It was his whole-hearted acceptance of her religion and spirituality as the only source of her national vitality and the sure foundation of her reconstruction. Therefore Swamiji’s lectures and letters were exhortations to the people of India to preserve their priceless spiritual culture at all costs and thus preserve their national identity and their uniqueness as a spiritual race. For example, Swamiji writes to his disciples in Madras, “Keep the motto before you – Elevation of the masses without injuring their religion..Can you raise them? Can you give them back their lost individuality without making them lose their innate spiritual nature?” (6).
way, in his Colombo address: “What is true of the individual is equally true of the race. Each race, similarly, has a peculiar bent… a peculiar mission to fulfill in the life of the world… Political greatness or military power is never the mission of our race; it never was and, mark my words, it never will be. But there has been the other mission given to us… The Hindu’s calm brain must pour out its own quota to give to the sum total of human progress. India’s gift to the world is the light spiritual…. Slow and silent, as the gentle dew that falls in the morning, unseen and unheard yet producing a most tremendous result, has been the work of this calm, patient, all suffering, spiritual race upon the world of thought.” (9)
He puts the same idea in a different way, as in this letter, “Until all the Hindu race becomes extinct… India can never be Europe until she dies”; “India will be raised, not with the power of the flesh, but with the power of the spirit…. with the flag of peace and love, the garb of the Sannyasin;….. say not that you are weak. The spirit is omnipotent”.(7)
In words that wing their way into the hearts of men, Swamiji draws the picture of contrast between how the other races and India have given lifegiving ideas and thoughts to the world. The others have done it “with the blast of war trumpets and with the march of embattled cohorts,” “soaked in a deluge of blood; the blood of millions of our fellow-beings”, “followed by the groans of millions by the wails of orphans, by the tears of widows”…. but India has for thousands of years peacefully existed… even from her but every word has been spoken with a blessing behind it peace before it.”(9)
Again with a note of warning, “ India is immortal as long as she continues her search for God. But if she takes to politics and social conflict she will die”. Now shifting the focus a little, Swamiji is equally emphatic in pointing out that adherence to a religio-spiritual way of life is not merely for India’s survival as a nation and a race but for the fulfillment of our mission to the world as well. He puts the case a forceful yet winsome
In this context, therefore, Swamiji’s call to the nation is to fulfill her
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