AT THE WORLD PARLIAMENT OF RELIGIONS A YOUNG SWAMI VIVEKANANDA SPOKE WITHOUT FEAR, HELD HINDUISM HIGH, MADE HIMSELF EQUAL WITH HIS AUDIENCE

At a place far away in the foreign land and time when Christianity reigned supreme, Swami Vivekananda from India, at the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893, not only upheld the global relevence of Hinduism but also spoke to his white audience as an equal, writes JEFFERY D. LONG.

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The first World Parliament of Religions was held in Chicago in the autumn of 1893. This event, very much a product of its era, was an extension of the Columbian Exposition or World’s Fair of 1893. An event intended to showcase human progress in a wide array of fields, from culture to technology, the Exposition and the Parliament that accompanied it, while highlighting human cultural diversity – and thus being, in many ways, a cutting-edge event for its time – nevertheless carried a definite note of Western triumphalism: that it was in the West, and America in particular, that human potential had achieved its true height of greatness.

Into this context strides Swami Vivekananda, a Hindu monk and the pre-eminent disciple of Sri Ramakrishna, who had left behind his physical form just seven years before. In the years since his Master’s passing, Vivekananda had travelled the length and breadth of India on foot, as a simple sannyasi, or renouncer, seeking a way to spread the message of his master and regenerate the spiritual life of the people of India, who were labouring under the heel of British imperialism. Encouraged by his friend and supporter, Bhaskara Sethupathy Thever, the Raja of Ramnad, Vivekananda had resolved to travel to America and participate in the Parliament: to make the case directly, in the heart of the West, for the global relevance of Hindu thought and spirituality.

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Also read: TO SWAMI VIVEKANANDA TOLERATION A BLASPHEMY, ACCEPTANCE DIVINE

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It was an act of supreme audacity. Vivekananda’s courage was fuelled by his devotion to his master’s teaching: joto mot, toto poth (as many beliefs, so many ways). “Every religion is a path,” a way to the supreme realization attested in the Hindu scriptures for thousands of years: that the infinite presence of divinity inheres in all living beings, and that the ultimate aim of our existence is the manifestation of this divine potential. Vivekananda delivered this message at a time when the European colonization of much of the world was being justified as the “white man’s burden,” and as a Hindu, in a land where the superiority of Christianity over other religions was taken for granted.

In these circumstances, it would have been quite understandable if the young Vivekananda felt some trepidation before his overwhelmingly white and Christian audience. Filled with confidence in the teachings of Vedanta, however, he spoke to his listeners as an equal, beginning with the now famous words: “Sisters and brothers of America…”

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JEFFERY D. LONG is Professor of Religion and Asian Studies at the Elizabethtown College, USA. He completed his PhD in Philosophy of Religion at the University of Chicago in 2000. He is author of the books, Hinduism in America: A Convergence of Worlds and A Vision for Hinduism, Jainism: Introduction, the Historical Dictionary of Hinduism (first and second editions). In 2018, he received the Hindu American Foundation’s Dharma Seva Award for promoting accurate and sensitive portrayals of Hindu traditions in the American education system and media. He has presented in venues around the world, including three at the United Nations in 2019. He can be reached at longjd@etown.edu

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