Swami Vivekananda & Womens Development

Swami Vivekananda & Womens development

Om sthapakaya cha dharmasya sarva dharma svarupine
Avatara varishtaya Ramakrishaya te namaha!
Revered Swami Vashishthanandaji, Adhyaksha, Ramakrishna Math, Antpur; Revered Swami
Ritanandaji, President of todays session, Revered Swami Arunatmanandaji on the stage, other revered
Swamijis and dear friends; I have come here from Ramakrishna Mission Shilpamandira. It is a Diploma
College in Belur Math. I teach there, you know. But I have a great fear of holding classes in the post
lunch session! From 2pm to 2.45pm; it is called the 5th period! So difficult to hold the attention of the
students; of course, mine too! Once I was teaching in the 5 th period. After sometime I found a boy in the
front row sleeping. I woke him up and asked him I am teaching here. Why are you sleeping? He replied,
Maharaj, what can I do? Your voice is so sweet. Listening to your sweet voice, I fell asleep! I countered
him, Hey, that cant be true. Why are so many others not sleeping? He said, Ah that is because,
Maharaj, they are not listening to you!
Now, I have been given a topic: Sister Nivedita Swamijis exposition of Womens
Development. Just look at the topic. What a grand idea. Yes, Niveditas entire life is nothing but an
explanation of Swamijis ideas about awakening women in India. I am supposed to speak to you on this
topic. But it is too complex a topic for me. Instead, I plan to speak to you about one portion of this vast
topic, that is, Why & how can women development be achieved according to Swami Vivekananda. The
reason I am doing this is we have all listened with rapt attention here in the morning to the important
events in the life of Sister Nivedita. If we understand the idea of why womens development is needed,
and how it can be achieved according to Swamiji, we can then put two and two together to understand
why Sister Niveditas life can be considered as the exposition of Swamijis ideas on women development.
Swami Vivekananda was a leader of epic proportions. He had extremely clear plans about human
development. How did he develop this clarity of vision? It all began due to his devotion to his Guru. His
Guru Sri Ramakrishna had told him Do something for these people. It took him a few years to find out
who exactly these people were. Slowly, Swamiji understood that Sri Ramakrishnas these people
meant not just the people living in Calcutta, not just the people living in Bengal, not just Indians, but
people everywhere. For, mankind is one. Sri Ramakrishna wanted Swamiji to carve out a new path for
people everywhere in the world. Now, in his scheme for the upliftment of mankind, he had a very special
place for the development of India. If humanity had to achieve progress, it was vital that India should
develop and become vibrant. Without a vibrant India, mankind has no hope of even survival, let alone
progress! Therefore, he worked out a detailed plan of how India could be developed. Again and again, we
find him telling Women and the masses these have to be developed first of all. Repeatedly he said that
development of women and the common people took precedence over everything in India.
I hope you are getting the logic of Swamijis thoughts that I am trying to elaborate here. He loved
his Guru. He was a Guru Bhakta. His Guru had exhorted him to do something for these people. The
circumstances when this event occurred were very pathetic. During the Dakshineshwar days, when Sri
Ramakrishna was a healthy man, if he had told this to Naren, he would have laughed it away. Sri
Ramakrishna told these words to him lying on his death bed. There was no chance of saying no to him. So
Naren accepted. In all probability, when he agreed to do something for the spiritual regeneration of these
people, he didnt have a clue of who those people were. Slowly, it became clear to him that these
people meant people everywhere in the world. Fine. Now, in order to spiritually rejuvenate mankind,
India had a very specific role to play. India had to first of all awake from a deep slumber into which she
had fallen. The awakening of India entailed awakening of the women and the masses. If the Indian
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women and the Indian masses awakened, India would awaken. An awakened India would catalyze the
spiritual rejuvenation of mankind everywhere. That is the train of thought in Swamijis mind. Fine? Now
let us move on.
I raise a question here. Why develop women and the masses? Why not just the masses? Arent
women included in the masses? Why separate out women from the masses? If we can answer this
question, we would have understood why Swamiji brought Sister Nivedita to India. He met her in
England sometime on 1895. He told her specifically, I need you for my Indian work. I need you for the
development of Indian women. As of now, we are unable to do it on our own. Hence I am loaning you
from England. Sister Nivedita was brought to India and trained for a very specific job by Swamiji. What
is that job? It was for the development of Indian women.
Again, Swamiji was a man of unparalleled clarity of vision. Womens development was not a
vague clich for him. He had very specific ideas of what he wanted to achieve. He had spelt out with great
clarity what sort of woman he wanted in future India. In many places in the Complete Works of Swami
Vivekananda, we find references to this description of the ideal woman he had envisaged. But, it was
Sister Nivedita who grasped that vision most clearly. Not only was she able to grasp the vision, she was
able to express it in the form of the written word with amazing clarity. She has one whole chapter on
Women and the masses in her seminal book Master as I saw him. She writes, He could not foresee a
Hindu woman of the future, entirely without the old power of meditation. Modern science women must
learn: but not at the cost of the ancient spirituality. He saw clearly enough that the ideal education would
be one that should exercise the smallest possible influence for direct change on the social body as a
whole. It would be that which should best enable every woman, in time to come, to resume into herself the
greatness of all the women of the Indian past. 1
Elsewhere, he specified, What we need is western science coupled with Vedanta, with
Brahmacharya as the guiding motto, and Shraddha or faith in oneself.2 It was this wonderful
combination of qualities that he worked into Niveditas personality over a period of intense training that
lasted only a few years. He would work this Celtic lady into such a personality and then unleash her on
Indian society. She would pass on the legacy to the future generations. Such was his plan of action.
That is all fine. But the main question I raised still remains unanswered. Why did he single out
womens development as paramount? Why did he have to spell it out separately from the development of
the masses?
We get a hint in a letter that Sister Nivedita wrote to Josephine Macleod on 9th April 1899. She
writes, He told me of a letter he wrote to Sarala, in which he said, Our men might be rough or
unpolished, but they were the only manly men in Bengal. The manhood of Europe was kept up by the
women, who hated unmanliness. When would Indian girls play this part and drench with merciless
ridicule any display of feebleness on the part of men?3
Let me explain these most amazing statements. You see, Sarala Ghoshal was a very influential,
educated lady of Calcutta. There must have been some discussion between Sarala Ghoshal and Swamiji
during which she must have mentioned that some of Swamijis companions were not as sophisticated as
he was. So, in this letter which he wrote to Sarala, he mentions that some of his brother disciples might
indeed seem a bit rough or unpolished, not as sophisticated as he himself was, but they were the only
1

Cf: Master as I saw him; Sister Nivedita; Longman, Greens & Co: 1910; Pg 363-364
Cf: Complete works of Swami Vivekananda: Vol-5; Conversations & Dialogues-IX; recorded by Sri Priyanath Sinha
3 Cf: Letters of Sister Nivedita; Ed Sankari Prasad Basu; Nababharat Publishers, Calcutta: 1982; Pg 112
2

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manly men in Bengal! Look at the choice of words Swamiji has! Sri Ramakrishna chose that handful of
boys not because they were sophisticated, or talented, or learned; he chose them because they were full of
manliness. In fact, Swamiji goes so far as to say that this handful of boys were the only persons with
manliness in the whole of Bengal! If what he says is true, what indeed constitutes manliness? We know
who that handful of men was: Swami Premananda, Swami Subodhananda, Swami Yogananda and others.
What indeed is this manliness that Swamiji asserts was manifest in these people?
We will not go into the details of this most important term in Swamijis lexicon manliness. I
will explain that to you on some other occasion. We can safely say that a tremendous passion for
excellence, a burning urge for achievement, no matter what field we consider, forms the crux of this term.
This urge is something peculiar. It is something akin to the urge we find in addicts. That urge helps them
surmount all kinds of obstacles. Sri Ramakrishna used to speak highly of this urge in the spiritual field.
He called it Vyakulata.
Anyway, look at the next statement of Swamiji. The manhood of Europe was kept up by the
women, who hated unmanliness. What is he trying to say here? You have all heard of Napoleon
Bonaparte, the great conqueror of Europe. He would often say, Give me great mothers and I will give
you a great Nation. How is that possible? It is the mothers that actually create the men. A European
philosopher, I forget his name, used to say, One good mother is equal to a hundred teachers.
Take for instance the conception of the super-ego of modern psychology. We all keep telling our
children that they must be confident in life, that they should always have self-confidence. Yet, when the
real testing moments come in our childrens lives, we find them faltering, going back, retreating. Why is
this? Inside every persons mind is a kind of tape-recorder. This is filled with the voice of our mothers. As
we grew up, our mothers told us many things, concerning ourselves. Minor comments, trivial
observations, such things; mother was perhaps not even serious when she said some of those things; but
our mental tape recorder obediently recorded them. And at really important points in our lives, this taperecorder plays it back to us with uncanny precision. Hence we hear that voice inside ourselves telling,
Hey, you are a fool; you can never get anything right! Whose voice was that? Why would I ever tell
such a thing to myself? It is my mothers voice; she never meant to weaken me. She simply didnt know,
thats all. She simply had no clue what would be the implications of all the words that she carelessly
threw around her small child!
Let me give you an example to justify this point. A boy keeps coming to meet me often. He is
now pursuing his Engineering in a prestigious college in Bengal. He once told me that his mother had said
that she was sad that he was born to her! Imagine! A young teenager says that his mother rues his having
born to her! Now, the fun is, I know both his parents. Both of them are teachers, highly educated; and he
is their only son. Would it ever be possible that his mother or father feel sorry for their only childs birth?!
I know how much those two people love this boy. In fact, he is the only rationale for their life at present.
Both of them are devoted to Ramakrishna Mission and I often keep meeting them too. Do you understand
what this means? Someday, this boy must have irritated that lady beyond limit of human forbearance. At
such a moment of utter desperation, she must have said these words. But surely we grown-ups know that
she could never have meant it. However, the way the young boy processed it was totally different.
You see, sometimes I tell people I know about a peculiar observation of mine. Take any job in
this present day society. Suppose you want to be a teacher. There are specific qualifications, specific
training for that job. Or a doctor, or a surgeon, or a clerk; you name the job role and you have specific
qualifications. However, in order to be a parent, our society doesnt prescribe any training, any

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qualifications! The most important job in our society is that of parenting. And that is left unspecified.
Anybody can just wing it. That is how it is now. This peculiar situation reminds me of a story:
There was a zoo in a city. There was a fruit-garden adjacent to this zoo. One day, the owner of the
fruit-garden complained to the zoo authorities that the giraffe in the zoo was eating all the fruits of his
garden. The zoo authorities held a meeting and decided that the compound wall would be raised to 20
feet. That would prevent the giraffe from sticking its neck into the garden. After some more days, the
owner of the fruit-garden again complained that the giraffe was still eating the fruits. This time, the zoo
authorities raised the compound wall to 50 feet. There was no chance of the giraffe sticking its neck even
by jumping now! But, after some days, the owner of the fruit garden again complained that the problem
was still not solved. This time, a committee was formed to study the giraffe day & night to determine how
it stole the fruits. Do you know what the committee found? The gate between the zoo and the fruit-garden
used to be kept open. The giraffe would simply walk into the garden, eat whatever it wanted and would
come back!
That is the reason Swamiji says that we need Western Science coupled with Vedanta. Many fields
of study in the western world have unraveled many important truths about our lives, about our minds,
about our social interactions. Our women should know it. Then they will be able to raise strong-minded,
goal-oriented, focused children. Couple that with the truth of Vedanta, and the result will be formidable.
You might recall the ancient Queen Madalasa from our scriptures. See how she raised self-realized
children!
Anyway, coming back to our letter that I was quoting; The manhood of Europe was kept up by
the women, who hated unmanliness. How exactly did the European women achieve this arousing
manliness in their children?
You all know of Winston Churchill, the famous Prime Minister of England during the II world
war. His mother was the daughter of a millionaire in America. In those days, it was the fashion for
daughters of rich Americans to get married to Lords in England. You find the same thing happening with
the Hale sisters in Swamijis life. So, Churchills mother married Lord Randolph Churchill. One day, the
young boy Winston came home weeping. He had failed in his exams. This was in his 6th or 7th standard.
His mother asked him why. He said that although he had studied many things, his teacher went on asking
things which he didnt know! I guess that is almost like what we do even today. We are more interested in
knowing what the student doesnt know, rather than finding out what he knows. Anyway, imagine the
situation. Her child has said this about his school, about his teacher, about himself. And how does
Churchills mother react? She said that from the next day, he wouldnt go to school. She arranged for her
sons education right at home. So, as a result, Winston Churchill never went to any formal school or
college, all his life. That however did not destroy his self-confidence. Later on, he got the Nobel Prize for
Literature! Just imagine this! Just imagine the chemistry between the child and mother that allowed this to
happen.
You have all heard of Thomas Alva Edison, the famous inventor. He has dozens of patents in his
name. The light bulb, the modern telephone, the modern DC motor, so many other things. Do you know
about his childhood? He belonged to a poor family in America. One day, his teacher sent a letter for his
mother through him. It was a sealed letter. He brought it home and gave it to his mother. She read it.
There was nothing on her face to tell the small boy what was written on that letter. He must have been
apprehensive. Was it some kind of complaint? Was it a guardian call? What was it? After reading it,
Edisons mother said, I am so happy to read this letter, my child. Your teacher has praised your unique
mind and says that you dont need to go to school any more, and that they dont have the adequate
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infrastructure to cater to acute minds such as yours! I am so proud of you. I always knew you were
special. You finished school so early in your life. The boy grew up believing what she said. Those words
entered deep into his mind. He never went to school or college again in his life. His education however
continued non-stop. He was another of those famous self-taught people, what are called as Autodidacts.
He grew up to be a very famous man, with innumerable achievements. Much later in life, one day he got
that letter which his teacher had sent to his mother through him. He opened it and read it. It said, Your
son is an idiot. Please take him away from this school. We do not wish the name of our school to be
tarnished by having such a stupid boy as our student.
So, this is what Swamiji meant when he said, The manhood of Europe was kept up by the
women, who hated unmanliness.
The central message of Swamiji for us seems to be Manliness. In fact, when he was sailing on a
ship on his 2nd visit to the West along with Swami Turiyanandaji and Sister Nivedita, he himself said,
The older I grow, the more everything seems to me to lie in manliness. This is my new gospel.
So, let us summarize what we have seen till now. Swamiji had a specific plan for the spiritual
rejuvenation of entire mankind. India had a vital role to play in that plan. So, India needed to be awakened
as early as possible. Awakening of India actually meant awakening of women and the masses. Why are
women given such a paramount position in his grand plan? That is because women safeguard the
manliness of men and its feminine equivalent of women. Awakened women will rear up true men, who
will achieve great things in life. This much we have seen.
Now, how was this awakening of the women to be achieved? Swamiji specified that this would
be achieved by means of education. What education did he mean? The kind we have now-a-days in
formal schools and colleges? In fact, Nivedita too started such a school. We should ask ourselves if that
school ever achieved the desired result. Are there any certificate courses which can equip our women to
live up to this standard? As I quoted a little while ago, in Niveditas opinion, He saw clearly enough that
the ideal education would be one that should exercise the smallest possible influence for direct change on
the social body as a whole.
Well, I believe that what Swamiji meant by education being the method for awakening women
cannot be straitjacketed into the formal school-college-university education with which we are familiar
today. That education was meant to be a whole new paradigm with which one viewed life in its entirety.
Swamiji has left many hints about how women can develop themselves. There is a small book
that Swamiji wrote called Karma Yoga. In that book, he mentions a beautiful incident that he took from
the Mahabharata. A young Sannyasin went to a forest; there he meditated, worshipped, and practiced
Yoga for a long time. After years of hard work and practice, he was one day sitting under a tree, when
some dry leaves fell upon his head. He looked up and saw a crow and a crane fighting on the top of the
tree, which made him very angry. He said, What! Dare you throw these dry leaves upon my head?! As
with these words he angrily glanced at them, a flash of fire went out of his head such was the Yogi's
power and burnt the birds to ashes. He was very glad, almost overjoyed at this development of power
he could burn the crow and the crane by a look. After a time he had to go to the town to beg his bread.
He went, stood at a door, and said, Mother, give me food. A voice came from inside the house, Wait a
little, my son. The young man thought, You wretched woman, how dare you make me wait! You do not
know my power yet. While he was thinking thus the voice came again: Boy, don't be thinking too much
of yourself. Here is neither crow nor crane. He was astonished; still he had to wait. At last the woman
came, and he fell at her feet and said, Mother, how did you know that? She said, My boy, I do not know
your Yoga or your practices. I am a common everyday woman. I made you wait because my husband is
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ill, and I was nursing him. All my life I have struggled to do my duty. When I was unmarried, I did my
duty to my parents; now that I am married, I do my duty to my husband; that is all the Yoga I practice.
But by doing my duty I have become illumined; thus I could read your thoughts and know what you had
done in the forest. If you want to know something higher than this, go to the market of such and such a
town where you will find a Vydha (The lowest class of people in India who used to live as hunters and
butchers.) who will tell you something that you will be very glad to learn.4
So, you see, there is need of only thing to be done in order to awaken ourselves. Purity alone is
required. We need to be pure, and we need to do our duty. That is enough. We dont need to do anything
special for our own awakening. No special kind of lifestyle, no special kind of work; just the duty we are
all allotted to do by our birth and position in society. That, and genuine purity. This much is enough.
Some of you may object here. You may say, Oh, we know these stories. Those things were
possible in the days of the Purana and Upanishad. They are not practicable now. Well, is that really true?
Recall the Shodashi Puja that Sri Ramakrishna performed on her on the night of Phalaharini Kali
Puja. Sri Ramakrishna informed Holy Mother that she was to come to his room at around midnight. She
went. He made her sit on a stool, which he had duly consecrated. Then he invoked the presence of the
Divine Mother of the Universe in Sri Sharada Devi and worshipped her as one would ritually worship an
idol. She went into Nirvikalpa Samadhi. Around day-break, she came back to normal consciousness and
got up and went to her room in the Nahabat. This much information we find in her biographies.
I ask you to imagine a little bit here. Then you will understand what I am trying to say.
Remember that Holy Mother was an ordinary household lady, for all practical purposes. Like you and me,
she too had fixed duties to perform. So, when her husband asked her to come to his room by midnight,
how did she come? She had a household to run. That night, she must have prepared food for quite a good
number of people. She must have served them the food. Then after that, there would have been the duty of
cleaning the eating place and the vessels. She must have done all these and only then would she have
gone to her husbands room. Similarly, next day morning, she goes back to her room, for what? For rest?
Where is rest for a lady of the house?! Early morning she must have collected milk for preparing cheese
for her husband (he needed it as a staple diet). After that would have begun the innumerable daily chores
such as preparing breakfast, washing clothes, drying them up, etc. She didnt claim any privileges after
her Nirvikalpa Samadhi! She didnt say, Look here, yesterday night, I had Nirvikalpa Samadhi. So, I am
a saint from now on. I cant do all these menial works. From now on, I can only bless devotees. You all
should take care of these household works. She didnt say that!
However, there is a most important aspect we need to note in this amazing incident. You see, one
becomes fit to experience this kind of Samadhi only after the most rigorous Sadhana done for a long time.
In this instance we find this lady doing all her daily duties, and then she is fully ready for the highest
spiritual experience right after that! I wonder what must have been the attitude with which she had been
working, if her preparation for Nirvikalpa Samadhi was the daily chores she performed! Doesnt it make
you think?
That is the kind of attitude with which we ought to work. Working like this, living like this,
raising a family like this, is the education that Swamiji is speaking of. Working like this we will have all
the awakening that we are all seeking.
Let me summarize what I discussed today. I started out by talking on the topic Sister Nivedita
Swamijis exposition of Womens Development. Sri Ramakrishna has a message for the spiritual
4

Cf: Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda: Vol-1; Karma Yoga: Chapter-IV: What is duty?
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regeneration of humanity. If that message had to be preserved and disseminated properly, effectively,
India had to be awakened. India had entered into a terrible slumber since the 15th century. This vital job of
national awakening could be done only by awakening the women of India, for it is women who create the
society, who create true men, men imbued with manliness, the intense urge to excel in life. How was
women awakening to be brought about in India? By giving them a new paradigm with which to live their
lives. That is what Swamiji did. And he enlisted the help and assistance of Sister Nivedita.
Let us all pray that this effort of Swamiji reaches its fruition in our lives. Offering my pranams to
all the revered Swamijis here, I bring my lecture to an end.
Om shantih, shantih, shantihi!
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