Swami Vivekananda concept of socialism

Swami Vivekananda was one of the first religious leaders

of India who encouraged the Indians to formulate a
definite philosophy of service-‘’Atmano mokshartham
Jaggatharthiyya”.It was in fact a unique contribution for
the creation of a new India through organised large scale
social service.The Swami called upon the Youth of India to
come forward in large numbers and to take up the divine
ordained duty –uplifting the downtrodden
masses.Vivekananda talked to India about socialism and
equality much before the ideas of Karl Marx was known to
India.He was prepared to call all those traitors who
deprived the labour class of their rights.Vivekananda
upheld the noble idea of 'vedanta ' which holds that no
individual can be completely free unless every one is free
from oppression.Discarding the prevalent dogmatic caste
system he gave importance to individualism and called
upon each individuals to consciously act towards towards
the well beings of their fellow human beings and create a
better society. To become enlightened facilitate conditions
and support people to enlighten themselves.They should
be taught to improve methods of agriculture ,village
industries, etc.Centuries old oppression of the down
trodden has led to loss of faith in their own capabilities
which was the greatest obstacle.Through education he
imparted basically two kinds of knowledge to the
masses,secular knowledge in order to improve their
economic condition and spiritual knowledge to infuse in
them faith in themselves and strengthen their moral
senses.Among his major achievements no doubt was that
he presented the ancient teachings of India in its purest
form to the western audience who had a derogatory
picture of India that was presented to the world at large by
the colonial rulers and christian missionaries.Vivekananda
inspired the youth of the country and also the freedom
struggle .Gandhi ,Subhas Chandra
Bose,Tagore,Aurobindo,C Rajagopalichari etc were
influenced by the teachings of Vivekananda.Gandhi points
out that Vivekananda's influence increased his ‘’love for
his country a thousand fold.A whole generation of freedom
fighters from the moderates to the revolutionaries were
inspired by his teachings.He glorified mother India and
invoked a sense of pride in India's past and his literature
was devoured by the revolutionaries including
Aurobindo,Bagha Jatin,Bhupendranath Dutta (his own
brother)etc.Radical leftist leaders like Subhas Chandra
Bose wrote :''I cannot write about Vivekananda without
going into raptures. Few indeed could comprehend or
fathom him even among those who had the privilege of
becoming intimate with him. His personality was rich,
profound and complex... Reckless in his sacrifice,
unceasing in his activity, boundless in his love, profound
and versatile in his wisdom, exuberant in his emotions,
merciless in his attacks but yet simple as a child, he was a
rare personality in this world of ours’’.His concepts on
religion,social service ,nationalism,upliftment of down
trodden,dignity to labour classes,upliftment of women
were all noble ideas which in turn inspired India's freedom
movement.
VIEWS ON SOCIALISM, COMMUNISM AND DEMOCRACY

Swami Vivekananda was a social realist. He wanted the materialistic and dynamic west to imbibe the
spiritual teachings of the yoga and the Vedanta. His message to the Indians was realistic and pragmatic.
He was intensely conscious of the miseries of India’s millions. His revolutionary statement read thus: It is
mockery to offer religion to a starving man. The deep social realism of Vivekananda is also revealed in
his statement that India’s political slavery of a thousand years is rooted in the suppression of the
masses. He mercilessly denounced the sophistication, the arrogance and the wickedness of the upper
classes of Indian society. They have been responsible for exploiting the millions of masses throughout
India’s history. Once Swami Vivekananda declared thus: I am a socialist not because I think it is a perfect
system, but half a loaf is better than no bread.’ He can be considered a socialist in two senses. First, he
had the historical vision to realise that in Indian history there has been the dominance of the two upper
castes. The Brahmans and the Kshatriyas. While the later perpetrated political and economic
exploitation, the former enchained the masses with new complicated ceremonies and rituals. He openly
denounced caste oppressions and refused to recognise any social barrier between man and man. His
gospel of social equalitarianism is fundamentally socialistic. Secondly, Vivekananda was a socialist
because he championed the concept of equal chance. ‘For all the inhabitants of the country. This
concept of equal chances s definitely in the socialist direction.

Vivekananda was aware of the weaknesses of the western gospels of socialism and anarchism. He was in
favour of violent revolution for achieving the goal of socialism. He was a great social realist who was
conscious of caste oppressiveness in Indian society and who left the crying urgency of the solution of the
problems of food and hunger. Marx stressed the need for an organised proletarian party for
transformation from capitalism to socialism. Vivekanada wanted to train individual workers for the
social awakening and change in the traditional caste-ridden Indian society. The fundamental difference
between the Vedantic socialism of Vivekananda and Marxism is that although the former stressed the
reformation of society, he put greater stress on the elevation of human consciousness into the divine’
Marxism was born as a reaction against the disturbing and maladjusted situation created by the
industrial revolution. The spiritually- rooted sociological doctrines of Vivekananda with their stress on
the cultivation of purity and fraternity have been the restatement of the perennial philosophy of justice,
love and universal compassion.

Vivekananda was a great advocate of democracy and he wanted to awaken the young people to
establish free and democratic government in India. According to him, the principle of liberty
wasimportant because there could not be growth in society without liberty. He believes that everyone
should have liberty of thought, discussion, food, dress etc. He was a supporter of equality of all men and
pleaded for the abolition of caste and class privileges. Caste system was a hindrance to the development
of India into a strong nation. Vivekananda’s plea for the individual freedom and social equality made him
a firm believer in the institution of democracy. The liberation of the masses necessitates their
participation in the activities of the government. Democracy, according to him, inculcates faith in self
reliance and self – government; it eliminates the dependence of the individual on parliament. He viewed
democracy both as a way of life and a form of government. As a way of life, democracy envisages
freedom, equality, brother hood and their union. As a form of government he maintained that social
evolution was possible through the cyclic rule of the caste system. He believed that democracy
encourages individual initiative and self- reliance in administering the affairs of government. Democracy
provides for them to uplift themselves and mould their future. He believes that religious tolerance was
crucial for the growth of democracy because that alone could promote the cause of liberty, equality and
fraternity.

VIVEKANANDA’S VEDANTIC SOCIALISM

Swami Vivekananda is generally approached as a patriot--monk par excellence. He is simply credited

with revealing the soul of India to the Western world. He is mostly regarded as a spokesman of
Hinduism. The spiritual dimension of his personality seems to have obviously got the better of the social.
It looks as though the “Vivekananda” was drowned under the heavy weight of the “Swami”.

Although he was a man of religion and meditation, Viveka-nanda was all for activity that would lead to
increase in production and the removal of poverty. He always said with his Guru, Ramakrishna
Paramahamsa, that, “religion is not for empty stomachs.” He shocked people out of their self-
com-placency and plunged them into action. Thus, he influenced the course of life in modern India by
stimulating the Rajasic qualities in the Indian people, and getting them to set about the task of
betterment of their material conditions of life rather than get lost in a soporific religion that produced
contentment with their existing life of poverty and degradation. In Vivekananda’s opinion, religion had
to be the principal and leading force in implementing all social changes in India.

No doubt, Vivekananda took pride in the country’s inheritance from the past, but he was not an
obscurantist revivalist with undiscriminating admiration for all that had come down from the past. To
him, India meant the people and the people meant the masses. Removal of poverty, eradication of
illiteracy, restoration of human dignity, freedom from fear, availability of spiritual and secular
knowledge to all, irrespective of their caste and class and the ending of all monopolies, religious,
economic, intellectual, social and cultural – all these formed a part of what he derived from his practical
Vedanta or Vedantic socialism.

Through his re-interpretation of Vedanta, and his deep concern for the masses and their problems,
Vivekananda gave the country a new lease of life. Raising his voice against colonial and feudal
oppression, Vivekananda searched, at the same time, for an answer to the question of India’s historical
destinies, of the ways and means of transforming it into a wealthy, strong and independent state. He
insistently repeated that India could be roused and rebuilt with the help of small groups of enthusiastic
patriots, strong and courageous with “muscles of iron and nerves of steel and gigantic wills”.

Though not in politics, Vivekananda did exert a visible influence on the political development and on the
modern India that has emerged from this development. In a sense, he was politically far ahead of his
time in the importance he attached to the masses, the indignation he displayed on their exploitation,
the genuine concern he had for the uplift of women and the backward classes and, above all, in his
strong desire for the country to get the benefit of Western science and technology for its development
without falling into the trap of slavish imitation of the Western ways of life. The revolutionary ideas he
propounded had a tremendous influence on subsequent political thinking and action in India, especially
on the mass -dynamism of Mahatma Gandhi and the socialistic ideas of Jawaharlal Nehru.

Vivekananda was not against reforms, but he believed that India needed radical reforms. In his book,
“On India and Her Problems”, he wrote: “Remember that the nation lives in the cottages. But, alas,
nobody ever did anything for them. Our modern reformers are very busy about widow-remarriage. Of
course, I am a sympathiser in every reform, but the fate of a nation does not depend upon the number
of husbands the widows get, but upon the condition of the masses”. Vivekananda went a step further
and said, “So long as millions live in hunger and ignorance, I hold every man a traitor.” He sincerely
believed that the only hope of India was from the masses, for the upper classes were physically and
morally dead. He believed that a time would come when the masses would rise, throw off the
dominance of the upper classes and establish their absolute supremacy.

With his own concept of Vedanta, Vivekananda gave the country the secularist ideal that now forms a
part of the Constitution of modern India. It was he who first proclaimed on world platforms that all
religions were but different paths that led to the same goal. His idea of secularism was, in fact, an
advance of what is found in modern India. He wanted not just mutual tolerance but mutual respect and,
what is more, mutual recognition of the basic truth that underlies all individual religions.

Vivekananda’s understanding of Vedanta made him a total opponent to the practice of untouchability.
Denouncing, as he did, the practice of untouchability, Vivekananda anticipated, by several decades, the
more effective campaign that Gandhi and Ambedkar carried on against this social evil. He found neither
religious sanction nor secular logic behind the terrible practice of untouchability and he went all out to
condemn it.
Vivekananda’s Vedantic socialism centres round his pro­gressive ideas on education which are more
modern than those of professional educationists who moulded the education of modern India. From the
beginning of his mission, he stressed the importance of universal literacy as an essential condition for
mass uplift and development. Furthermore, he had conceived of so many decades back what we now
call informal education. Also, the credit for pioneering the programme of universal adult literacy should
go to Vivekananda. He also laid great stress on industrial training and technical education which have
now become a part of the educational system of modern India. What he wanted was man-making
education. He believed that educa-tion should aim at developing the mind rather than stuff it with
bookish knowledge. He wanted education to include all aspects of life, not only the intellectual but also
the physical, social, cultural and spiritual, and lead to the building of character and the adoption of a
fearless and self-reliant attitude towards life.

Though he laid great stress on the traditional values of chastity and family life for women, Vivekananda
was totally against their subjection. While drawing attention to the prominent place occupied by women
in intellectual field in ancient India, he blamed the priestcraft for relegating women to a backward
position by denying them equal rights with men in education and in knowledge of the scriptures. He
passionately pleaded for the extension of all educational facilities to women.

Vivekananda’s Vedantic socialism is also reflected in his endeavour to give India’s traditional religions a
new orientation of social service. By establishing the Ramakrishna Mission, he gave an altogether new
direction to the role of monks and Sanyasins in Indian society. As a result, for the first time in Indian
history, we have the Hindu monks who do not isolate themselves from society, but actively concern
themselves with its service and betterment. They have set up educational institutions, hospitals,
dispensaries, orphanages and other social institutions for alleviating human suffering. They are also in
the forefront in the work of relief and rehabilitation whenever the country suffers natural disasters such
as drought, floods, cyclones and epidemics.

Thus, with his reinterpretation of Vedanta, Swami Vivekananda played a key role in the shaping of
modern India. Socialism, secularism, mass uplift and mass power, abolition of untoucha-bility, universal
literacy, informal education, women’s liberation and inculcation of social service as a part of religious
worship ­these constituted the quintessence of his “Vedantic socialism”. His sociological views played a
positive role in the development of the patriotic and national self-consciousness of the youth of India.
Vivekananda’s clamant call to the Indian youth­ – “Awake, arise, and stop not till the goal is reached” – is
resounding all through India, rousing their social consciousness and kindling their damp spirits.