Chapter 2.2 - Conclusion (social reforms of Swami Vivekananda)

From the above discussion it has been surveyed that Swami Vivekananda can be rightly said a social reformer. He tried to revitalize India with its ancient traditions along with modern science. One special character of Vivekananda’s reform is that he did not try to abolish the systems prevalent in then India. Rather he wants to make them grow in their true form. Vivekananda undoubtedly took immense pride in the India's inheritance from the past. Eradication of poverty, removal of illiteracy, restitution of human dignity, liberty from fear, availability of spiritual and secular knowledge to all, irrespective of their class, caste, and ending of all the monopolies, all these together made up a part of what he got from his Vedantic Socialism. With his re-interpretation of Vedanta, and its deep rooted concern for the masses and their issues, Swami Vivekananda gave India a new way of life. He raised his voice against the feudal and colonial oppression. At the same time Vivekananda looked for answers regarding the India's historical destinies, and ways to transform it into strong, wealthy and independent state. He always reiterated the fact that India could only be built with the help of masses, small groups of energetic patriots, brave and strong.

He had immense outrage over exploitation of rights and showed genuine concern for uplift of socially backward people. He wanted a distinct social reform with the help of Western ideas and technology, yet not entrapped us with slavish imitation of the Western ways of life. He wrote: "Remember that the nation lives in the cottages. But, alas, nobody ever did anything for them. Our modern reformers are very busy about widow-remarriage. Of course, I am a sympathizer in every reform, but the fate of a nation does not depend upon the number of husbands the widows get, but upon the condition of the masses".^[1] Vivekananda went a step further and said “So long as the millions live in hunger and ignorance, I hold every man a traitor who, having been educated at their expense, pays not the least heed to them."^[2] The revolutionary doctrine he propounded has serious influence on the social reformers that followed-dynamism of Mahatma Gandhi and the socialistic ideas of Jawaharlal Nehru were highly inspired by Vivekananda’s ideas and teachings.

Swami Vivekananda's ideas on education are modern than the educationists of ancient India. From the very beginning he was instrumental in mass development and uplift. He laid special stress on technical education and industrial training which have now become an essential part of the educational system of modern India. Vivekananda worked for the educational rights of women. He laid special stress on traditional values of family life and chastity for women. But he was totally against their subjection. He pleaded for the extension of all educational facilities to women. He tried to give India its traditional religion with a new orientation of social service. With the establishment of Ramakrishna Mission, he propounded a new path for Indian monks and Sanyasins. We now see that Hindu monks do not live an isolated life, on the contrary they are concerned with proving their service to the society. They have set up hospitals, educational institutions, dispensaries, orphanages and other community institutions for alleviating human misery.

Thus, one sees Swami Vivekananda is a pioneering figure in India who has played in integral part towards shaping of modern India. Socialism, secularism, mass uplift and mass power, treating the untouchables with compassion, universal literacy, women's liberation and inculcation of social service as a part of religious worship-these constituted the basic points for reforms by Swami Vivekananda. His famous words; ‘Awake, arise, and stop not till the goal is reached’ still resonated among the youth of the nation, rousing their social consciousness and kindling their damp spirits.

So we may now conclude that Vivekananda is a great social reformer. He offered solution of the Indian society in proportionate to their problems. During the time of Vivekananda, religion, specially the Hindu religion was nothing except priest craft. He through his religious lectures has shown that religion consists only in self-realization and realizing the same self in others. We all are part of the same Brahman. So we all are divine. And divinity is within us. This he preached to arouse the self-confidence in people. This was really a bold step. Because at that time the priest had an overwhelming power on society. But he could not stop himself in showing the people of India that religion consists in self-realization only. Again at that time the caste system was much degenerated. It was based on birth. He showed that caste is not based on birth, but on individual’s quality. His aimed at the full-fledged development of the country. Therefore he offered an education system which is sufficient to all-round development of students. Society consists in individuals. If the individual rises society will automatically rise. In his educational reform we can bring out two points. First, at that time education was restricted to limited individuals. Vivekananda offered universal mass education. His provision of informal education was one of the greatest contributions to society. Secondly, the education system of then India was not good in his view. According to him it was negative in character. A full-fledge education system is that which helps us to become mentally and physically strong as well as to become self -reliant. If we look into his educational curriculum we see that it includes all those subjects which are sufficient to make people mentally-physically strong and selfreliant. The common masses of India thus had been benefited by his philosophy. These are enough to establish him as a social reformer.

Generally speaking, his contribution to India and to the larger world may be summed up in the following ways. First, in modern India, it was Vivekananda who first emphasized that our everyday lives would become more meaningful only when spiritualized. It was in this spirituality that he re-discovered, as it were, India's message to herself and to the world. For Vivekananda, this spiritual self-realization leads people more fully realizing their own potentialities, specially in the context of a colonized society like that of 19th century India. Second, even though He rejected political praxis and West inspired social and religious reforms, his essential message was the empowerment of the people: through education, collective thought and action but above all, realizing he underlying unity of all human existence. In the Hindu tradition, ascetic detachment from the world had been criticized even before Vivekananda but it was he who first actively joined the idea of individual renunciation to committed social service. In this sense, he gave new meaning or signification to the very idea and institution of sanyas.

Third, there is the love that Vivekananda consistently exhibited for the socially marginalized and oppressed. It is he, who even before Gandhi, reinvented and effectively used the older religious idiom of God especially residing in the lowly and the poor (daridranarayan).

Swami Vivekananda was really an epoch maker with a life span of less than forty years inspiring his brothers to fight against poverty, illiteracy, superstition, untouchability, priest craft, and tyranny of the wise. In his wanderings from the Himalayas to Kanyakumari, he mixed with all classes of people, ate and slept with them, shared their Joys and sorrow. His heart always throbbed with the masses and in their degradation he found himself humiliated. He vehemently criticized the orthodox brahmanical caste system and viewed ‘untouchability’ as a type of mental disease of upper classes.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

Vivekananda, Swami, Education, p-63.

[2]:

[Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda] VOL.5, p-58.