ADDRESS OF WELCOME PRESENTED IN CALCUTTA AND SWAMIJTS REPLY, On his arrival in Calcutta, the Swami Vivekananda was greeted with intense enthusiasm, and the whole of his progress through tlie decorated streets of the City was thronged with an immense crowd waiting to have a sight of him. The official reception was held a week later, at the residence of the late Raja Radha Kanta Deb Bahadur at Sobha Bazar, when Raja Benoy Krishna Deb Bahadur took the chair. After a few biief introductory remarks from the Chairman, the following addicss was read and presented to him, enclosed in a silver casket: — To Srimat Vivekananda Swami.
Dear Brother, — We, the Hindu inhabitants of Calcutta and of several other places in Bengal, ^offer you on your return to the land of your birth a hearty welcome. We do so with a sense of piide as well as of gratitude, for by your noble woik and example in various paits of tlie world you have done honour not only to our religion, but also to our country and to our province in particular.
At the great Pailiamcnt of Religions which constituted a Section of the Woild’s Fair held in Chicago in 1893, you presented the piinciples of tiie Aryan religion. The substance of your exposition was to most of your audience a revelation, and its manner overpowering alike by its grace and its stiength. Some may have received it in a questioning spii it, a few may have criticised it, but its general effect was a revolution in the religious ideas of a large section of cultivated Ameiicans. Anew light had dawned on their mind, and with their accustomed eaineslness and love of trqth they determined to take full advantage of it. Your oppoitunittes widened; your work grew. You had to meet call after call fiom many cities in many States, answer many queries, satisfy many doubts, solve many difficulties. You did all this work with energy, ability and sincerity; and it has led to lasting results. Your teaching has deeply influenced many an enlightened circle in the American Common- wealth, has stimulated thought and research; and lias in many instances definitely altered religious conceptions in the direction of an inci eased appieciation of Hindu ideals. The rapid growth of clubs and societies for the co-operative study of religions and the investigation of spiritual truth, is witness to your labour in the far West. You may be regarded as the founder of a College in London for the teach- ing of the Vedanta philosophy. Your lectures have been regulaily delivered, punctu- ally attended and widely appreciated. Their influence has extended beyond the walls of the lecture-rooms. The love and esteem which have been evoked by your leaching are evidenced by the warm acknowledgments, in the address presented to you on the eve of your departure from London, by the students of the Vedanta philosophy in that town.
Your success as a teacher has been due not only to your deep and intimate acquaintance with the truths of the Aryan religion, and your skill in exposition by speech and writing, but also, and largely, to your personality. Your lectures, your essays and your books have high merits, spiritual and literal'}', and they could not but produce their effect. But it has been heightened in a manner that defies expreskEPI.r TO THE ADDREPS OF WELCOME IN CALCUTTA Sion, 1)> the cx.implo of youi simple, sinccic, self-denying life, your modesty, devo- tion and earnestness While acknowledging your services as a teacher of the sublime Itulhs of our religion, we feel that we must tendei a tribute to the memoi) of youi levcied jnccep- loi Sii Ramakiishna Paiamahamsa. 'I'o him we laigch owe even )ou. With his laie magical insight he eaily discoveied the heavenly sj)aik in you, and jneduted foi you a careei which happily is now in couuse of leahsation. lie it was that unsealed the vision and the faculty <h\ine with which God liad blessed you, gave to join thoughts and aspiiatiuns the bent that was awaiiting the holy touch and aided youi pui suits in the icgion of the unseen. Ills most piecious legacy to posterity was yourself.
Go on noble soul, woiking steadily and valiantly m the path you have chosen. Yon have a woild to conquer You have to mtcipiet and vindicate the religion of the Tlindus to the ignoiaiil, the.sceptical, the wilfully blind. You have liegun the woik in a spiiit which commands oiii admiiation, and have aheady achieved a success to which man} lands hcai witness Hut a gieal deal >et lemains to he done; and our own countiy, or lather we should say \oiu own comiliv, waits on }ou, 'I'lie liullis of the Hindu lehgion have to be expounded to huge numbers of 1 lindiis themselves, lhace youi self then foi 'the giaiid e.xeition. We have conlidem e in vou and in the le-hteousness of om cause Om national lelignm seeks to win no malcnal tmimphs. Ils pui puses aie similual, its weapon is a irulh whirl) is hiiMen aw.av fiom mateiial eves and yields only to the rdloclive leason Call on the woild, and whcie nccessaiy, on Hindus tlieiuMdvcs, to open the innci eye, to tianscend the senses, to icad lightly the sacit'd iioi lies in face the siipieme lealiU and lealise tlieii posilion and destiny vs men No r.ne is hel'. i liU-d than yiwnself to giv.‘ the awakemng oi make tiic call, ',na wv can 01,1} assme}oi, ot cm heail} sympalhv and lo\al copemion m that V, oik which is appaivntl} }om nm-ion oidamed by Heaven We rem.am den Inoihei, Vom luvM ^ fnend-, A adiniieis.
The Sw, ami’s lepl} was as follows - 0„(,,,,1^ io loM ih-' cm eis>! m the imhvi.Uial, one lenonnres. flies oil, and lues to cut Imnsjf oil l.om J’ asMti Mlions of the body, of the piM. one woiKs haul to lou-et even that he u- a mm, ad in the lioaitol ho hcail, thme is a. soil sound, one 01,0 ul'.J, l.-lls hi,„, F.,M oi WV-I, l,o,„0,. Ivs, C.li/.o,,', lor tilo ktuduoss y.u, hwo a,olv„,,,Uho. 1 shoul.l not ihauk you,U,.11, fur LECTURES—FROM COLOMBO TO ALMORA you arc my brotlieis, you have done only a brother’s duty, aye, only a Hindu brother's duty, foi such family ties, such relationships, such love, exist nowhere beyond the bonds of this motheiland of ours.
I'hc Parliament of Religions was a great affair, no doubt. From various cities of this land, we have thanked the gentlemen who organised the meeting, and they deserved all our thanks for the kindness that has been shown to us, but yet allow me to construe for you the history of the Parliament of Religions. They wanted a horse, and they wanted to ride it. There weie people there who wanted to make it a heathen show, but u was ordained otheiwisc; it could not help being so. Most of them were kind, Inil we have thanked them enough.
On the other hand, my mission in Ameiica was not to the Parliament of Religions. That was only something by the way, it was only an opening, an oppoitunity, and for that we are veiy thankful to the members of the Pailiamcnt; but really, our thanks are due to the great people of the United States, the American nation, the warm- hearted, hospitable, great nation of America, where more than anywhere else the feeling of brotherhood has been developed. An American meets you for five minutes on board a train, and you arc his friend, and the next moment he invites you as a guest to his home, and opens the seciet of his whole living there. That is the character of the American lace, and we highly appreciate it. Their kindness to me is past all nai ration, it would take me years yet to tell you how I have been ticated by them, most kindly and most wonderfully. So arc our thanks due to the other nation on the othei side of tlic Atlantic. No one ever landed on English soil with more hatred in his heait for a race than I did for the English, and on this platform are present English friends, who can bear witness to the fact; but the moie I lived among them, and saw how the machine was woiking, — the English national life, — ainl mixed with them, I found where the heart-beat of the nation was, and the moie I loved them There is none among you here present, my brothers, who loves the English people more than I do now. You have to see what is going on there, and you have to mix with them. As the philosophy, our national philosophy of tlie Vedanta, has snmmai iscd all misfortune, all misery, as coming from that one cause, ignoiancc, herein also we must understand that the diflkullies that arise between us and the Jhighsh people are mostly due to that ignorance; we do not know them, they do not know us. Unfortunately, to the Western mind, spiiiluality, nay, even morality, IS eternally connected w’lth w'orldly prospciity, and as soon as an English- man or any othei Western man, lands on our soil, and finds a land of povcily and of misery, he foitluvith concludes, that there cannot be any religion here, theie cannot be any morality even, llis own expeiience is true. In Europe, owing to the inclemency of the climate and many other circumstances, poverty and sin go togethei, but not so in India. In India, on the other hand, my experience is, that the poorer the man the better he is in point of morality. Now this lakes time to undci stand, and how many foieign people ar^lhere who will stop to understand this, the very seciet of national existence in India? Few are there who will have the patience to study the nation and understand. Here and here alone, is the only race where poverty does not mean ciimc, poverty does not mean sin, and here is the only lace where not only povcity docs not mean crime, but poverty has been deified, and the beggai's gaib is the gaib of the highest in the land. On the other hand, we ha\e also similaily, patiently to study the social instiUitions of the West, and not lush into mad judgments about them. Their mteimiiigling of the bexc*s, their REPLY TO THE ADDRESS OF WELCOME IN CALCUTTA cr5 clifTerent customs, their manners, have all iheir meaning, have all their gmnd sides If you have the patience to study them. Not that I mean that we are going to 1>omow their manners and customs, not that they aie going to bonow oms, for the manneis and customs of each race are the outcome of centuiies of patient giowlh in that race and each one has a deep meaning behind it, and theiefoie neilhei aie they to ridicule our manners and customs, nor we theiis.
Again, I want to make another.statement before this assembly. ]\Ty woik in England has been more satisfactory to me than my woik in America. The bold, biavc and steady Englishman, if 1 may use the e.vpiession, with his skull a little thicker than those of other people — if be has once an idea put into his biain, it never comes out, and the immense practicality and energy of the lace makes it sprout up and immediately bear fruit. It is not so in any other countiy. That immense practicality, that immense vitality of the race, >ou do not see anywhcie else. There is less of imagination, but more of woik, and who knows the well-.spnng, thenvain- spring of the English hcait? flow much of imagination and of leeling is theie! They are a nation of heiocs, they are thetiue Kshatri)as, then education is to hide their feelings and never to show them. From then childhood thev have been educated up to that. Seldom will >ou find an Englishman manifesimg feeling, nay, even an Englishwoman. I have seen Englishwomen go to work and do deeds which would stagger the biavest of Ilengalees to follow. But with all thi.s heioic supeisti ucture, behind this covering of the hghter, thcie is a deej) spilng of feeling in the English heart. If you once know how to reach it, if you get theie, if }ou have peisonal contact and mix with him, ho will open his hcait, he is your friend foi evei, he is your servant. Therefore in my opinion, my woik in England has been moie satisfactory than any- where else. I firmly believe that if I should die to-moirow, llie woik in England would not die, but would go on expanding all the time.
Brothers, you have touched another choid in my hcait, the deepest of all, and that is the mention of my teacher, my mastei, my hero, my ideal, my (jod in life Sri Ramakrishna Paraimhamsa. If theie has lieen anything achieved by me. by thoughts, or woids, or deeds, if from my lips has ever fallen one woid that has helfxid any one in the world, I lay no claim to it, it was his. But if there have been cm SC'S falling fiom my lips, if there has l:>een hatied coming out of me, it is all mine, and not his. All that has been weak has been mine, and all that has been life-giving, strengthening, pure, and holy, has been his mspiialion, his woids, and he himself Yes, my fi lends, the world has yet to know that man. Wc read m the history of the woild, about prophets and their lives, and these come down to us ihiough centimes of wnlings and workings by their disciples. Through thousands of years of chiselling and modelling, the lives of the gieai prophets of yore come down to us; and yet, in my opinion, not one stands so high in biiliiance as that life which I saw with my own eyes, under who.se shadow I have lived, at whose feet 1 have leaint everything, — the life of Ramakrishna ParamahamsI# Aye, fi lends, you all know the cclebiatcd saying of the Gita ^ ft ^4^ i i» “Whenever, O descendant of Bhaiata, thoio is decline of Dharma, and rise of Adhar- ma, then I body Myself forth. I'or the protection of the good, for the desi ruction of the wicked, and for the establi.shmcnt of Dhaima, I conies into being in ever} age.”
Along with it you have to understand one thing moie. Such a thing is before US to-day. Before one of these tidal waves of spiiituality comes, there aie wiiiiipools LECTURES -FROai COLOMBO TO ALa/ORA ii6 of lesser manifeslation all over society. One of these comes up, at first unknown, unpcrccived, and unihought of, assuming proportion, swallowing, as it weic, and assimilating all the other little whiilpools, becoming immense, becoming a tidal wave, and falling upon society with a power which none can resist..Such is hapjiening before us. If you have eyes you will sec it. If )our heail is open you will icccivo it. If you are truth-scckcis )ou will find it Blind, blind indeed is the man who does not sec the signs of the «1ay' Aye, ihis bo) born of pooi Biahman paienls in an out-of-the-way village, of which very few of you have even heaid, is liteially being worshipped in lands which have been fulminating against heathen worship for centuiies. Whose powci is it? Is it mine, or youis? It is none else than the powei which was manifested here as Ramakrishna Paiamah.tm^a For. you and I, and sages and prophets, nay, even Incai nations, the whole universe, me but manifestations of power more or less individualised, nioie oi less concentrated. Hcie has been a manifesta- tion of an immense power, just the vciy beginning of whose worldngs we aic seeing, and before this gcneiation passes away, you will see more wondei ful w'Oikings of that pow’cr. It has come just in lime for the regcuei alien of India, for we forget irom time to time the vital power that must always w^oik in India.
Kach nation has its own peculiar method of w'oik. Some woik through politics, Bome through social lefoims, some thiough <*lhei lines. With us, lehgion is the only ground along w'hich w'c* can move. 'I'hc Englishman can undei stand religion even through politics. IVihaps, the Amencau can understand re'igion even ihiough pocial reforms. But the Hindu can imdei stand even politics when it is given thiough rehgiQn; sociology must come thiough religion, evciything must come thiough religion. For that is the theme, the lest aic the vaiiations in the naiional life-music. And that w'as in dangei It seemed that we weie going to change this theme in our national life, that wc w'crc going to exchange the backbone of oni existence, as it weie, that we weie trying to replace a spiritual by a iiolilual backbone. And if we could have succeeded, the icsult would have been annihilation But it was not to be. So this power became manifest. I do not care in what light you undeistand this great sage, it matter.s not how much respect you pay to him, but I challenge you taco to face with the fact, that heie is a manifestation of the most marvellous power that has been for scvcial centuiies in India, and it is youi duly, as Hindus, to Bludy this power, to find what has been done for the regeneration, for the good of India, and foi the good of the whole human race through it. Aye, long befoic ideas of universal religion and brothcily feeling between different sects had been mooted and discussed in any country in the world, hcie. in sight of this city, was living a man whose whole life was a Parliament of Religions, as it should be.
Tlie -highest ideal in our Scriptures is the lmperson.J, and would to God every- one of us heie were high enough to realise that Impersonal ideal; but, as that cannot be, it is absolutely necessary for the vast majority of human beings to have a Personal ideal; and no nation can rise, can become great, can work at all, with- out enthusiastically coming under the banner of one of these gieat ideals in life. Political ideals, peisonages lepiesenLing pol.tical ideals, even social ideals, commeicial ideals, would have no power in India, Wc want spiiUual ideals before us, we want enlhusiablic^lly to gather round grand spiiitual names Our heroes must be spiritual. Such a hero has been given lo us in the j;eison of Ramakiislma Pdiamahamsa If this nation w.ants to rise, take my woid for it, it will have to lallj enlluisiasiically round this name, ll does not matter who pleaches Ramakrishna Paianiahaujsa, REPLY TO THE ADDRESS OF WELCOME IN CALCUTTA ir; whclhei I, or you, or anybody else. But him I place before you. and it is for you to judge, and for the good of our race, for the good of our nation, to judge now, what you shall do with this great ideal of life. One thing we are to rcmembei, that it was the purest of all lives that you have ever seen, or let me tell you distinctly, that you have ever read of. And before you is the fact that it is the most maivellous manifestation of Soul-power that you can read of, much less expect to see. Within ten years of his passing away, this power has encircled the globe; that fact is befoic you. In duty bound therefore for the good of our race, for the good of our religion, I place this great spiiitual ideal before you. Judge him not thiough me. I am only a w’eak instiument. Let not his character be judged by seeing me. It was so gie.at that if I, or any other of his disLiples spent hundreds of lives, we could not do justice to a millionth pait of what he really was. Judge for youi selves; in the hcait of youi hearts is the Eternal Witness, and may He, the same Ramakiishna Paramahamsa, for the good of our nation, for the welfare of our counliy, and for the good of humanity, open your hcails, make you tiue and steady to w'oik for the immense change which must come, whether we cxcit ourselves or not. For, the woik of the Lord does not wait for the likes of you or me. He can raise His workers fiom the dust by hundreds and by thousands. It is a gloiy and a privilege that w'e aie allowed to woik at all under Hun.
Fiom this the idea expands. As you have pointed out to me, we have to con- quer the world. That \ye have to! India must conquer the woild, and nothing less than that is my ideal. It may be veiy big, it may astonish many of you, but it is so. We must conquci the w'oild or die. There is no other alternative. The sign of life is expansion; wc must go out, expand, show life, or degrade, fester and die. There IS no olhci alternative. Take either of these, either live or die. Now, we all know about the petty jealousies and quarrels that we have in our country. Take my w'Oid, it is the same everywhere. The other nations with their political lives have foieign policies. When they find too much quairelling at home, they look tor somebody abroad to quarrel with, and the quarrel at home stops. We have these quairels, without any foreign policy to stop them. This must be our eternal foreign policy, pleaching the truths of out Shaslras to the nations of the world. I ask you who arc politically-minded, do you require any other proof that this will unite us as a race? This very assembly is a suflicient witness. Secondly, apart fiom these selfish considerations, there arc the unselfish, the noble, the living examples behind ns. One of the great causes of India’s misery and downfall has been that she narrowed herself, went into her shell, as the oyster does, and refused to give her jewels and her treasures to the other races of mankind, refused to give the life-giving liuths to thirsting nations outside the Aryan fold. That has been the one great cause, that wo did not go out, that we did not compare notes with other nations,— that has been the one great cause of our downfall, and every one of you know that that little stir, the little life that you see in India, begins from the day when Raja Rammohan Roy broke through the walls of that exclusiveness. Since that day, history in India has taken another turn, and now it is growing with accelerated motion. If we have had little rivulets in the past, deluges are coming, and none can resist them. Therefore we must go out, and the secret of life is to give and take. Aie we to lake always, to sit at the feet of the Westeineis to learn everything, even religion? We can learn mechanism from them. We can learn many other things. Cut we have to leach them something, and that is our religion, that is our LECTUEES~-FROM COLOMBO TO ALMORA spiiilualily. I'or a complete civilisation the woild is waiting, waiting for the treasures to come out of India, waiting foi the marvellous spiritual inheritance of tlie lace, which, through decades of degiadalion and misery, the nation has still clutched' to hei breast. The world is waiting for that treasuie; little do you know how much of hunger and of thirst iheie is outside of India foi lhe.se wondetful tieasures of our foicfathers. We talk here, we quairel with each oth.u', we laugh at and we ridicule cvcr)lhing sacied, till it has become almost a national vice to lidiculc everything holy. Little do we understand the heait-pangs of millions wailing outside the walls, stretching foilh their hands foi a little sip of that nectar which our foiefathers have pieserved in this land of India. Theietorc we must go out, exchange our spirituality for anything they have to give us; for the maivels of the legion of spirit we will exchange the maivels of the region of matter. We will not be students always, but teachers also. There cannot be fiieiidship without equality, and there cannot be cipiality when one party is always the teacher and the other paity sits always at his feet. If you want to become eipial with the Englishman or the Ameiican, you will have to leach as well a.s to leain, and you have plenty yet to teach to the world for centuiies to come. This has to be done. Fire and enthusiasm must be m our blood. We Bengalees have been credited with imagination, and I believe we have it. We have been lidiculed as an imaginative lace, as men with a good deal of feel- ing. Let me tell you, my fiiends, intellect is great indeed, but it stops within certain bounds. It IS through the heait, and the heart alone, that insjiiiation comes. It is thiough the feelings that the highest seciets aie reached, and therefoie, it is the Bengalee, the man of feeling, that has to do this woik.
I “Awake, aiise, and slop not till the desired end is leached.’’ Young men of Calcutta, arise, awake, lor the time is piopi- tiouS. Already everything is opening out befoie us. Be bold and fear not. It is only in our.scriptuies that this adjective is given unto the LoiA—AhhiJi, Ahhih. We have to become Ahhik, feailess, and our task will be done. Aiise, awake, for youi counliy needs this liemendous saciihce. It is the young men that will do it. “The young, the eneigelic, the stiong, the well-built, the intellectual,”— for them is the task. And we have hundieds and thousands of such young men in Calcutta. If, as you say, 1 have done.something, rcmembei that I was that good-for-nothing boy playing in the stieets of Calcutta. If I have done so much, how much more will you do } Aiise and awake, the woild is calling upon you. In other paits of India, theie is intellect, there is money, but cnthu.siasm is only in my motherland. That must come out, and, theiefoie arise, young men of Calcutta, with eiuhiisiasm in your blood. Think not that you aie poor, that you have no fi lends. A\e, whoever saw money make the man; it is man that ahvays makes ino.^ej. The whole woild has been made by the energy of man, by the powei of enthusiasm, by the powei of faith.