Book Excerpt: Vivekananda and Our Times: The Journey from Fear to Love by Rajni Bakshi

An exclusive excerpt from Vivekananda and Our Times: The Journey from Fear to Love by Rajni Bakshi (Published by Speaking Tiger, 2024)

As I delved deeper into the Collected Works of Swami Vivekananda, this six-part series moved beyond being only a ‘project’ or just another piece of journalism.

Reading Swamiji’s letters and lectures became a sanctuary—one that felt like a foxhole in a combat zone. As I read about the wide variety of situations and experiences which Vivekananda journeyed through, I began to see him as a friend, rather than as some remote persona on a pedestal. And as Swamiji led me to the life and teachings of Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa—deep gratitude overcame all other feelings.

I did start out in the spirit of countering the efforts of those who deployed fragments of Vivekananda’s writing to justify and promote communal animosity. But somewhere along the way this ceased to be the driving motivation. It became far more important to share what I had learnt about the struggles and triumphs of a rare man’s life—a deeply self-aware man who located himself in a cosmic frame.

It was in this spirit that I shared my journeys with Swamiji at a seminar held at the Institute for Development Studies (IDS), Jaipur, in August 1993. The six articles published in the Sunday Review and an essay based on the paper I presented at the IDS seminar were together published by The Other India Press, Mapusa, Goa, in 1994.

Over the last 30 years Swamiji’s presence has enriched my life in countless ways. He left this material world more than half a century before I was born but Vivekananda is a friend—for there are shared joys, disagreements and an enduring affinity on core values. It is not that I have often gone back to his writings. Yet through these three decades, Swamiji has been a constant inspiration—a cooling shade amid the searing turmoil of our times. After all, this turmoil is not just manifest in large events ‘outside’ in politics, society and public life at large. It has entered our daily life through bitter divisions among family and friends.

To be divided about the material approach to a particular problem can be creative—that wider variety of approaches can lead to a better solution. But when the division is between justifying hatred versus advocating compassion then the very basis of samaj/society is at stake. From time to time, I have been asked: What would Vivekananda do, or Gandhi do, in this situation? On principle I refuse to address this question. There are no possible answers to this question which can escape being presumptuous. What I do feel confident in sharing is an account of my own journey, through these troubled times, with the torch light of inspiration I draw from Vivekananda. This is what the concluding essay of this volume aims to do.

Excerpted with permission from the author Rajni Bakshi and the Speaking Tiger, the publishers of Vivekananda and Our Times: The Journey from Fear to Love (2024)

About the Book

In 1893, Swami Vivekananda travelled to Chicago to attend the Parliament of World Religions. There, amidst representatives of the various religions of the world, Vivekananda—who grew up in an affluent Bengali household in Calcutta, studied to be a lawyer, only to give it up to become a wandering monk—spoke of Universal Religion—‘a religion which will have no place for persecution or intolerance in its polity, which will recognize the divinity in every man and woman, and whose whole scope, whose whole force, will be created in aiding humanity to realize its own true divine nature’. Although a devout Hindu, he had always been someone who felt a deep sense of belonging to the plural heritage of the Indian subcontinent. Through his learnings and travels he sought to galvanize society on the basis of love.

Comprising three insightful essays, Vivekananda and Our Times situates the Swami in today’s world. Rajni Bakshi’s endeavour—which began a century after the Chicago address, when the country was reeling from the shock of the Ramjanmabhoomi campaign and the consequent demolition of the Babri Masjid—attempts to seek a space for reflection and shows us, through Vivekananda’s ideologies, the need to reconcile with the ‘other’ in a ‘shared quest for freedom from fear’.

About the Author

Rajni Bakshi is a journalist, author, speaker and the founder of the YouTube channel, Ahimsa Conversations. Her books include Bapu Kuti: Journeys in Rediscovery of Gandhi (1998) and Bazaars, Conversations and Freedom: For a Market Culture Beyond Greed and Fear (2009), among others. Born in Delhi, she is currently based in Mumbai.