“The Universal Appeal of Swami Vivekananda”.  – A conversation with Hindol Sengupta

[Music] [Music] up [Music] hi guys my name is amish tripathi and i am the director of the nehru center the nehru center is the cultural wing of the indian high commission in the uk and we are we've been in existence for many decades and we organize wonderful events at this very auditorium which is in mayfair in central london sadly as you can see the auditorium is empty it has been empty uh since we were all put into lockdown uh due to the corona virus uh pandemic uh but what we indians believe is that the other side of a crisis is an opportunity and what we have done at the nehru center is moved all our events online so now if you attend our online events every single seat is a vip seat like you get a front row at our events no trouble of parking no trouble of traveling all the way and most practically all the programs that we would do like uh literary discussions and then and dance performances musical performances we are doing them all on our online channels you can register that for our newsletter at our website narrowcenter.org.uk you don't need to write them down they will be displayed at the bottom of the screen you can also come to our facebook page which is a verified page the nehru center you can follow updates on all our events on twitter as well the nehru center that's also a verified account or you can come to our youtube channel again the nehru center we are uh nothing if not consistent uh i hope you do come to our online channels and enjoy the events that we are putting up for you thank you so much for all your love and support [Music] good namaste my name is amir shrapati and i'm the director of the nehru center today as you all would know is the 12th of january it is the birth anniversary of perhaps one of the greatest indians of the last millennia uh swami vivekananda his impact is so immense that we feel it till today and we at the nehru center and at the indian high commission wanted to celebrate uh the great man the great monk who had an impact not just on on india and dharma but indeed on the entire world and the best person to discuss this with uh is a brilliant scholar and journalist who's actually written a book on swami vivekananda the modern monk if he can bring hindu saint gupta up i've done lectures at the nehru center at the venue but this is also a very wonderful way of being at the nehru center and connecting with the nato center yeah no i mean we're all online now some chinese dietary habits have forced all of us online uh so we're going to focus uh we are in the nehru center we are hosting this from the nehru center and uh this is before we start we are a sarcari place indole you know what it's like so i'll have to do your official introduction before we get uh we get cracking and and here we go hindol sain gupta is a multiple award-winning author of nine books he is vice president and head of research at india's national investment promotion agency in west india under the ministry of commerce he is the only indian to have won the wilbur award given by the religion communicators council of america for being hindu in 2017. his latest book the man who saved india sardar patel and his idea of india won the valley of words award for best non-fiction book of the year in 2019 he's a world economic forum young global leader and a columnist for aspen italy he has been a senior journalist for the indian editions of fortune cnbc cnn and bloomberg tv he is co-founder of grin media network i love that name green media network which focuses on telling the civilizational story of india for the world and most importantly as you guys can see on the on the overlay uh of this wonderful program hindu is also the author of the book the modern monk uh which tells us about swami vivekananda and the impact he's had uh on all of humanity actually uh if you know how we'll do this program and for those on the audience out here hindu is gonna uh is gonna make a short speech uh on swami vekananda what he understands of him and the universal appeal of swamiji a good 150 170 years after he was born he was born all the way back in 1863 and post that hindolan and i will have a conversation indoor the stage is all yours thank you thank you very much amish such a pleasure and thank you for inviting me to talk on swami vivekananda my family has been associated with the ramakrishna mission for three generations now i myself got my diksha at the age of ten uh in a sense i am a child of the mission and it is a great honor and a privilege to be able to speak about swami vivekananda and to be right writing about him and speaking about him the topic that we have chosen amish and i for today's lecture is the universal appeal of swami vivekananda and in the next few minutes i will try to explain to all of you why swami vivekananda of course is a great treasure of india but his appeal is a global appeal there is a universal appeal of swami vivekananda why is that true well let's begin with the very first fact swami vivekananda as many of you might know if a spiritual disciple of a man called ramakrishna paramhans the great saint of calcutta of the 19th century ramakrishna paramhans was an unlettered village you know man and a priest at the dakineshwara temple and an enlightened soul who was the spiritual master in the sense of swami vivekananda ramakrishna after trying many parts to the divine gave a certain phrase which encapsulated his teaching and also swami vivekananda's teaching which is really the teachings in the sense of the advaita vedanta we'll go into that in just a moment but in bengali that phrase is says joto moth totopot as many as there are ways as many as there are opinions as many as there are minds and ideas that many are parts to the divine are ways to access god so the first universality of swami vivekananda comes from the very slogan that comes from the very core message comes from the very idea given to him by his spiritual master which is spread around the world that it doesn't matter what your path is you will reach the same divine in fact to really borrow from swami vivekananda who famously said every soul is potentially divine no matter what your path if you start to discover yourself and the divinity and god within you will come to the same place that's the first universality of swami vivekananda going forward from there there is a universal appeal to swami vivekananda because he's really the first hindu monk from india who makes what we today would call a global splash he's really able to come to the west and win hearts and minds in the west where the center is in london a lot of people was were attracted to swami vivekananda after his talks in that city and of course everybody knows in america both in new york in boston in chicago across america swami vivekananda won many many many hearts and minds and then of course in the rest of europe this is really important because before swami vivekananda there had been nobody who really went out and told the civilizational message of india the core values of hinduism in a universal language not only for indians but for everybody in the world who would care to listen that again number two is the universal appeal of swami vivekananda remember what propelled swami vivekananda to global acclaim was that famous lecture of his at the parliament of religions where he gets up and says brothers and sisters of america and the entire audience burst into applause so swami vivekananda was able to do what nobody have before him had been able to do he was able to bring together the entire civilizational context and message of india and make it palatable help the west understand what india's civilization was all about number three remember swami vivekananda was doing all of this when he was a citizen of a colonial nation india was ruled by the british when swami vivekananda left its shores and went to the west the universal appeal of swami vivekananda comes from the fact that he did not allow colonialism to restrict him he stepped beyond the boundaries of colonialism he broke the shackles of colonialism and gave the message to the world that india needed to give and he showed that even as a citizen of a colonial nation one could have their sheer dogged determined confidence to tell the story of one's own civilization even though one was being ruled politically by another country that was the universal message of courage and conviction of swami vivekananda then swami vivekananda has a universal appeal because he's not merely a distant monk you know when we talk about ascetics and monks and men of god and women of god also we tend to think of them as secluded sheltered cloistered away somewhere deep in meditation deep in thinking about god praying about god and cut away from life in a sense that's the idea of the ascetic the renouncing ascetic one who has renounced the world swami vivekananda has a universal appeal because he showed that you don't need to leave the world behind to get to god you can embrace the world because if you look at his word he brought the divinity that he possessed within him into his everyday life we are so fascinated by him even today because swami vivi kananda was not only deeply spiritual as a monk but he was palpably human he's a man who got angry with his detractors he's a man who loved food he's a man who was a great cook he's a man who traveled across europe and america and took notes and compared breakfast and meals that different people and different cultures are around the world he taught us that in order to love god and become divine and really understand the divine you don't have to completely negate life you can live while embracing the divine that is his great magic that is his great universal appeal he shows us that we can be also human even while reaching out for the divine swami vekanda's other universal appeal the idea of swami vivekananda is that here is a man who's really a renaissance man in so many ways he speaks beautiful english writes beautiful english equally adapted english as he is in sanskrit because remember that's how he accesses the you know the great treasures of hindu religion and hindu philosophy and he is able to marry these two things he's able to marry his western sensibilities remember he actually was a product of us what we would today call a missionary school so he had been taught all the great english poets and writers and all of that when he was in school so he could marry all that education with the greatest and the most in-depth philosophies of hinduism and bring together a message that was modern that's that was progressive that was forward-looking and that appealed not only just to indians but to people around the world remember that's why one of his most famous disciples sister nivedita she was not indian right and this is how swami vivekananda was able to talk to people across cultures because he embedded and embodied all that marrying of the east and west within his very self and turned it into a tool to reach to the divine to reach god that's the great appeal of swami vivekananda there is one more thing you know i want to talk about about swami vivekananda and people often don't talk about it i'm one of the first people who wrote about it in a long essay at fortune magazine where i was edited at large until recently and i'm still a columnist swami vivekananda is an institution builder he has he built an institution that has lasted all these decades and become a global institution in more than 20 countries 200 centers without a single real controversy and i call that you know this idea this management style of swami vivekananda and i've written in fortune i call it a detached ownership management style swami vivi kananda showed his brother monks a detached ownership management style which is why the ram krishna mission has after swami vivekananda's death never allowed a single one single monk to become the lord stone of the organization the lord's stone is the words of swami baby is the words of sridhara krishna is the love and affection of and each monk the organization is rotated among different monks who become president and so on and so forth of the organization consistently teaching them that you are here to do god's work not to take ownership there's this wonderful story of swami ranganathan on of the ram krishna mission who was awarded one of india's highest civilian awards and he said i cannot accept it on my own behalf because i am as an individual i am nothing if you have to give it you must give it to the entire organization but those awards are only awarded to individuals so therefore he did not take it but where does that come from it comes from the style of swami vivi that you are entirely devoted to the work but you're not attached to the credit if you think about it this is straight from the bhagavad-gita from the ashtavakra the idea that you live in the moment you are entirely consumed in the divine in the moment and therefore with a victory or defeat you will do your task to the very end but you are not attached to it there's a wonderful story told about the ram krishna mission there was a home of swami vivekananda there is a home of sauvignon in calcutta for many years that home had fallen to disrepair and the mission after a lot of work finally took over that home and rebuilt it refurbished it and made it into a meditational spiritual center in the memory of swami vivekananda there was one monk who was leading all the efforts for years and years he worked and worked to make this project happen coordinated endlessly with the municipal authorities fought all kinds of battles to make it happen one day before the grand inauguration of that place he was shifted and transferred by the mission to one of the remotest centers of the mission when the president of the dress commission at that time was asked why did you remove him at that day you could have let him stay one more day and allowed him to participate in the in the festivities so to speak he smiled and said said his job was done his job was done there is no attachment his job was done he finished his job and he's gone away to a place where he was really needed so this in a sense is the legacy of swami vivekananda you know i like to tell my younger friends and i want to conclude so that we have some time for amish and i to have a conversation but i want to conclude when i go to school especially and there might be some younger people in the audience today so i want to say this i like to tell my very young listeners that swami vivekananda was a true rock star and they always ask me why rocks me so i tell them look here is a man who went from east to west and created a big splash right and one hearts and minds had huge audiences you know people you know fawned over him were mesmerized by his words and also he knew what all the best rock stars know that in order to remain a legend you have to die young so they always laugh when i say that you know what swami vivi canada achieved that 39 most human beings cannot achieve in many many many lifetimes right and when before he passed away swami vivekananda actually said he knew in fact he in a sense gave up his body because the body had lost meaning for him and you know there is an apocryphal story but such a story pregnant with meaning before he passed away he was asked why don't you stay i mean you've just only begun your work you know there's such a long journey ahead the mission has just begun swami vivekananda say and that's you know i was talking about the task management he said if i stay all your journeys will be blocked by going i am setting you free so that your journeys and your paths individual paths are not blocked by me you know every time i say that i get goose actually right because you can see the devotion only to the divine and the supreme lack of attachment to anything that the world has to offer the idea is that to serve the divine and the divine alone and today more than ever before at a time when india has shown the world that even during coven even with our population india can be a source of healing whether it is sending a hydroxychloroquine tablets around the world or now the oxford manufacturing and sending the optimal vaccine around the world india is a place of great healing and i think in many ways one of its greatest messengers of healing was swami vivekananda thank you very much for listening to me i would love now to have a conversation with amish so that we can talk more in a question and answer format wonderful what a fascinating speech and intervention indoor only you can do something like this brief crisp clear and yet so thoughtful and uh and then meaningful thank you so much for that um if one thinks you know right at the beginning i mean i will come to actually what are the messages that resonate uh today but if you look at the time when swamiji went to the west and uh there that was a time when the so-called reform movements would come from the west to the east and here was one taking knowledge and wisdom from the east to the west in that phase of history it was a radically different thing to do what was the the relevance of that at that point of time what is the importance of that at that point that's a lovely question amish and you're absolutely right you know when i talk to some of my academic gatherings about swami vikananda i like to you know uh smile and say that long before edward scythe taught us about orientalism and changing the gays you know there was another man called swami vivekananda who taught us you know how to turn the gaze in a sense right because he really turned the gates if you read swami vegan of course he's talking in terms of spirituality but he's turning the gaze he's telling the west that you thought you brought us modernity but we were in many ways modern ourselves and you thought you brought a certain and remember that does not mean that he rejects western values or western civilization or mass because he himself in a sense is a product of it you know he studied a particular school he spoke english effortlessly and so on and so forth right so he's a product of that but he takes the best and is not chained by it that's a very important lesson of you know turning the gaze he's not chained by the good of the west he doesn't defer he just accepts it and uses it he doesn't defer to it he retains the confidence to talk back to it when he went to america pointed out that the kind of racial discrimination that existed in america and the kind of discrimination that existed in america against women was unheard of even in his own university calcutta university because remember calcutta university was one of the pioneering university which opened its doors to women students coming in long before the top universities in the west and swami people come in the went and said this right so in a sense he turned the gaze and in a sense in that sense he's a pioneer in you know understanding orientalism what we you know later learn to call orientalism understand colonialism and turn the case there's also you know building a bid on what you said we will come to i do want to discuss his importance to uh to india and the way we see ourselves today but building a bit on what you said in terms of turning the gaze uh if you look at the west today look we're a diplomatic platform so we never want to discuss politics but uh you know many of our western allies the divisions that are there in society uh at times are deeply worrying as you know as people who would like the west to do well because i think they would be good allies for us for us indians but the divisions in their societies uh trouble at times uh and weaken them what do you think would be swami vivekananda's message to them and approach to them that what are the roots of where these divisions are coming from and can india and indian wisdom through the words of swami vivekananda help the west absolutely i think more than ever before today amish a very divided world requires the message that integrally human beings are one this message in a deeply deeply deeply troubled and divided world already the world was very divided and troubled now technology has enabled us to divide even further and make the chasms even further right today the message i mean it is no surprise you know i like to say that uh you know swami vivekananda in 1893 showed us another 9 11 it was a different kind of 911 right and that's 911 rather than 911 that we understand show the path of really cultures and peoples coming together recognizing that fundamental fact that every soul every living thing has the potential of the divine in them and using that to merge to break boundaries and to merge peoples with one another this message i truly believe considering what we are seeing around the world is perhaps perhaps never been more urgent than it is today and if we look if we turn the gaze back from there and look at ourselves um the way india has managed many of these uh the challenges of the last year or two you know the the pandemic uh the economic devastation of it military troubles what do you think one of the things that swami vivekananda always spoke of was the importance of shakti that you must have strength what do you think he would say to the india of today and how we are handling things woody be proud of us would he tell us you can do better what do you think he would think so it's it's of course hard to you know extrapolate that in into what would happen if he was there but let me give let me go deeper into your question i think you asked a very relevant question let's discuss a little bit on swami bibi kananda's idea of what he called manhood by which he meant not just like for men but for people in general strength in human beings right why is strength in human beings important and he he says this again and again throughout his work right that strength in human beings really is a very important aspect and it is lethargy in human beings that pull down nations right so enterprising strength in human beings is very very important that's why i saw swami vivekananda once famously said that people can find god even by playing football now what is he really saying right he's essentially saying that if you put your entire focus an entire devotion without any distractions in doing one thing and go deeper and deeper into it you will get a glimpse of the divine right whether it's painting whether it's writing whether it's playing music whether it's playing football right so therefore this idea of strength of energy of enterprise are very very important so i will become the idea and i think uh you know today in a sense india's energies are being unleashed once again i keep writing that some of it is because of digital technology right i mean something like this has never happened in the history of the world so many people democratically have never got access to this kind of mass information ever in the history of the world it has never so the energies that have been unleashed in india are something truly spectacular to behold right and i think you know i i definitely feel that have swallowed they kind of you know knowing how modern you are he would definitely be a tech enthusiast today you know had he been here you know you would have been doing this this stream yard conversation broadcast live with swami vivekananda rather than me you know because he was really modern he was excited about you know he wanted to know how you know uh the most modern ships were built right he wanted to know how the latest ammunition was being created he had a very scientific mind he is the one who inspired the tatas to build the indian institute of sciences right in a famous uh ship journey right so he was a man of scientific temper he constantly spoke about a scientific temple so i think he would be excited if you had been with us today by the energies that are being unleashed in india he would like those energies of course to go into a certain direction of discovering a deeper truth one of the things that i mean if we speak of india's rise among the things that swamiji was so adept at was actually the art of storytelling what is essentially influencing people the ability to tell stories building philosophies and communicating them well india is rising there are some i'm in the west in london there are some who celebrated some who criticize it uh what can we learn from swamiji on how the story of india's rise should be told abroad again just talk about within india you're an excellent question swami vivekananda is of course a great storyteller because when he comes to the west so little is known about india and its philosophies in the west swami vivekananda finds a new language finds a new idiom finds a new way of telling the story of indian civilization in a way that the maximum number of people in the west understand there is a great narrative lesson for india even today from the story of song learn how to tell the story of your civilization better that's the great lesson for the today's india from swami vivekananda because he did it with such panache he did it with such gumption he did it with such style if i may say so what is the grand narrative of india what is the narrative attributes of india how do we tell the story of india better swahili was a great exponent in that style if you have to if i have to probe you a bit further on this if you as someone who's who's read and studied swami vivekananda someone who's a brilliant scholar and a journalist and a thinker what do you think are the key things that stand out of the india story what is our narrative is difficult to encapsulate 1.3 billion words in a very pithy line but if you have to think of a few pointers a few things that define the narrative of india's rise what do you think it would be so our mission i've been writing about this so i'm happy to share this with you i think one of the things i just mentioned never before in the history of humankind has information flown to this kind of grassroot level you in a democratic edifice ever in the history of mankind this is unprecedented what's happening in india is unprecedented and i have recently written into the fortune uh magazine that there are three key narratives i see that india must use today one is of holistic health and that's the three pillars there are the wonderful work we are doing with the vaccine the wonderful work we have done in controlling yoga the world is seeking new natural ways of healing india has some of the most potent stories to tell them that's number one number two the other great narrative that we have is the narrative of the one that i was talking about tremendous flow of information empowering the largest number of people using technology in a democratic edifice never done before never at this scale so this is unprecedented that's the other story and the third story is equally exciting and particularly relevant after what we've seen in the last few days the greatest democracy on earth a democracy that with so many states effortlessly smoothly conducts regime change after election without any controversy this is a magnificent achievement these are the three pillars of the india story today as far as i see it it's a fascinating point i couldn't agree more we have over 800 million voters voting is done smoothly results come out within a day a professional election commission we we do it at a scale and a price that is unbelievable uh and all credit to our politicians it's so uh so easy to criticize politicians but i think indian politicians don't get credit where it's due that if they lose the elections they quit across all parties they quietly resign and leave and menu and most of them actually come back for the swearing-in ceremony of their successor absolutely absolutely yeah and that is something worth celebrating and we must credit our politicians for that but building a bit more just probing a bit further on the second point that you made on information flow uh there is fascinating stuff happening in india uh and swamiji himself was an exponent of let's spread knowledge let's let's spread information but sometimes with that there is also a lot of noise uh noise that can one has seen in western countries as well but noise that's excuse me that is uh there in india as well how do you think learnings from swami vivekananda because yes of course there are huge benefits to this information flow massive information flow there are huge challenges as well there's tremendous noise what can we learn from swami vivekananda to mitigate the risks of the kind of world that we live in today the hyper connected world we live in today i think swami vivekananda's great lesson there is the propagation of an inner if i want to answer your question a slightly differently amish uh if you look at the history of the world amish there has never been really a time like the time we are living in where most human beings have forgotten to have any kind of inner life even in the last generation uh you know there were people who would always make it a point to go to some spiritual place once a week if nothing else once a week you know they would go to church on sunday or they would go to the temple on tuesday or whatever they would do something right but we are living in a time when a large number of people have no inner life at all we have been living in a time where a large number of people have forgotten the need to have an inner life and if you really want to cut off noise you have to first cut off noise from inside you and i think india is best placed to tell the story once again for the need of an inner life because human beings cannot survive i mean you know in spite of all the technology and stuff you know an unprecedented a surge of loneliness suicides depression around the world so therefore an inner life is so so critical for human being about history people have always had an inner life it's only today that we have forgotten to have an inner life right and i think india again is in a great position to tell the story of the need for an inner life the fascinating point swami vaikanan is is one of the best ambassadors for that another thing that he is a wonderful ambassador for which you spoke on briefly uh in your speech was that he was an institution builder one of the things that india is criticized on though we have built fantastic institutions in some areas uh you know election commission and in the modern way many of our government processes have been improved drastically the way subsidies are given up for example but yes to be fair one can say that often in india institutional capacity both at a government level and at a private sector level for uh the scale of our country is relatively weak um we need learnings there what are the learnings we can draw from swami vivekananda who clearly knew how to build institutional institutions at last one of the great things to learn there is the point of collective the ram krishna responsibility has survived because responsibility is always taken in the right in collective which includes people it's an inclusive way of running the organization it includes people and this is a great management style it has survived for so many years because it has this inclusive nature it's always a body of people who take decisions the other thing very important empowerment of localized centers the localized centers of the ramakrishna mission don't always operate only on the basis of what baylor mutt is saying the headquarters they are tremendously empowered to take many decisions of how it's run how it's run on their own at a localized level at the ground level depending and changing depending on which area they exist which country they exist you know it's local culture it's local flavor and so on and so forth so that's really important this ability and flexibility and freedom to operate uh individual the hub and spoke model where the spokes each have you know an individual freedom to run in the way they want and bailout only gives a framework right so i think that's really a model to learn something from can you can you build that up with some examples of you know of uh the mission perhaps in the west or outside of india but even some examples you get that wonderful example of the one who worked on the monk who worked on swamiji's house as a meditation center but other examples of of great institution building institutions are essentially the you know they provide the ability to get humans to work together over so let's bring these generations are there examples like this absolutely please note the effort that the ram krishna mission has made again and again to ensure low note the effort that the ramkus the mission has made again and again to ensure that uh it's its ties with academia remain extremely strong and this entire academic you know point of view is a very very important attribute of the ram krishna mission because not only has the ram krishna mission led and built some of the best academic institutions like the northern report school and others in india do you know it is a mission a monk who even today is the chaplain for both harvard and mit really my god that it is the hindu chaplain in howard and mit generation after generation is a ram krishna mission monk wow the sitting rank is uh generation after generation the monk has been from the ramakrishna mission and not just for howard but also for mit and a lot of ram krishna mission monks produce scholarship of their own in the morning i was doing a lecture with our embassy in seoul on vivekananda and korean research asked me for a book recommendation and i mentioned this brilliant book by a young distribution monk which has been published recently by oxford university press called in finite parts to infinite reality right and that's not the only one some of the biggest uh you know uh or most scholarly people in india traditionally have been ram krishna mission monks let me equate that with if you go to oxford and cambridge many of the professors are actually ordained priests they teach theology they teach uh you know history all kinds of things right dramatist mission actually has it and you know there's other maharaja we call he is one of the best known topographical geography scientist in india he teaches at the tata institute of fundamental research in mumbai he was a slow and fellow uh you know when he was working in america and 50 of the people who in mathematics who get the sloan fellowship go on to win the nobel prize this is the level of monks that they have cultivated over the years and this is not an aberration this is the rule such people are the rule in standard right so the cultivation of these people and the freedom given to them to continue their research while they remain monks has built it and given its strength so you see it all comes down to swami became the famous point about the quality of human beings they just have a different quality of human beings right so this and i have met like it is no service secret that rampant mission monks are some of the most eluding highly educated scholarly people including swami ranganathan who i mentioned earlier in the lecture you know you look at his lectures look at the books he's written do you know the ashtavik i've just finished writing a book on dashlava the translation that i used is a translation a definitive translation made by or written by ramakrishna mission monk so the advent of the advaita ashram and mutt their publishing program is world class it's truly world-class publishing program because they have the monks who have that scholarly uh level to produce work of that stature this is very little known because they do so little self-promotion yeah and i'll tell you like you know you and i have discussed things like this in the past when mohan maharaj was asked he won the shanti soro bhatnagar award you know one of india's highest prizes in mathematics right a few years ago and then the infosys prize for equals in mathematics when he won that a television channel went to talk to him in mumbai and asked him what do you you know what does god mean to you and he said god is maths and the report as always was really flammable he said what do you mean what do you mean and he said no i mean i don't think you're understanding what i'm trying to say but you know that level of intellectual i mean you know we have lost that intellectual ability in our public sphere in india right that's the problem and i think you were talking about institution building institutions got built or ram distribution got built because they cultivated from day one people like this to become monks even today if you go to calcutta one of the great libraries of calcutta perhaps the greatest library of calcutta and cultural center is the gold park grand prix mission and its cultural center it's a world-class center even today so you see what i'm trying to paint for you is the picture that swamiji's influence because he had he was such a intellectual dynamo right he was able to imbibe in his organization those values which were then continued by these people generation after generation right if i you know and if there are any uh you know guys please feel free to uh to post your questions uh i'm so sorry the the person who was hosting it has had a power cut and he's just logged back in from her pad but keep posting your questions he will post them up uh but uh hindu if i can just build a bit on what you uh said of uh the intellectual uh standard public space right in the public space now in some ways modern india is in in terms of intellectual uh caliber it's it's a it's a best of times it's the worst of times we have fantastic achievements in medicine vaccines for example in technology in uh in in new ideas on how to on how to explore what is the idea of india so we have some great new stuff happening but simultaneously the public space has become full of noise full of uh tribalism you know anyone who is who's even slightly calmer or wants to debate actually wants to stay away from the mess and that so it's it's a very bizarre dichotomy what do you think what can we learn from swami vivekananda to get some sanity into the public uh square no i think one of the great lessons of vikananda is that even though he was a monk and look at the interesting thing his own spiritual master was an unlettered village priest right but swami vivekananda was an intellectual right and he did not i mean while he the ramsay brahmanas was a spiritual master he did not he took all that spiritual knowledge and flowed it into his own intellectual street and strengthened him through it right he didn't give it up so i think we can have all the debates in the world but we have to learn from swamiji that intellectualism is not a bad thing it's a good thing right and also the other great lesson i think is to you know to resolve the noise swami vivekananda was a great writer of letters writer of essays and a great reader and since you and i are both authors you know now's the time to mention on this thing that please read books you may need all the whatsapp messages in the world you may read all the twitter messages in the world including from amish's feed in my feed it cannot replace books please read books you can read our books you can read somebody else's books but please especially read especially read the modern monk by hindu thank thank you thank you very much uh yes you can read you know um uh like i said amisha's books my books but you can please read books because there are very few things if you want to really go in depth into a subject there are very few ways you can do it without reading good books right and please don't desert the world of books read them whether you read them on a kindle or wherever you read them read the books and if there's one thing to learn from swami bay currently it is to read a lot and write a lot right so this i mean it sounds very simplistic but it's very hard to do in our busy lives and i don't think we should forget it yeah true and if we can do that hopefully we can improve the the quality of the public square uh uh debate uh as well in india that that certainly needs some improvement um there's a question here from ram why is swamiji's teachings not been practiced in india deeply especially to remove the caste system in indian society what do you say to that well i think the caste system in indian society definitely has gone down in many ways uh what happens is that because of technology and media today every incident you know is instantly splashed all over the world but i think the data clearly shows that the numbers have steadily gone down and in many cases uh i mean this is a whole new conversation then you know i'll keep that for another day but uh i would not agree that cast uh violence especially has not gone down in india it has gone down yes it is true that there are still some terrible examples and we have to eradicate those examples but it's a long haul you know it's a long haul prejudice once it grows in human minds it's very difficult to take out that prejudice right but i do think with every new generation this edifice has only become weaker and weaker i definitely believe that yeah no good good message on that uh there's a there's a question from shantanu hindolsa what message will you give to the youth of india on this occasion of national youth day please read books [Laughter] please read books i wish the youth of india read more books you know i mean that's really become my thing please remember and genuinely i mean this seriously look we are living in the age of information overload right and often you cannot really verify whether information coming to is true false you don't know you're like oh my brother sent it my sister sent it my friends ended it must be true but often it's not true it's false right so therefore it is incumbent upon all of us as individuals to become better informed individuals and to verify verify the information that comes to us uh before we rush to a judgment and rush to an opinion you know please stop rushing to opinions please verify re-verify check before you make up your mind building a bid on this on what you're talking about on information uh it was something that one started seeing in in mainstream media in legacy media and now slowly it appears to be you know the beginnings of that process in social media as well where even information flows gets divided according to ideologies yeah so people will constantly keep hearing things with reinforces their point of view which reinforces the the tribalism that tends to exist especially in the in the public square and the debating space a do you think this is a realistic fear be if it is a realistic fear what do we do no no this is absolutely a realistic fear very very realistic fear please see what's happening in some other large countries this is a very realistic fear and the more we go into these self-isolating bubbles of echo chambers the worse the world is becoming we have to make a conscious effort to move out there and listen to a different point of view i make sure that i usually read or usually follow accounts which you know dramatically disagree with me at least 50 of the account that i follow and 50 of the stuff that i read are people who completely disagree with me now i may completely disagree with them and they with me but yet it's important for us to learn to understand where the person is coming from even if we don't agree if i don't agree with something it doesn't have to be hatred you know it's a very important lesson to learn because please remember the lesson of moving forward always is bipartisan without bipartisan coming together bipartisan agreement coming together you can never move the world ahead right so and if you think if all of us think that the moment somebody disagrees with us that person deserves to be destroyed you know we will never move forward we have to try and find the middle path i know the middle ground is shrinking the middle part is shrinking but some of us who are on the middle path who are on the middle ground must vocally say that we must make an effort to keep this space no i think that's that's very wise advice indulge certainly you know support that to everyone try and listen to those you disagree with that doesn't mean you have to agree with what they say but it it it actually improves the quality of your thinking if all of us only listen to those opinions that reinforce our viewpoint yes we are in dangerous echo chambers and you see the results of that in some in some western countries and it's troubling i mean because they are there are allies and it's it's troubling to see there's another question uh hindu do you believe swamiji's teachings need to be included in the new education policy 2020 as i'm sure where the nep 2020 came up and how can it be ensured uh that it is included in the nap 2020. well i think thematically many of his teams are already included right i mean the new education policy has a focus on uh you know technological uh education it has a focus on making education far more egalitarian it has a focus on making education uh far more you know learning oriented rather than just result oriented all of these things are i think from swamiji's lives and teaching remember swamiji necessarily wasn't a very good student in school or college right now i actually derived great pleasure from saying that just to annoy my parents you know that you know when i was you know younger i used to say this to annoy my parents but but uh would be a troublesome student is the kind of through chalk no i think he was just a uh yeah maybe he threw chocolate i don't know whether he knew john but he was definitely as i say in my book he was definitely a naughty boy you know studious type you know he was a naughty boy so yeah maybe he you know he threw a couple of chalks and we don't know [Laughter] so i take great pleasure in uh you know in this to be honest okay what uh what a wonderful place uh to end a truly fascinating uh conversation at hindu uh this is the birth anniversary of swami vivekananda 12 january one of the greatest indians of of the last millennia we would all do well to learn from him be inspired by him spread his message across the world he'll help the world a lot more and i will say it once again i thoroughly enjoyed the modern monk when i when i read it and it's indole's book and do check it out it is available in india and i believe in the uk as well through amazon on candlelight right in india uh so do check the book out the cover is you can see it and on your on the overlay and thank you so much indole for gracing the nero center stage thank you thank you very much amisha thank you very much delighted to be at the nehru center once again and delighted to be in conversation with you once again thanks a lot ladies and gentlemen thank you very much may the power and the blessings of swamiji be with all of you thank you [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: The Nehru Centre London

Views: 855

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Id: BnYAwVxOd54

Length: 62min 26sec (3746 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 12 2021