#78, WHY DOES VIVEKANANDA USE SCURRILOUS LANGUAGE?

Swami Vivekananda is represented as a great yogi by his cult. A yogi's speech and actions are to be clean and gentle. Quite frequently, his writing style contains a language which is sneering and biting, often with no valid reason. For example, we can see a quote from his letter dated Feb. 25, 1898 from Belur Math to Swami Ramakrishnananda (Shashi), his brother disciple and the founder of the Ramakrishna Math at Chennai (Madras).

" ... I received your letter of recommendation for the young man with the old story of "having nothing to eat, Your Honour"; only added in the Madras edition: "got a number of children too", for generating whom no recommendation was needed! I would be very glad to help him, but the fact is, I have no money; every cent I had I have made over to Raja, as they all say I am a spendthrift and are afraid of keeping money with me. I have, however, sent the letter to Rakhal if he can find the way to help your friend, the young man, in having some more children. He writes that the Christians will help him out if he becomes a convert, but he won't. Perhaps he is afraid that his conversion will make Hindu India lose one of her brightest jewels and Hindu society the benefit of his propagating power to eternal misery ... "


BLOGGER'S VIEWs
*Why insult the youth?
*If Swamiji was so scurrilous in his letters, what would he have been in his oral communications? Foul-mouthed?

In his very next letter to Ms. Mary Hale from Belur Math on March 2, 1898 he was seeking money from her, of course using a humorous style.

"... My only regret is that the millionaires do not materialise: and I want them so badly just now that I am growing decrepit and old and hot in the midst of building and organising. ... Well, well, you could not get the millionaire, so I could not get the money; so I had to worry a good deal and work hard to no purpose; so I got the disease ..."

Comments

Anonymous said…
Hi yb,
I saw ur blogs on vivekananda. I want to express my thoughts on it (if u feel i am wrong, plz forgive me). Observing from ur commnts on SV, i feel that you have got really hurt badly from something SV has said or done, which u have felt absolute mistake or nonsense. I want to know that one thing which has made u frustrated? as i am also not a big fan of SV..
This comment has been removed by the author.
Dear Shri Rajesh garu: I deleted my reply comment here and posted it as Review No. 80, a new blog post. This became necessary as I had to correct errors. After your reading it and my reading your comments, I may have to make further corrections. Thank you. Pl. bear with my scepticism. Shortly, I shall write another blogpost on why I became a sceptic. I know that readers will be blast me.

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