a sense of pride as well as of gratitude, for by your noble work and
example in various parts of the world you have done honour not only to our
religion but also to our country and to our province in particular.
At the great Parliament of Religions which constituted a Section of the
World's Fair held in Chicago in 1893, you presented the principles of the
Aryan religion. The substance of your exposition was to most of your
audience a revelation, and its manner overpowering alike by its grace and
its strength. Some may have received it in a questioning spirit, a few may
have criticised it, but its general effect was a revolution in the religious
ideas of a large section of cultivated Americans. A new light had dawned on
their mind, and with their accustomed earnestness and love of truth they
determined to take fun advantage of it. Your opportunities widened; your
work grew. You had to meet call after call from many cities in many States,
answer many queries, satisfy many doubts, solve many difficulties. You did
an this work with energy, ability, and sincerity; and it has led to lasting
results. Your teaching has deeply influenced many an enlightened circle in
the American Commonwealth, has stimulated thought and research, and has in
many instances definitely altered religious conceptions in the direction of
an increased appreciation of Hindu ideals. The rapid growth of clubs and
societies for the comparative study of religions and the investigation of
spiritual truth is witness to your labour in the far West. You may be
regarded as the founder of a College in London for the teaching of the
Vedanta philosophy. Your lectures have been regularly delivered, punctually
attended, and widely appreciated. Their influence has extended beyond the
walls of the lecture-rooms. The love and esteem which have been evoked by
your teaching are evidenced by the warm acknowledgements, in the address
presented to you on the eve of your departure from London, by the students
of the Vedanta philosophy in that town.
Your success as a teacher has been due not only to your deep and intimate
acquaintance with the truths of the Aryan religion and your skill in
exposition by speech and writing, but also, and largely, to your
personality. Your lectures, your essays, and your books have high merits,
spiritual and literary, and they could not but produce their effect. But it
has been heightened in a manner that defies expression by the example of
your simple, sincere, self-denying life, your modesty, devotion, and
earnestness.
While acknowledging your services as a teacher of the sublime truths of our
religion, we feel that we must render a tribute to the memory of your
revered preceptor, Shri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. To him we largely owe even
you. With his rare magical insight he early discovered the heavenly spark in
you and predicted for you a career which happily is now in course of
realisation. He it was that unsealed the vision and the faculty divine with
which God had blessed you, gave to your thoughts and aspirations the bent
that was awaiting the holy touch, and aided your pursuits in the region of
the unseen. His most precious legacy to posterity was yourself.
Go on, noble soul, working steadily and valiantly in the path you have
chosen. You have a world to conquer. You have to interpret and vindicate the
religion of the Hindus to the ignorant, the sceptical, the wilfully blind.
You have begun the work in a spirit which commands our admiration, and have
already achieved a success to which many lands bear witness. But a great
deal yet remains to be done; and our own country, or rather we should say
your own country, waits on you. The truths of the Hindu religion have to be
expounded to large numbers of Hindus themselves. Brace yourself then for the
grand exertion. We have confidence in you and in the righteousness of our
cause. Our national religion seeks to win no material triumphs. Its purposes
are spiritual; its weapon is a truth which is hidden away from material eyes
and yields only to the reflective reason. Call on the world, and where
necessary, on Hindus themselves, to open the inner eye, to transcend the
senses, to read rightly the sacred books, to face the supreme reality, and
realise their position and destiny as men. No one is better fitted than
yourself to give the awakening or make the call, and we can only assure you
of our hearty sympathy and loyal co-operation in that work which is
apparently your mission ordained by Heaven.
We remain, dear brother,
Your loving Friends and Admirers.
The Swami's reply was as follows:
One wants to lose the individual in the universal, one renounces, flies off,
and tries to cut himself off from all associations of the body of the past,
one works hard to forget even that he is a man; yet, in the nears of his
heart, there is a soft sound, one string vibrating, one whisper, which tells
him, East or West, home is best. Citizens of the capital of this Empire,
before you I stand, not as a Sannyasin, no, not even as a preacher, but I
come before you the same Calcutta boy to talk to you as I used to do. Ay, I
would like to sit in the dust of the streets of this city, and, with the
freedom of childhood, open my mind to you, my brothers. Accept, therefore,
my heartfelt thanks for this unique word that you have used, "Brother". Yes,
I am your brother, and you are my brothers. I was asked by an English friend
on the eve of my departure, "Swami, how do you like now your motherland
after four years' experience of the luxurious, glorious, powerful West?" I
could only answer, "India I loved before I came away. Now the very dust of
India has become holy to me, the very air is now to me holy; it is now the
holy land, the place of pilgrimage, the Tirtha." Citizens of Calcutta — my
brothers — I cannot express my gratitude to you for the kindness you have
shown, or rather I should not thank you at all, for you are my brothers, you
have done only a brother's duty, ay, only a Hindu brother's duty; for such
family ties, such relationships, such love exist nowhere beyond the bounds
of this motherland of ours.
The Parliament of Religions was a great affair, no doubt. From various
cities of this land, we have thanked the gentlemen who organised the
meeting, and they deserved all our thanks for the kindness that has been
shown to us; but yet allow me to construe for you the history of the
Parliament of Religions. They wanted a horse, and they wanted to ride it.
There were people there who wanted to make it a heathen show, but it was
ordained otherwise; it could not help being so. Most of them were kind, but
we have thanked them enough.
On the other hand, my mission in America was not to the Parliament of
Religions. That was only something by the way, it was only an opening, an
opportunity, and for that we are very thankful to the members of the
Parliament; but really, our thanks are due to the great people of the United
States, the American nation, the warm hearted, hospitable, great nation of
America, where more than anywhere else the feeling of brotherhood has been
developed. An American meets you for five minutes on board a train, and you
are his friend, and the next moment he invites you as a guest to his home
and opens the secret of his whole living there. That is the character of the
American race, and we highly appreciate it. Their kindness to me is past all
narration, it would take me years yet to tell you how I have been treated by
them most kindly and most wonderfully. So are our thanks due to the other
nation on the other side of the Atlantic. No one ever landed on English soil
with more hatred in his heart for a race than I did for the English, and on
this platform are present English friends who can bear witness to the fact;
but the more I lived among them and saw how the machine was working — the
English national life — and mixed with them, I found where the heartbeat of
the nation was, and the more I loved them. There is none among you here
present, my brothers, who loves the English people more than I do now. You
have to see what is going on there, and you have to mix with them. As the
philosophy, our national philosophy of the Vedanta, has summarised all
misfortune, all misery, as coming from that one cause, ignorance, herein
also we must understand that the difficulties that arise between us and the
English people are mostly due to that ignorance; we do not know them, they
do not know us.
Unfortunately, to the Western mind, spirituality, nay, even morality, is
eternally connected with worldly prosperity; and as soon as an Englishman or
any other Western man lands on our soil and finds a land of poverty and of
misery, he forthwith concludes that there cannot be any religion here, there
cannot be any morality even. His own experience is true. In Europe, owing to
the inclemency of the climate and many other circumstances poverty and sin
go together, but not so in India. In India on the other hand, my experience
is that the poorer the man the better he is in point of morality. Now this
takes time to understand, and how many foreign people are there who will
stop to understand this, the very secret of national existence in India? Few
are there who will have the patience to study the nation and understand.
Here and here alone, is the only race where poverty does not mean crime,
poverty does not mean sin; and here is the only race where not only poverty
does not mean crime but poverty has been deified, and the beggar's garb is
the garb of the highest in the land. On the other hand, we have also
similarly, patiently to study the social institutions of the West and not
rush into mad judgments about them Their intermingling of the sexes, their
different customs their manners, have all their meaning, have all their
grand sides, if you have the patience to study them. Not that I mean that we
are going to borrow their manners and customs, not that they are going to
borrow ours, for the manners and customs of each race are the outcome of
centuries of patient growth in that race, and each one has a deep meaning
behind it; and, therefore, neither are they to ridicule our manners and
customs, nor we theirs.
Again, I want to make another statement before this assembly. My work in
England has been more satisfactory to me than my work in America. The bold,
brave and steady Englishman, if I may use the expression, with his skull a
little thicker than those of other people — if he has once an idea put into
his brain, it never comes out; and the immense practicality and energy of
the race makes it sprout up and immediately bear fruit. It is not so in any
other country. That immense practicality, that immense vitality of the race,
you do not see anywhere else. There is less of imagination, but more of
work, and who knows the well-spring, the mainspring of the English heart?
How much of imagination and of feeling is there! They are a nation of
heroes, they are the true Kshatriyas; their education is to hide their
feelings and never to show them. From their childhood they have been
educated up to that. Seldom will you find an Englishman manifesting feeling,
nay, even an Englishwoman. I have seen Englishwomen go to work and do deeds
which would stagger the bravest of Bengalis to follow. But with all this
heroic superstructure, behind this covering of the fighter, there is a deep
spring of feeling in the English heart. If you once know how to reach it, if
you get there, if you have personal contact and mix with him, he will open
his heart, he is your friend for ever, he is your servant. Therefore in my
opinion, my work in England has been more satisfactory than anywhere else. I
firmly believe that if I should die tomorrow the work in England would not
die, but would go on expanding all the time.
Brothers, you have touched another chord in my heart, the deepest of all,
and that is the mention of my teacher, my master, my hero, my ideal, my God
in life - Shri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. If there has been anything achieved
by me, by thoughts, or words, or deeds, if from my lips has ever fallen one
word that has helped any one in the world, I lay no claim to it, it was his.
But if there have been curses falling from my lips, if there has been hatred
coming out of me, it is all mine and not his. All that has been weak has
been mine, and all that has been life-giving, strengthening, pure, and holy,
has been his inspiration, his words, and he himself. Yes, my friends, the
world has yet to know that man. We read in the history of the world about
prophets and their lives, and these come down to us through centuries of
writings and workings by their disciples. Through thousands of years of
chiselling and modelling, the lives of the great prophets of yore come down
to us; and yet, in my opinion, not one stands so high in brilliance as that
life which I saw with my own eyes, under whose shadow I have lived, at whose
feet I have learnt everything —the life of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. Ay,
friends, you all know the celebrated saying of the Gitâ:
यदा यदा हि धर्मस्य ग्लानिर्भवति भारत ।
अभ्युत्थानमधर्मस्य तदात्मानं सृजाम्यहम् ॥
परित्राणाय साधूनां विनाशाय च दुष्कृताम् ।
धर्मासंस्थापनार्थाय संभवािम युगे युगे ॥
"Whenever, O descendant of Bharata, there is decline of Dharma, and rise of Adharma, then I body Myself forth. For the protection of the good, for the destruction of the wicked, and for the establishment of Dharma I come into being in every age."
Along with this you have to understand one thing more. Such a thing is
before us today. Before one of these tidal waves of spirituality comes,
there are whirlpools of lesser manifestation all over society. One of these
comes up, at first unknown, unperceived, and unthought of, assuming
proportion, swallowing, as it were, and assimilating all the other little
whirlpools, becoming immense, becoming a tidal wave, and falling upon
society with a power which none can resist. Such is happening before us. If
you have eyes, you will see it. If your heart is open, you will receive it.
If you are truth-seekers, you will find it. Blind, blind indeed is the man
who does not see the signs of the day! Ay, this boy born of poor Brahmin
parents in an out-of-the-way village of which very few of you have even
heard, is literally being worshipped in lands which have been fulminating
against heathen worship for centuries. Whose power is it? Is it mine or
yours? It is none else than the power which was manifested here as
Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. For, you and I, and sages and prophets, nay, even
Incarnations, the whole universe, are but manifestations of power more or
less individualized, more or less concentrated. Here has been a
manifestation of an immense power, just the very beginning of whose workings
we are seeing, and before this generation passes away, you will see more
wonderful workings of that power. It has come just in time for the
regeneration of India, for we forget from time to time the vital power that
must always work in India.
Each nation has its own peculiar method of work. Some work through politics,
some through social reforms, some through other lines. With us, religion is
the only ground along which we can move. The Englishman can understand even
religion through politics. Perhaps the American can understand even religion
through social reforms. But the Hindu can understand even politics when it
is given through religion; sociology must come through religion, everything
must come through religion. For that is the theme, the rest are the
variations in the national life-music. And that was in danger. It seemed
that we were going to change this theme in our national life, that we were
going to exchange the backbone of our existence, as it were, that we were
trying to replace a spiritual by a political backbone. And if we could have
succeeded, the result would have been annihilation. But it was not to be. So
this power became manifest. I do not care in what light you understand this
great sage, it matters not how much respect you pay to him, but I challenge
you face to face with the fact that here is a manifestation of the most
marvellous power that has been for several centuries in India, and it is
your duty, as Hindus, to study this power, to find what has been done for
the regeneration, for the good of India, and for the good of the whole human
race through it. Ay, long before ideas of universal religion and brotherly
feeling between different sects were mooted and discussed in any country in
the world, here, in sight of this city, had been living a man whose whole
life was a Parliament of Religions as it should be.
The highest ideal in our scriptures is the impersonal, and would to God
everyone of us here were high enough to realise that impersonal ideal; but,
as that cannot be, it is absolutely necessary for the vast majority of human
beings to have a personal ideal; and no nation can rise, can become great,
can work at all, without enthusiastically coming under the banner of one of
these great ideals in life. Political ideals, personages representing
political ideals, even social ideals, commercial ideals, would have no power
in India. We want spiritual ideals before us, we want enthusiastically to
gather round grand spiritual names. Our heroes must be spiritual. Such a
hero has been given to us in the person of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. If this
nation wants to rise, take my word for it, it will have to rally
enthusiastically round this name. It does not matter who preaches
Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, whether I, or you, or anybody else. But him I place
before you, and it is for you to judge, and for the good of our race, for
the good of our nation, to judge now, what you shall do with this great
ideal of life. One thing we are to remember that it was the purest of all
lives that you have ever seen, or let me tell you distinctly, that you have
ever read of. And before you is the fact that it is the most marvellous
manifestation of soul-power that you can read of, much less expect to see.
Within ten years of his passing away, this power has encircled the globe;
that fact is before you. In duty bound, therefore, for the good of our race,
for the good of our religion, I place this great spiritual ideal before you.
Judge him not through me. I am only a weak instrument. Let not his character
be judged by seeing me. It was so great that if I or any other of his
disciples spent hundreds of lives, we could not do justice to a millionth
part of what he really was. Judge for yourselves; in the heart of your
hearts is the Eternal Witness, and may He, the same Ramakrishna Paramahamsa,
for the good of our nation, for the welfare of our country, and for the good
of humanity, open your hearts, make you true and steady to work for the
immense change which must come, whether we exert ourselves or not. For the
work of the Lord does not wait for the like of you or me. He can raise His
workers from the dust by hundreds and by thousands. It is a glory and a
privilege that we are allowed to work at all under Him.
From this the idea expands. As you have pointed out to me, we have to
conquer the world. That we have to! India must conquer the world, and
nothing less than that is my ideal. It may be very big, it may astonish many
of you, but it is so. We must conquer the world or die. There is no other
alternative. The sign of life is expansion; we must go out, expand, show
life, or degrade, fester, and die. There is no other alternative. Take
either of these, either live or die. Now, we all know about the petty
jealousies and quarrels that we have in our country. Take my word, it is the
same everywhere. The other nations with their political lives have foreign
policies. When they find too much quarrelling at home, they look for
somebody abroad to quarrel with, and the quarrel at home stops. We have
these quarrels without any foreign policy to stop them. This must be our
eternal foreign policy, preaching the truths of our Shâstras to the nations
of the world. I ask you who are politically minded, do you require any other
proof that this will unite us as a race? This very assembly is a sufficient
witness.
Secondly, apart from these selfish considerations, there are the unselfish,
the noble, the living examples behind us. One of the great causes of India's
misery and downfall has been that she narrowed herself, went into her shell
as the oyster does, and refused to give her jewels and her treasures to the
other races of mankind, refused to give the life-giving truths to thirsting
nations outside the Aryan fold. That has been the one great cause; that we
did not go out, that we did not compare notes with other nations — that has
been the one great cause of our downfall, and every one of you knows that
that little stir, the little life that you see in India, begins from the day
when Raja Rammohan Roy broke through the walls of that exclusiveness. Since
that day, history in India has taken another turn, and now it is growing
with accelerated motion. If we have had little rivulets in the past, deluges
are coming, and none can resist them. Therefore we must go out, and the
secret of life is to give and take. Are we to take always, to sit at the
feet of the Westerners to learn everything, even religion? We can learn
mechanism from them. We can learn many other things. But we have to teach
them something, and that is our religion, that is our spirituality. For a
complete civilisation the world is waiting, waiting for the treasures to
come out of India, waiting for the marvellous spiritual inheritance of the
race, which, through decades of degradation and misery, the nation has still
clutched to her breast. The world is waiting for that treasure; little do
you know how much of hunger and of thirst there is outside of India for
these wonderful treasures of our forefathers. We talk here, we quarrel with
each other, we laugh at and we ridicule everything sacred, till it has
become almost a national vice to ridicule everything holy. Little do we
understand the heart-pangs of millions waiting outside the walls, stretching
forth their hands for a little sip of that nectar which our forefathers have
preserved in this land of India. Therefore we must go out, exchange our
spirituality for anything they have to give us; for the marvels of the
region of spirit we will exchange the marvels of the region of matter. We
will not be students always, but teachers also. There cannot be friendship
without equality, and there cannot be equality when one party is always the
teacher and the other party sits always at his feet. If you want to become
equal with the Englishman or the American, you will have to teach as well as
to learn, and you have plenty yet to teach to the world for centuries to
come. This has to be done. Fire and enthusiasm must be in our blood. We
Bengalis have been credited with imagination, and I believe we have it. We
have been ridiculed as an imaginative race, as men with a good deal of
feeling. Let me tell you, my friends, intellect is great indeed, but it
stops within certain bounds. It is through the heart, and the heart alone,
that inspiration comes. It is through the feelings that the highest secrets
are reached; and therefore it is the Bengali, the man of feeling, that has
to do this work.
उत्तिष्ठत जाग्रत प्राप्य वरान्निबोधत । — Arise, awake
and stop not till the desired end is reached. Young men of Calcutta, arise,
awake, for the time is propitious. Already everything is opening out before
us. Be bold and fear not. It is only in our scriptures that this adjective
is given unto the Lord — Abhih, Abhih. We have to become Abhih, fearless,
and our task will be done. Arise, awake, for your country needs this
tremendous sacrifice. It is the young men that will do it. "The young, the
energetic, the strong, the well-built, the intellectual" — for them is the
task. And we have hundreds and thousands of such young men in Calcutta. If,
as you say, I have done something, remember that I was that good-for-nothing
boy playing in the streets of Calcutta. If I have done so much, how much
more will you do! Arise and awake, the world is calling upon you. In other
parts of India, there is intellect, there is money, but enthusiasm is only
in my motherland. That must come out; therefore arise, young men of
Calcutta, with enthusiasm in your blood. This not that you are poor, that
you have no friends. A who ever saw money make the man? It is man that
always makes money. The whole world has been made by the energy of man, by
the power of enthusiasm, by the power of faith.
Those of you who have studied that most beautiful ail the Upanishads, the
Katha, will remember how the king was going to make a great sacrifice, and,
instead of giving away things that were of any worth, he was giving away
cows and horses that were not of any use, and the book says that at that
time Shraddhâ entered into the heart of his son Nachiketâ. I would not
translate this word Shraddha to you, it would be a mistake; it is a
wonderful word to understand, and much depends on it; we will see how it
works, for immediately we find Nachiketa telling himself, "I am superior to
many, I am inferior to few, but nowhere am I the last, I can also do
something." And this boldness increased, and the boy wanted to solve the
problem which was in his mind, the problem of death. The solution could only
be got by going to the house of Death, and the boy went. There he was, brave
Nachiketa waiting at the house of Death for three days, and you know how he
obtained what he desired. What we want, is this Shraddha. Unfortunately, it
has nearly vanished from India, and this is why we are in our present state.
What makes the difference between man and man is the difference in this
Shraddha and nothing else. What make one man great and another weak and low
is this Shraddha. My Master used to say, he who thinks himself weak will
become weak, and that is true. This Shraddha must enter into you. Whatever
of material power you see manifested by the Western races is the outcome of
this Shraddha, because they believe in their muscles and if you believe in
your spirit, how much more will it work! Believe in that infinite soul, the
infinite power, which, with consensus of opinion, your books and sages
preach. That Atman which nothing can destroy, in It is infinite power only
waiting to be called out. For here is the great difference between all other
philosophies and the Indian philosophy. Whether dualistic, qualified
monistic, or monistic, they all firmly believe that everything is in the
soul itself; it has only to come out and manifest itself. Therefore, this
Shraddha is what I want, and what all of us here want, this faith in
ourselves, and before you is the great task to get that faith. Give up the
awful disease that is creeping into our national blood, that idea of
ridiculing everything, that loss of seriousness. Give that up. Be strong and
have this Shraddha, and everything else is bound to follow.
I have done nothing as yet; you have to do the task. If I die tomorrow the
work will not die. I sincerely believe that there will be thousands coming
up from the ranks to take up the work and carry it further and further,
beyond all my most hopeful imagination ever painted. I have faith in my
country, and especially in the youth of my country. The youth of Bengal have
the greatest of all tasks that has ever been placed on the shoulders of
young men. I have travelled for the last ten years or so over the whole of
India, and my conviction is that from the youth of Bengal will come the
power which will raise India once more to her proper spiritual place. Ay,
from the youth of Bengal, with this immense amount of feeling and enthusiasm
in the blood, will come those heroes who will march from one corner of the
earth to the other, preaching and teaching the eternal spiritual truths of
our forefathers. And this is the great work before you. Therefore, let me
conclude by reminding you once more, "Arise, awake and stop not till the
desired end is reached." Be not afraid, for all great power, throughout the
history of humanity, has been with he people. From out of their ranks have
come all the greatest geniuses of the world, and history can only repeat
itself. Be not afraid of anything. You will do marvellous work. The moment
you fear, you are nobody. It is fear that is the great cause of misery in
the world. It is fear that is the greatest of all superstitions. It is fear
that is the cause of our woes, and it is fearlessness that brings heaven
even in a moment. Therefore, "Arise, awake, and stop not till the goal is
reached."
Gentlemen, allow me to thank you once more for all the kindness that I have
received at your hands. It is my wish — my intense, sincere wish — to be
even of the least service to the world, and above all to my own country and
countrymen.