Swami Vivekananda : Unresolved Conflicts between the

Spiritual and the Secular

Ashish Lahiri

Swami Vivekananda was one of the finest writers of English

prose among Tagore's Bengali contemporaries. It would not

be an exaggeration to say that so far as English prose

writing was concerned he was way ahead of Tagore of the

corresponding period. When Tagore finally overcame his

diffidence and achieved creativity in English prose, he was

already past his youth; whereas Vivekananda - or

Narendranath, to stick to his pre-monastic name - had

acquired mastery over English prose right in his early

youth. The best way to study the nobility, the grace and

the power of his English prose is to go through his letters,

which are mostly written in English. Dr. Rajagopal

Chattopadhyay, citing Prof. Baridbaran Ghosh's Swami

Vivekananda: Bangla Rachana Sambhar (2012), shows that out of a

total of 576 letters published by the Ramakrishna Mission,

151 are written in Bengali, one or two in French and

Sanskrit. That means, more than 420 letters are written in

English. The English letters thus constitutive an

invaluably rich source of understanding the real

Vivekananda. Except perhaps for the famous Chicago speech

and the Raja yoga, most of his other well-known writings

1

are newspaper reports and lecture-notes taken by his

disciples and edited later; so they may not fully reflect

the qualities of his own prose. On the other hand his

letters bear the unmistakable hall-mark of his personality :

brilliant, many-splendoured, passionate, witty, forceful

and frankly masculine. However, they also bring out his

contradictions, his vacillations, even helplessness in the

face of a transitional reality which, under the impact of

colonialism, was undergoing change at an exponential rate.

We will examine some of his letters in detail and try to

understand the working of this great mind.

But before that, it is perhaps advisable that we review

the glorious account of the various phases of the young

Narendranath's philosophical transformation as narrated by

his illustrious classmate, later the doyen of Indian

philosophy, Brajendranath Seal. For I shall try to show that

the various phases illuminated by Brajendranath had left

their discrete marks on Vivekananda's mind, never mingling

into a composite whole. In an article published in the

Prabuddha Bharata (April 1907; reprinted Brahmavadin, May,

1907). Brajendranath says,

John Stuart Mill's Three Essays on Religion had upset his

first boyish theism and easy optimism which he had

imbibed from the outer circles of the Brahmo Samaj. The

arguments from causality and design were for him broken

reeds to lean upon, and he was haunted by the problem

2

of the Evil in Nature and Man which he, by no means,

could reconcile with the goodness of an All-wise and

All-powerful Creator. A friend introduced him to the

study of Hume's scepticism and Herbert Spencer's

doctrine of the Unknowable, and his unbelief gradually

assumed the form of a settled philosophical scepticism.   

In order to help him get out of this settled philosophical

scepticism, Brajendranath

... gave him a course of readings in Shelley. Shelley's

'Hymn to the Spirit of Intellectual Beauty', his

pantheism of impersonal love and his vision of a

glorified millennial humanity moved him as the arguments

of the philosophers had failed to move him. The universe

was no longer a mere lifeless, loveless mechanism. It

contained a spiritual principle of unity. I spoke to him

now of a higher unity than Shelley had conceived, the unity

of the Para Brahman as the Universal Reason. ... The sovereignty of

Universal Reason, and the negation of the individual as

the principle of morals, were ideas that soon came to

satisfy Vivekananda's intellect and gave him an assured

conquest over scepticism and materialism.

But this sovereignty of Universal Reason also fell short of

Narendranath's demands :

But this brought him no peace. The conflict now entered

deeper into his soul, for the creed of Universal Reason

3

called on him to suppress the yearnings and susceptibilities of his artist

nature and Bohemian temperament.

The rest is well-known. The history of how, with the help

of Sri Ramakrishna, he could apparently bury his

contradictions is too well-known to bear repitition.The

point I want to make is, the contradictions were not fully

resolved ever and the conflicts between these developmental

phases did remain with him all through his life, so that at

crucial moments he would take stands that were apparently

contradictory, even irrational.

A Letter of 1892

Particularly susceptible to summer heat, Swami Vivekananda

went to Mount Abu in mid-April 1891 where he met Raja Ajit

Singh of Khetri. From 25 July to 3 August he spent with Ajit

Singh there and went on to stay at the King's palace at

Khetri where he remained till 28 October, fully enjoying

the princely hospitality. At the invitation of the Raja he

once again went to Khetri and stayed there from 21 April

1893 till 10 May 1893. Immediately after, he left for his

historic tour of America. Indeed, Ajit Singh's material

help was substantial behind that trip.

But, apart from providing material help and

hospitality, Khetri is important in his life for other

reasons too. It is from Pandit Narayandas of Khetri, the

4

foremost Sanskrit grammarian of his time in Rajputana, that

he learnt the maha-bhashya (the grand critique) of Panini

Sutra. He reverently called the Pandit his "Professor."

Thus, it is only at Khetri 'that Swamiji became a good

scholar of Sanskrit, [which] he could speak with the same

fluency and ease as English, or his mother tongue.'1

Moreover, he also discussed scriptures with two other

scholars of Khetri, namely Shankarlal and Sundarlal. Pandit

Shankarlal was to become a disciple of Swamiji.

It is to this Pandit Shankarlal that he wrote a letter

from Seth Ramdas Chhabildas's home in Bombay on 20 September

18922, some eight months before leaving for America. In

this letter, he made some unusually terse comments on the

'dearth of those sciences which are the results of

observation and generalization', that is, the inductive

sciences. These comments and the general viewpoint

expressed in the letter are strangely at variance with what

he would preach just a few months later in America. Here,

apparently, he was speaking from the scepticist-empiricist

layer of his mind of which we had a glimpse earlier. Let us

examine what Swamiji has to say in this letter about the

characteristics of "Hindu" science or the lack of it.

Expressing 'unbounded gratitude' to Pandit

Sundarlalji and to 'my Professor', i.e. Pandit Narayandasji,

Vivekananda writes:

5

Now I would tell you something else. The Hindu mind was

ever deductive and never synthetic or inductive. In all

our philosophies, we always find hair-splitting

arguments, taking for granted some general proposition,

but the proposition itself may be as childish as

possible. Nobody ever asked or searched the truth of

these general propositions. Therefore, independent

thought we have none to speak of, and hence the dearth of

those sciences which are the results of

observation and generalization.

Don't we discern in this a direct projection of the phase of

settled philosophical scepticism, as described by Brajendranath? But

before proceeding any further, we would note that although

Vivekananda is here apparently towing the lines propagated

by Vidyasagar, Akshay Kumar Datta and early Bankim

Chandra, there are substantial differences between their

viewpoints.

'In all our philosophies?'

According to Vivekananda, all our philosophies suffer from the

alleged abhorrence of experiment and observation. However,

both recent and Vivekananda's contemporary research point to

the fact that, if anything, this idea is one-dimensional

and oversimplified. Brajendranath Seal very clearly stated:

'The Sankhya-Patanjali system accounts for the Universe on

principles of cosmic evolution; the Vaisesika-Nyaya lays

6

down the methodology of science, and elaborates the concepts

of mechanics, physics and chemistry. The Vedanta, Purva-

Mimamsa, and in a less degree the Bauddha, the Jaina, and

the Charvaka systems make incidental contributions on points

of specific interest, but their main value in this regard is

critical and negative.' 3 Other scholars have at different

times, in their own way, pointed to the difference between

the various strands of Indian philosophies so far as the

development of empirical ideas is concerned. Simon Blackburn

notes that 'Nyaya generally tends towards a realist

metaphysics, and anticipated many later western concerns,

for instance with the problem of distinguishing true from

misleading perceptions, with induction, and the nature of

knowledge via testimony.' 4 Recalling the advice offered

by Javali, 'a sceptical pundit', to Ram ('Follow what is

within your experience and do not trouble yourself with what

lies beyond the province of human experience'), Amartya Sen

observes: 'This observational focus is, of course, in line

with the materialism of Lokayata and the Carvaka system.'

He goes even further, showing that 'the rationale of the

Lokayata approach is quite close to a methodological point

that Francis Bacon would make with compelling clarity in

1605 in his treatise The Advancement of Learning.' Indeed, the

flowering of Indian science in the Gupta period owed much

to this 'tradition of scepticism and questioning.' 5

Recently Prof. Ramkrishna Bhattacharya, while calling

7

Charvaka 'the most uncompromising materialist school of

philosophy in ancient India', has also demonstrated that

'there is enough evidence to show that the Cārvāka-s ... did

admit inference in so far as it was grounded in perception.'

He also establishes 'the fact that there existed a pre-

Cārvāka school of materialism in India.' 6 How can then one

so sweepingly comment that 'independent thought we have none

to speak of, and hence the dearth of those sciences which

are the results of observation and generalization' ? Even if

we leave out everything else, was not Indian medicine

clearly a triumph of this empirical approach?

As a matter of fact, this comment of Vivekananda's had

so embarrassed the editor of the volume that in a footnote

he felt compelled to inform that 'In later days he

[Vivekananda] acknowledged that India gave birth to many

sciences, though they developed elsewhere.'7 One does

appreciate the editor's predicament. First of all, here is

a great man known for his super-human intellect and memory

and yet making a plain faux pas. This is all the more

surprising because in 1883, that is, nine years prior to

this letter Akshay Kumar Datta had presented in the

celebrated introduction to the second volume of his

Bharatbarshiya Upasak Sampradaya a detailed and differential

account of the Indian philosophies from the Baconian

standpoint. Even earlier, in 1873 Bankim Chandra in his

essay 'The Study of Indian Philosophy' 8 had analysed the

8

successes and the lapses of the Indian philosopher-

scientists. How could Vivekananda miss these eminent

analyses?

Secondly, the way Vivekananda chastises 'Hindu'

science in a global manner demolishes his Hindu-nationalist

image completely. On the face of it, he was following

Vidyasagar's dictum of 1853 that 'the Samkhya and Vedanta

are false systems of philosophy'. This cannot but embarrass

a missionary editor. Strangely enough, the Bengali edition

of the works of Swami Vivekananda, while incorporating a

translation of this letter, does not carry this editorial

caveat.

Reasons for Failure

Vivekananda next raises the all important question: why did

the 'Hindus' fail in empirical science? He confidently

answers:

From two causes: The tremendous heat of the climate

forcing us to love rest and contemplation better than

activity, and the Brahmins as priests never undertaking

journeys or voyages to distant lands. There were voyages

and people who travelled far; but they were almost

always traders, i.e., people for whom priestcraft and

their own sole love for gain had taken away all capacity

9

for intellectual development. So their observations,

instead of adding to the store of human knowledge,

rather degenerated it. For, their observations were bad,

and their accounts exaggerated and tortured into

fantastical shapes, until they passed all recognition.

In short, oppressive summer heat, circumscribed priests

and the outgoing traders' "sole love for gain" -- these are

the factors that stood in the way of the development of

empirical science in India. It is because of these factors

that the tired Hindu mind became idle and estranged from

reality on the one hand and crassly this-worldly on the

other.

And yet, quite a few internalist and externalist

hypotheses trying to explain the decline of Indian science

were ready at hand. In 1883, Datta had lamented that because

of the absence of an empiricist philosopher like Bacon or a

positivist like Comte, the great achievements of Kapila or

Kanada could not "grow, blossom and fructify". Bankim

Chandra in 1873, while agreeing that excessive reliance on

deductive logic was at the root of the decay, had accused

theology as being chiefly responsible for this. We have

seen how the Baconian Vidyasagar in 1853 had denounced

Sankhya and Vedanta as 'false systems of philosophy'.

Another illustrious contemporary of Vivekananda's, Prafulla

Chandra Ray had later diagnosed that Sankara's advaitabad on

the philosophical side and the post-Buddha casteism on the

10

social side were among the major factors responsible for the

decline of the once-glorious Indian science. None of these

thinkers had condemned 'Hindu' philosophies en masse for

this decline.

Vivekananda's difficulty lay elsewhere. It was

impossible for him to critically examine the above factors

for ideological reasons. Hence the either/or approach. Just

consider: 1) Being a follower of the anti-Buddha

Sankaracharya who preached advaitabad, how could Vivekananda

denounce mayavad as one of the harmful influences? 2)

Being a theist who embraced ritualistic deity-worship, how

could he accept, even examine, the materialistic, empirical

logical method of the Charvakas based on experiment? 3)

Being a religious leader for whom theology formed the

inviolable basis for all argument, how could he, like

Bankim, castigate an excess of theology as detrimental to

the growth of empirical thinking? 4) Being a Hindu

nationalist who considered the pre-Buddha Indian social

system ideal, he always prevaricated in denouncing the caste

system. In one place he would say that by stultifying

competition, this system has finished the Hindus. In another

place he would say with equal confidence that by stultifying

competition, this system had helped sustain the Hindus

through the vicissitudes of history. Unable for ideological

reasons to consider any of the above hypotheses as the

causative factors for the decline of Indian science, his

11

entire ire fell on the narrow-minded priests. This ire is

entirely justified. However, without a mention of the chief

philosophical and social reasons, this castigation of the

priests alone smacks of a kind of escapism.

In the chain of reasons cited by Vivekananda for

India's failure in science, the weakest link is the traders'

'love for gain'. For it is an established fact of history

of science that it was the traders' love for gain that had

promoted science everywhere -- in Egypt, in China, in

Europe, in the Arab countries, even in Buddhist India.

The Main Drift

The main drift of Vivekananda's letter here is that

... we must go to foreign parts. We must see how the

engine of society works in other countries, and keep free

and open communication with what is going on in the minds

of other nations, if we really want to be a nation again.

But, that is not all. He vehemently ridicules Brahminical

tyranny and points out that it is because of this tyranny

that 'the lower classes' are being converted by 'the Padris'

to Christianity 'by lakhs'.

Clearly, he is at the most vituperative mode against

the 'tyrannies' of Brahmins, particularly the priesthood. So

instead of coolly and objectively assessing the merits and

demerits of 'Hindu' science, he goes on and on to show how

the Hindu philosophers were given to spinning deductive

12

yarns, based on 'childish' propositions the truth of which

nobody ever cared to verify. This is the kind of stuff James

(John Stuart's father, the writer of the infamous History of

India) Mill would have loved to hear! And the only remedy

suggested by Vivekananda is: 'we must travel', which he was

now set to do, thanks to the Raja of Khetri's support.

If we now read this in the context of the pen-portrait

drawn by Brajendranath, things fall into place. The young

Narendranath was:

Undeniably a gifted youth, sociable, free  and

unconventional in manners, a sweet singer, the soul of

social circles, a brilliant conversationalist, somewhat

bitter and caustic, piercing with the shafts of a keen wit the shows and

mummeries of the world, sitting in the scorner's chair but hiding the

tenderest of hearts under that garb of cynicism;

altogether an inspired Bohemian but possessing what

Bohemians lack, an iron will; somewhat peremptory and absolute,

speaking with accents of authority and withal possessing a strange

power of the eye which could hold his listeners in

thrall.

On to the Other Extreme

13

The editor of the Letters of Swami Vivekananda has correctly

reminded us that Vivekananda had changed his opinion

expressed in this letter of 1892. The fact is, he took the

equally uncritical path to land at the opposite pole. A few

examples will suffice. In 1896 he opined that the

'psychological and scientific ideas as to cosmology and all

that pertains to it ... is in accordance with all the latest

discoveries of modern science' so much so that 'when there

is anything lacking we shall find that it is on the side of

modern science'. 9 He went on to assert: 'The latest

scientific men are coming back to the ancient sages, and as

far as they have done so, there is perfect agreement.' 10  

In 1900 he said, 'You know how many sciences had their

origin in India. Mathematics began there. You are even today

counting 1, 2, 3, etc. to zero, after Sanskrit figures, and

you all know that algebra also originated in India, and that

gravitation was known to the Indians thousands of years before

Newton was born.' 11 And yet, just a few years before this, he

believed that 'independent thought we have none to speak

of, and hence the dearth of those sciences which are the

results of observation and generalization.' One wonders

through what research, through the discovery of what new

facts did he arrive at this diametrically opposite view?

Reason, Passion, Sense

14

We may now move on to a few letters written towards the end

of his short life. Here we find a different kind of

manifestation of the conflicts which Brajendranath talked

of. In his inimitably penetrating manner, Brajendranath had

described his young friend's spiritual struggles in these

words:

His senses were keen and acute, his natural cravings and

passions strong and imperious, his youthful

susceptibilities tender, his conviviality free and merry.

To suppress these was to kill his natural spontaneity - almost to suppress his

self. The struggle soon took a seriously ethical turn -

reason struggling for mastery with passion and sense. The fascinations

of the sense and the cravings of a youthful nature now

appeared to him as impure, as gross and carnal. This was

the hour of darkest trial for him.

In this hour of trial, it was music that brought him solace.

But here again the vagaries of an imperfect and indecent

reality stood in the way of his attaining peace. The musical

milieu of Calcutta in the 1880's was indeed vulgar, enough

to give a jolt to any sensitive mind. Brajendranath says,

His musical gifts brought him associates for whose

manners and morals he had bitter and undisguised

contempt. But his convivial temperament proved too strong

for him. 

Narendranath built up a shield so as to beat off this

vulgarity and at the same time give full play to his musical

15

passions, the aim being to reconcile his spiritual

conflicts. What was the nature of that shield? Seal

recounts:

He took an almost morbid delight in shocking

conventionality in its tabernacles, respectability in its

booths; and in the pursuit of his sport would appear

other than he was, puzzling and mystifying those outside his inner

circle of friends. But in the recesses of his soul he wrestled

with the fierce and fell spirit of Desire, the subtle and

illusive spirit of Fancy.

The key words here are 'puzzling' and 'mystifying'. It can

be shown that this trait remained with him all along,

causing many a misunderstanding. For example, many of

Vivekananda's foreign disciples rebelled against him on the

alleged ground that he had indulged in the kind of luxury

that one normally did not associate with an abstemious Hindu

yogi, a sannyasin. Another allegation was that theoretically

a yogi, having mental control over the neurological and

physiological processes, should have an impeccable health,

whereas Vivekananda, the very writer of Raja yoga, suffered

from so many metabolic diseases, which ultimately led to his

sad death at the age of 39. He didn't even have the strength

of mind, his foreign disciples alleged, to give up smoking,

even when it was telling on his health. Could it be that he

16

was a victim of an Orientalist perception engendered by

himself?

Faced with these uncomfortable - but mostly inane -

charges, Vivekananda riposted at four layers. First, he

denied that he had accepted luxuries from his foreign well-

wishers. Second, that actually often he had to undergo a

life of extreme hardship. Third, those lovable Westerns who

did provide him with a good living never raised their

eyebrows at his lifestyle; it was only the good-for-nothings

that did so. Fourth, the shastras do not prescribe a

Hindu sannyasin to 'torture the flesh', so if his foreign

disciples had treated him well, he had done nothing

unethical. The fact that he should choose to answer these

allegations at such a length and in such a manner, which

often borders on the quizzical, shows how deep-seated the

unresolved psychological conflicts were.

On 14th September 1899, Vivekananda wrote to E. T.

Sturdy from New York:

Mrs. Johnson is of opinion that no spiritual person ought

to be ill. It also seems to her now that my smoking is

sinful etc., etc. That was Miss Muller's reason for

leaving me - my illness. They may be perfectly right for

aught I know - and you too, but I am what I am. In India

the same defects plus eating with Europeans have been

taken exception to by many. I was driven out of a private

temple by the owners for eating with Europeans. I wish I

17

were malleable enough to be moulded into whatever one

desired, but unfortunately I never saw a man who could

satisfy everyone.

After a few more words he makes a rather baffling statement

about how he had to kowtow before unreasonable demands of

others:

In India the moment I landed, they made me shave

my head, and wear ''Kaupin'' (loin cloth), with the

result that I got diabetes, etc. Saradananda never

gave up his underwear - this saved his life,

with just a touch of rheumatism and comment from our

people.

This is indeed quizzical, for by his own admission he got

the greatest ovation of his life in South India immediately

upon landing there after his historic tour of the West. To

learn that these same people ('they') forced ('made') him to

shave his head, that he had to surrender before their will,

at once brings out the conflicts he lived with. One is

baffled as to how wearing or not wearing a 'kaupin' or an

underwear can lead to getting diabetes; but one can well

realise the extent of his irritation at silly insinuations

by those very people who he himself had reared.

But that is not all. In November 1899 we find him

writing another longish letter to Sturdy in which we find

18

him angry, self-righteous, apologetic and pathetic - all at

the same time. The letter is worth quoting al length.

For the last few months I have been hearing so much of

the luxuries I was given to enjoy by the people of the

West - luxuries which the hypocrite myself has been

enjoying, although preaching renunciation all the

while.

One would have expected that a man of his stature would

find it beneath his dignity to answer these mean

allegations. But no; he was so angry and upset that he went

on to describe in detail how he was ill-treated while at

England, even by Sturdy's wife:

I remember your place at Reading, where I was fed with

boiled cabbage and potatoes and boiled rice and boiled

lentils, three times a day, with your wife's curses for

sauce all the time. I do not remember your giving me

any cigar to smoke -- shilling or penny ones. Nor do I

remember myself as complaining of either the food or

your wife's incessant curses, though I lived like a thief,

shaking through fear all the time, and working every

day for you.

The next memory is of the house on St. George's

Road -- you and Miss Müller at the head. My poor

brother was ill there and ... drove him away. There,

too, I don't remember to have had any luxuries as to

food or drink or bed or even the room given to me.

19

The next was Miss Müller's place. Though she has

been very kind to me, I was living on nuts and fruits.

The next memory is that of the black hole of London

where I had to work almost day and night and cook the

meals oft-times for five or six, and most nights with a

bite of bread and butter.

I remember Mrs. - giving me a dinner and a night's

lodging in her place, and then the next day criticizing

the black savage -- so dirty and smoking all over the

house.

Expressing gratitude to those who were actually ready to

provide luxury for him, he cautions Sturdy that

... it is only those who do nothing, who only come to

grind their own axes, that curse, that criticise.

Having established that far from living in luxury, he had

been living in extreme hardship, he suddenly puts in a new

argument:

In undergoing all this hardship in the West we have been

only breaking the rules of Sannyasa. ... I shall be very

glad if you can point out to me where I have preached

torturing the flesh. As for the Shastras (scriptures), I

shall be only too glad if a Shastri (Pundit) dares oppose

us with the rules of life laid down for Sannyasins and

Paramahamsas.

Then, having vented his ire, he turns patriarchal and

affectionate:

20

Well, Sturdy, my heart aches. I understand it all. I know

what you are in - you are in the clutches of people who

want to use you. I don't mean your wife. She is too

simple to be dangerous. But, my poor boy, you have got

the flesh-smell - a little money - and vultures are

around. Such is life. 12

Conclusion

A perusal of Swami Vivekananda's letters, the bulk of which

are written in English, allows us to have a look at his

multi-faceted personality. What emerges is a tremendously

dynamic but conflict-ridden personality, the peculiarities

of which can be explained using the clues provided by

Brajendranath Seal who, as a slightly senior co-student at

the General Assemblies (later Scottish Church), saw and

contributed to the development of a great mind. The

attempted synthesis between reason and spirituality, between

individuality and the collective, however, did not fructify.

At times the secular elements predominated, at others the

spiritual. To the end of his life, this contradiction

remained unresolved.

21

1 Benishankar Sharma, Swami Vivekananda - A Forgotten Chapter of His Life, Towards Freedom, Kolkata 2012, p. 522 Letters of Swami Vivekananda , Advaita Ashrama, Mayavati, Champawat, Uttaranchal, (First Edition 1940), Fifteenth Impression, May 2006, pp. 27-283 Brajendranath Seal, The Positive Sciences of the Ancient Hindus (1915), Sahitya Samsad Calcutta Reprint 2001, p.1 4 Simon Blackburn, Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, OUP, Oxford, 1996, p. 2665 Amartya Sen, The Argumentative Indian, Allen Lane, London 2003, pp. 26-276 Ramkrishna Bhattacharya, Studies on the Cārvāka/Lokāyata, Societa Editrice Florentina, Firenze 2009, pp. 9-107 Letters, p. 278 See Bankim Rachanavali Vol. 3 (ed. Jogesh Chandra Bagal), Sahitya Samsad, Calcutta (1969), Reprint 1998, pp. 142-1489 The Science and Philosophy of Religion, 1915, Udbodhan, Kolkata, p. 11 10 The Cosmos: The Microcosm (Lecture Delivered in New York, 26th January 1896)11 THE POWERS OF THE MIND, Lecture Delivered at Los Angeles, California, January 8, 1900 . 12 Letters, . pp. 398-401