Author: O P Sharma
Publication: The Times
of India
Date: August 17, 2000
ONE of the most significant
events in the nineteenth century in the field of inter-religious dialogue
and understanding was the first World Parliament of Religions held in Chicago
in September 1893. The contribution made by ``the Hindoo Monk of
India'', Swami Vivekananda, was reported in the world press as a significant
one and ``of lasting value''. The US media unanimously noted that
the Swami had added an entirely new dimension to the proceedings by introducing
a `universal' touch to the subject of religion in a departure from the
traditional rigid approach. ``When other participants talked of this
religion or that'', observed a journalist, ``the Hindoo monk talked of
religion as such -- religion with a capital R -- which is common to all
of humanity''. Another wrote that the Swami's approach to other faiths
was rather like ``the ocean subsuming the waves without negating them''.
The Swamiji's approach
to a universal religion is rooted in the Vedic teaching, ekam sat vipra
bahuda vadanti, that is, one truth is called by various names by various
learned men. As the different religions of the earth try to embody
and express this selfsame truth in their own several ways, there is no
need, as Swamiji pointed out, to quarrel over the matter. All religions
are various aspects of the one universal religion. This, as Pandit
Jawaharlal Nehru in his lectures on Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda points
out, is the main message of India, and it entails, as Swami Vivekananda
so forcefully put it in his opening address at the Parliament: ``Acceptance,
and not mere tolerance of other people's faiths''.
Swamiji exhorted those
assembled at the Parliament, and through them the whole world, to give
up their `frog in the well' attitude pertaining to their respective faiths,
for, he said, it goes against the very basis of religion and spirituality
and eventually gives rise to all manner of fanaticism.
The Smithsonian Institution
of Washington in its book, Abroad In America: Visitors To The New Nation,
paid tribute to the insight of the Swami who, it says, ``passed a mystic's
judgement on a materialistic society and captured the imagination of his
American audience''.
The chaplain of a church
in Chicago, Rev. Frank Blevins, publicly acknowledged the deep and
lasting impact of the Hindu monk's Chicago addresses on many a sensitive
American mind. According to the chaplain, Swamiji's historic success
at the parliament helped inaugurate a serious and sincere study of comparative
religion in the US.
If Lincoln's Gettysberg
address celebrated the brave deeds done on the battlefield in the cause
of freedom for the American slaves and democracy, Swami Vivekananda's Chicago
addresses gave us words of perennial value for ``all people everywhere'',
noted Professor J Pollitt of Yale University in his 1993 address at the
UN.
Moreover, the Chicago
addresses will also be cherished for introducing the concept of what Walt
Whitman in an oblique reference to Vedantic philosophy and its pronounced
socialism calls `spiritual democracy'. The sublime humanism embodied
in Swamiji's doctrine goes far beyond any merely `political' democracy
concept; it entails, ``the recognition of divinity in every man and woman''
as well as ``everybody's inherent right to liberation or moksha''.
Every little soul counts in the cosmic scheme of things for atman is verily
Brahman, and with no `born sinner' complex, devoid of any threat of eternal
damnation.
Nor is there, according
to Vivekananda, the exclusive right to ``holiness, purity and charity''
of any faith in the world, for these virtues are evidenced by people of
all religious backgrounds. Indeed, one almost hears the resounding,
inspired words of the great Swami in his closing address reverberating
down the annals of history. Giving a fitting global finale to the
entire seventeen days' proceedings, he said:
``If the Parliament of
religions has shown anything to the world, it is this: It has proved to
the world that holiness, purity and charity are not the exclusive possessions
of any church in the world, and that every system has produced men and
women of the most exalted character. In the face of this evidence,
if anybody dreams of the exclusive survival of his own religion and the
destruction of the others, I pity him from the bottom of my heart...''.
