#263 What is common between rAm gOpAl varma and swAmi vivEkAnanda?

rAmgOpal varma Shri rAm gOpAl varma is a noted bollywood producer, director. Also a columnist of Deccan Chronicle newspaper published from Hyderabad.

Reference: his column 'SHOOTING STRAIGHT' in the Tabloid Edition. Date: 18th August 2013.

This column is a set of questions and answers.

We shall take up one q&a which is pertinent to vivEkAnanda and USA.

Reader's question: Do you think that American people are more intelligent than us?

Answer of Shri Varma: Intelligence comes from people and not from countries. What countries do is to provide a system and a platform where intelligence can flourish. That is what America does. It was formed barely 200 years ago without any so called rich heritage, tradition, and culture and it surpassed all of us who have several thousand years of history. Great men are born all over the world but they eventually land up in America. Whether or not people admit it , fact remains that America is the greatest that is known to us. And the proof lies in the long lines outside the US embassy to get a visa.

We shall now compare this to what viVekAnanda wrote:

In May 1896 Swami Vivekananda wrote to Ms. Alberta Sturges (age 19) that he liked Amerique - the yankee land. He called India a jelly fish.

" ... I have had two classes already — they will go on for four or five months and after that to India I go. But it is to Amerique — there where the heart is. I love the Yankee land. I like to see new things. I do not care a fig to loaf about old ruins and mope a life out about old histories and keep sighing about the ancients. I have too much vigour in my blood for that. In America is the place, the people, the opportunity for everything. I have become horribly radical. I am just going to India to see what I can do in that awful mass of conservative jelly-fish, ... "

We shall, now, see what Indra Nooyi (present CEO of Pepsico) said about the Amerique:

“Where I am has a lot to do with the United States. I think the United States represents the greatest meritocracy in the world,”

---

ybrao a donkey's views

For rAm gOpAl varma, America is the Greatest. vivEkAnanda had his heart in Amerique. For Indra Nooyi it is the greatest meritocracy. Naturally because she gets about $12.6 millions pay from PepsiCo.

vivEkAnanda reversed his opinion later. Shri Varma and Ms. Indra Nooyi are entitled to their own opinion. Not only do they have a right to stick on to their opinions, but also to change them depending on exigencies. We should wait and see.

ybdonkey: Every Nation does have its own strengths and weaknesses, greatnesses and pitfalls. By comparing, we contribute nothing, except some love and hate, probably some heated discussion. For example, I found some Americans criticise that Indians are aboriginal or abominable because, they found just one temple in rAjasthAn, where mice are fed with milk and worshipped. How this is going to decide characteristic trait of a whole Nation? In America and Europe we find people who maintain spiders as pets. Well it is the whims of individual members of a Nation. 59% of Americans, according to some studies, indulge in regular oral sex, which ought have been partly shunned at least from the point of view of hygiene. Still, we cannot attribute the 59% characterstic to a whole Nation.

ybdonkey: I wish to make it clean, once again, that this is not a hate-America blog or hate vivEkAnanda blog.

Thousands of rAmakrishna-vivEkAnanda missionaries are visiting Indian villages distributing free photoframes of vivEkAnanda, for adorning Indian homes. The distributors apparently want whole generations of Indians to be nurtured with ambitions of imitating swAmi vivEkAnanda, while growing up.

The problem with worshipping photos, without going into indepth of a person's qualities and practices, is it breeds blind faith, and some times even blind hatred.