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SOAS Studies on South Asia • Swami Vivekananda and the Modernization of Hinduism Google Original frcm 01gitized by UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN SOAS Studies on South Asia Terence J. Byres, ed., The State, Development Planning and liberalization in India Nigel Crook, India's Industrial Cities: Essays in Economy and Demography Dagmar Engels, Beyond Purdah? Women in Bengal 1890-1939 Michael Hutt, ed., Nepal in the Nineties: Versions oft he Past, ViJions oft he Future Sudipta Kaviraj, The Unhappy Consciousness: Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay and the Formation of Nationalist Discourse in India Peter Robb, ed., Rural India: Land, Power and Society under British Rule Peter Robb, ed., Society and Ideology: Essays in South Asian History Peter Robb, ed., Dalit Movements and the Meanings ofl abour in India Nigel Crook, India's Industrial Cities: Essays in Economy and Demography Ujjwal K. 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Contributors V.1. Foreword Vll 1. Swami Vivekananda's construction of Hinduism ./ Tapen Raychaudhuri 1 2. Reconstructing 1' .induism on a world platform: the World's First Pa11iament of Religions, Chicago 1892 v' Indira Chowdhwy-Sengupta 17 3. Sanskrit Pandits and the modernisation of Sanskrit ./ education in the nineteenth to twentieth centuries Nita Kumar 36 4. A meeting of ends? Swami Vivekananda and Brahmabandhab Upadhyay Julius J. Lipner 61 s. The modemi~ of tradition: Harishchandra ofBanaras and the defence o Hindu dharma Vasudha Dalmia 77 6. Hin<kl modernisers and the 'public' arena: indigenous critiques of caste in colonial India Susan Bayly 93 7. Vivekananda's Western message from the East v Dermot Killingley 138 8. Swami Vivekananda and sev.i: taking 'social service' seriously Gwilym BeckerJeue 158 9. Science and Sanskrit Vivelcananda's views on education Vivienne Baumfield 194 10. Vivelcananda and cssentialism Glyn Richards 213 11. Two sanitan dharma leaders and Swami Vivekananda: a comparison Kenneth W. Jones 224 12. Historicity, hagiography, and hierarchy in Gangetic India, 1918-1936 William R. Pinch 244 13. Swami Vivelcananda's ideal society and its impact on Govind Chandra Dev Hiltrud Rilstau 264 14. Swami Vivekananda and the challenge to fundamentalism Nemai Sadhan Bose 281 v Google Origiral frcn1 0191t1zea by UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN CONTRIBUTORS Vivienne Baumfield Lecturer in Education, Department of Education, University of Newcastle Susan Bayly Fellow of Christ's College, University ofC ambridge Gwilym Beckerlegge Sta.ff Tutor, Department of Religious Studies, The Open University Nemai Sadhan Bose Guru Nanak Research Professor, Asiatic Society, Calcutta Indira Chowdhury-Sengupta Reader, Department of English, Jadavpur University Vasudha Dalmia Teacher of Hindi literature and Modem Indian Studies, Universities of Tiibingen and Heidelberg Kenneth W. Jones University Distinguished Professor of History, Department of History, Kansas State University Dermot Killingley Senior Lecturer, Department of Religious Studies, University of Newcastle upon Tyne Nita Kumar Fellow, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta Julius J. lipner Lecturer, Divinity Faculty, University of Cambridge William R. Pinch Assistant Professor of History, Wesleyan University Willis.."11 i<adire Lecturer in Bengali, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London Tapan RaychaudhlUi Emeritus Professorial Fellow, St Antony's College, University of Oxford Glyn Richards Fonner Head oft he Department of Reliaious Studies, University of Stirling Hiltrud Riistau Department of South Asian Studies, Humboldt University, Berlin vi Google Origiral frcn1 0191t1zea by UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN FOREWORD William Radice The papers in this volume were nearly all written for a Workshop that was held at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London on 26 and 27 November 1993. The Workshop stemmed from the Annual Lecture of the Centre of South Asian Studies at SOAS, which was given on 26 November by Professor Tapan Raychaudhuri. His lecture fonns the opening chapter of the present volume, and establishes its central drift. The Lecture and Workshop were occasioned by the centenary of Swami Vivekananda's celebrated address to the 1893 World's Parliament of Religions in Chicago; they were given added urgency and topicality by the demolition by Hindu fundamentalists of the Bahri Masjid at Ayodhya on 6 December 1992. It was Professor Nemai Sadhan Bose who felt passionately that it was crucially necessary, at this alarming moment in India's development, to give scholarly attention to Vivekananda's social and religious ideals, to rescue them from the distortions that were being worked on them by fundamentalists keen to co-opt Vivekananda to their cause. Meeting me in Calcutta early in 1993, he urged me to organise the workshop. Professor Tapan Raychaudhuri shared Professor Bose's concern, and his lecture refined further the sym.pathetic yet objective appraisal of Vivekananda he had earlier given in his seminal book Europe Recon sidered: perreptions of the West in nineteenth-century Bengal (Delhi: OUP 1988). The firm view of both these scholars, based on their comprehensive knowledge of the Swami's writings in both Bengali and • English, as well as the facts of his life, was in 1993 and still is now that any attempt to project the Swami as a Hindu revivalist, fundamentalist or communalist grossly contradicts the evidence. Yet a volume such as this, bringing together scholars from different fields and backgrounds, approaching the Swami from many different angles, shows that the historical estimation of his life, works and influ ence can never be finally wrapped up. His life was so short, his writ ings often so hurried and improvised and provisional, that interpreters will always find loose ends or contradictions to support their particular vii Google Ong1nal from Digitized by UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN FOREWORD standpoint. Differences of view will be found in the present volume: to try to reconcile them all would diminish the richness and fascination of Vivekananda's legacy. It would also force into a rigid. intellectual mould the thoughts of a man who-despite his formidable learning and intellect- was not a systematic thinker, and never claimed to be one. In everything he did and wrote, the Swami was driven by his feelings: by his passionate devotion to his &UN Ramakrishna, by his ardent pursuit of the spiritual realisation that be had witnessed in his master, by his heartfelt awareness of human suffering and poverty that he acquired th.rough his experience as a wandering sannyisi, by his earnest convic tion- implanted in him unexpectedly by his sudden success at Chicago-that India and the West needed each other. He tried (not always succeeding perhaps) to apply the discipline of his intellect to those feelings; but the feelings always, for him, had primacy: It is through the heart that the Lord is seen, and not through the intellect. The intellect is only the street-cleaner, cleansing the path for us, a secondary worker, the policeman; but the policeman is not a positive necessity for the workings of society. He is only to stop disturbances, to check wrong-doing and that is all the work required of the intellect. When you read intellectual books, you think when you have mastered them, 'Bless the Lord that I am out of them' because the intellect is blind and cannot move of itself, it bas neither hands nor feel It is feeling that works, that moves with speed infmitely superior to that of electricity or anything else. Do you feel?- that is the question . ..1 So what would the Swami have made of the Workshop in 1993 and a volume such as this? He would probably been wryly amused at such academic scrutiny of his life and works and writings, but we can, I think, rest assured that he would not have disapproved of academic endeavour per se. He himself devoured academic books, valued his meetings with scholars in Europe and America. and regarded scholar ship-like science-as a valid sidhani in itself: almost a form ofj filna yoga. It is essential, however, never to lose sight of the Swami's pri mary motivation: it was, after all, what made him what he was and is therefore at the root of why we met to discuss him in 1993 and are publishing the Workshop papers now. A salutary reminder of that motivation was given at the end of the Workshop by Swami Dayatman anda of the Ramakrishna Vedanta Centre at Bourne End. His moving words impresSed us by the inner experience they reflected- just as Vivekananda himself impressed those who heard him. I 'Practical Vedanta' Part I, CW ll, p.306. viii Google Origlr.al from 01g1tizea by UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN FOREWORD A more serious question is: what would he have thought of the title of the Workshop and volume? It was devised partly so that the Workshop would embrace not only VivekaMOO& himself but his con temporaries and the religious, social and cultural context from which he emerged and which continued to evolve in his wake. Thus the volume includes-as well as the papers specifically on Vivekananda- two papers on nineteenth century Benaras (Nita Kumar and Vasudha Dalmia); two detailed studies of contemporary critiques of caste- in India as a whole (Susan Bayly) and in the Ramananda order of Vaish nava monks (Vijay Pinch); and comparisons between Vivekananda and other significant leaders and thinkers: Brahmabandhab Upadhyay (Julius Lipner), two sanltan dharma propagandists in the Punjab (Kenneth Jones) and Govind Chandra Dev in East Benaal (Hiltrud Riistau). But what would the Swami have made of the term 'modernisation' as applied to Hinduism? In one sense be would prob ably have rejected it as meaningless, since he believed the basic prin ciples of Vedanta to be eternally true, and valid not only for Hinduism but all faiths. But in other respects I do not think he would have shared the caution that many historians and thinkers today have about applying a moral value to the term. This caution characterises, for example, Vasudba Dalmia's definition ('an operation which entails a process of alteration and improvement of what is basically an older and already existing institution or system in order to accord better with contemporary conditions') or Gwilym Beckerlegge's view of modern isation as the changes worked by industrialisation, mass literacy, rapid transport and communications etc. For Vivekananda, modernisation meant reform: reform not only in its social dimension-in the nine teenth-century Bengali tradition of social, religious and educational reform (so that Vivekananda declared himself to be a follower of Vidyasagar as well as Ramakrishna) - but in a mental sense too. His central project- uniting his work in India and in the West- was to try to work out what in the religious traditions not only of India but of all countries and civilisations was valid and acceptable to modem scien tific and historical understanding. What should be preserved from the accumulated lumber and clutter of the world's religions, and what should be discarded? Was it possible not to throw the baby out with the bathwater? This project-and these questions-are even more pressing now than they were in 1893: The worship of the goddess of Reason dwing the French Revolution was not ix Google rron1 Origi~al oig1tlze1lby UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN FOREWORD the fint mmifestation of that phenomenon in lbe hilllDry of humanity, it wa a re-eoa•~went of what bad happened in ancient times, but in modem times it baa usumed greater proportions. The physical sciences are beUer equipped now than formerly, and religions have become leu and less equipped. The founda tions have been all undermined, and modern man, whatever be may say in public, knows in tbe privacy of his heart that be can no more 'believe'. Believing certain things becau1e an organized body of priests tells him to believe, believing becauJe it ii written in certain boob, believing because bis people like him to believe, the modem man knows to be impossible for him. There are, of course, a DIUDber of people wbo seem to acquiesce in lbe 10- called popular faith, but we also know for certain that they do not think. Their idea ofb elief may be better tramllled u 'not-thinl<ing-careleuneu'. This fight lnakina cannot last much longer without to pie<les all lbe buildings ofr eligion. au& The question is: is there a way The present volume does not in any way supply an answer to that question, any more than Swami Vivekananda had a final a.nswer. But for as long as the search for an answer goes on, Vivekananda will be remembered, and will, no doubt, be discussed and dissected at many more seminars and in many more books such as this. It remains for me to thank not only the contributors to the volume for revising their papers for publication but also the past and present Chairmen of the Centre of South Asian Studies, Professor Peter Robb and Dr. Giles Tillotson, for their guidance and support (it was Professor Robb who valuably suggested that the workshop should be widened beyond Vivekananda himself), and above all the Executive Officers of the Centre, Miss Janet Marks and her successor Mrs. Barbara Lazoi. The last named has shown by her care that accurate copy-editing and typesetting (even with modem computer aids) can also be a form of sidhani. SOAS, October 1996 2 ·Reason and Religion', CW I, p.367. x Google Original frcm oig1t1ze-0 by UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

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