January 12th marked the 150th birthday of one of the most respected visionaries of modern India. As Jawaharlal Nehru once famously pointed out, he made the ordinary Indian feel proud about his prestigious past and at the same time, introduced him to modernity for solving life’s problems. He conceptualised the supreme knowledge of Vedanta into the language of the common man. He brought the attention of the world community to the inherent strength of Indian spirituality. He openly proclaimed his faith in the power of youth in molding the future of this great nation and addressed them as the children of immortal bliss. His words, “Come up, O lions, and shake off the delusion that you are sheep; you are souls immortal, spirits free, blest and eternal; ye are not matter, ye are not bodies; matter is your servant, not you the servant of matter," continue to resonate through generations. Perhaps that’s why even after his lifetime, Swami Vivekananda remains one of the most prominent youth icons of all generations! As we bow down in reverence to that great soul, let us try and stimulate a few of his thoughts, which still hold great value in giving directions to any aspiring nation builder.


During his lifetime, the Indian culture was going through a period of uncertainty. Foreign conquests and ideological hegemony often portrayed our traditions as lopsided and devoid of hope. These biased characterizations and the cultural dogmas that then existed, convinced the ordinary man to start looking up to the western tradition as superior. Perhaps the mindless imitations of west that we see today are only an aftermath of those paradigm shifts caused in mindsets during that period. Swami Vivekananda foresaw its consequences and began his campaign to popularise ancient Indian wisdom. He bridged the gap between science and religion and advocated the power of spirituality and culture devoid of superstition.  He rekindled the fast losing hope on our tradition saying that a mighty tree produces a beautiful ripe fruit, which will fall on the ground and begin to decay and rot. Out of that decay will spring the roots of the future tree, perhaps mightier than the first one. He proclaimed that the period of decay through which our culture passed was all the more necessary because the India of the future had just begun to rise!
In one of his compelling addresseses, Swami Vivekananda explains that the glory of our nation is that we have never conquered any other nation. But he believed that India would conquer the world in the future through spirituality. More than a century has passed since his era. But today we see that many of the world-renowned universities have begun to include Indian culture as a part of their course curriculum. Vivekananda once pointed out that the whole of the Western world is on a volcano which may burst and go to pieces tomorrow because, “they have drunk deep of the cup of pleasure and found it vanity.” Hence sooner or later they would have no other choice other than to turn back to ancient Indian knowledge. Today we see that this process of conquest has begun to happen. It is a matter of great pride that societies, which once ridiculed our traditions have begun to look back upon us as the last resort to end their misery.

The greatness of Swami Vivekananda’s thoughts lies in the fact that he was never tied down by containment.  Even while he preached about the power of our systems, he advocated that India could not afford to turn a blind eye towards the learnings from other countries.  Perhaps this ignorance of outside knowledge led to domination of our land by foreign invaders for thousands of years. Today as we live in a crucial epoch of Indian history, these words of caution would serve us in good measure.

His insights on organisational power are quite fascinating because of the simplicity of its conception. Swami Vivekananda was assured of the fact that for India to have a promising future, accumulation of power and co-ordination of wills to a single focus would be required. He explains this concept in detail citing the example of the British rule in India. He says that compact little nations governing and ruling huge unwieldy nations is quite natural because it is easier for the little compact nations to bring their ideas into the same focus. On the other hand the bigger nations are born, as it were, a disorganized mob and hence struggle to combine and find a synergy.