Hinduism

Hinduism is open source



We first had the wisdom of the Vedas. Then came the Vedanta period (end of the Vedas) and people relied on the Upanishads. Finally the Ramayan and Mahabharat became the most popular books of Hinduism. They had their own philosophies which steadily took forward the narrative as the centuries went by.

Animal slaughter existed in ancient Vedic times, but we adopted peaceful temple worship and vegetarianism, further endorsed by Buddhism and Jainism. Hinduism is not a static religion but the most dynamic religion in the world. After the success of the open course software movement, a lot of people realized that Hinduism too was open course.

Whether it's software or religion: The future is open source.

- See more at: http://www.pragyata.com/mag/8-reasons-why-hinduism-rocks-in-the-new-age-113#sthash.E7ktnB4B.dpuf


4. Hinduism is a huge believer in woman power





Gods and goddesses rule India in equal measure. If Ganesh Puja is the life of Mumbai, Kali Puja is the highlight of Kolkata. The river Ganga symbolizes the goddess and Vaishno Devi is a top pilgrimage centre in North India. Shakti is woman empowerment. Shakti is the power of the feminine divine which can be tapped by both men and women.



Says the Shaktisangama Tantra...



Woman is the creator of the universe,

The universe is her form,

Woman is the foundation of the world,

She is the true form of the body.



Very few traditions in the world talk of the feminine in such a fashion. In Hinduism, at the divine and cosmic level, there is nothing to distinguish the masculine and the feminine

- See more at: http://www.pragyata.com/mag/8-reasons-why-hinduism-rocks-in-the-new-age-113#sthash.E7ktnB4B.dpuf

Yog

PANCHAAMRITAM

PANCHAAMRITAM

ONE

Recently Pakistan staked claim on Basmati rice for Geographic Index. India rubbished the claim, stating that Basmati belongs to the soil of India. Incidentally, in his book 'In the Lap of the Himalayas: Holy Wanderings', Swami Akhandananda, one of the direct disciples of Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, records an observation of his. "At village Tapovanam, near Rishikesh, the rice variety cultivated has an aroma and so is known as Basmati. The locals say that a saint, pleased with the hospitality of the villagers, blessed that the rice grown in the place would be aromatic". Recently, Mexicans carried Basmati seed to their land and cultivated it there. The rice they got was a look alike of Basmati, but the aroma was absent. (Based on a report in VIJAYABHARATAM, January 22, 2016).
TWO
In a kind gesture, an NRI couple from the US, D Jyothi Reddy and Sammi Reddy, has arranged the marriage of an orphan girl with hearing and speaking impairment in Warangal (Telengana, Bharat) on December 6, 2015. The couple, performed the 'Kanyadanam' of the girl, Saraswati, at the marriage that took place at Mallikamba Manovikasa Kendram, Warangal. A police officer, V Kiran Kumar found the girl abandoned at Hanamkonda bus stand in 2004 and handed over her to the Kendram. Since then the orphanage is looking after the girl, who hails from Srikakulam district. A private company employee, Ch Narender, who is also deaf and mute, came forward to marry the girl. Learning this, Jyothi Reddy volunteered to organise the marriage bearing all expenses. The marriage ceremony was held in a grand manner as per Hindu tradition. Warangal (West) MLA D Vinay Bhasker and others blessed the newlywed couple. The parents of Narender, Ch Upender and Sushila, Kendram Founder B Ramaleela and others were present. (From THE HANS INDIA, December 7, 2015).
THREE


Samuel Evan Stokes, 21, an American, came to India with the intention of working at a home for lepers in the Simla hills. He faced a lot of opposition from his family because he was heir to the family's prosperous business of elevators. Incidentally, Stokes and Parish Elevator Company later merged with Otis Elevators. But young Stokes was determined and his family relented to let him follow his heart and Samuel landed in Bombay on February 26, 1904. Thanedar, a little hamlet 15 KMs from Narkanda, a Himalayan town (Himachal Pradesh, Bharat). 6 KMs from Thanedar at Kotgarh stands an old church. Stokes was sent here to recuperate from the heat of the Indian plains. With time on his hands he set about exploring the surrounding hills and Thanedar worked her charms on him and he found himself completely in love with the place. In a drastic step he decided that he wanted to spend the rest of his life here. Stokes planted in 1916 a few apple saplings in his Barobagh orchard in Thanedar. When they bore fruit, the apples were an instant hit. During his rest and recuperation days at the Kotgarh church, young Samuel came in contact with a lot of Sadhus on the Hindustan-Tibet road making their way to Kailash Mansarovar. While the priest of the church was finely robed and had three meals a day, the simplicity of those Sadhus perturbed him and set him thinking about the Hindu religion. Later on in his life he also studied the Bhagvad Gita in English and then in an endeavour to understand it, learned Sanskrit and studied it again in that language. In 1932, he became an Arya Samaji and changed his name to Satyanand Stokes. Paramjyoti Mandir, the temple he built in 1937 was to be his legacy to Thanedar. On its walls are verses from the Gita and the Upanishads. Satyanand Stokes died on May 14, 1946. (Based on a report by Shri Sanjeev Awasthi in HILL POST, March, 19, 2006. http://hillpost.in/2006/03)

FOUR
Even while passing 13 months in jail, Gurgaon-based engineer Amit Kumar Mishra (31) created a piece of software that is making Indian prisons go high-tech. Mishra was sent to prison in a false dowry death case in 2013 when he was in his late 20s. While in prison, Mishra made the most of his time by putting his skills to use and created a piece of software, Phoenix, which increases the efficiency of the prison management system and makes the lives of inmates and officials easier and more productive. In a letter dated September 17, 2015, addressed to all states and union territories, the Ministry of Home Affairs had recommended incorporation of prison management software, and Phoenix was mentioned in a list of suitable options along with three other pieces of software. His wife committed suicide by taking poison within two years of their marriage. Even before he could recover from the tragedy of losing someone he doted on, his in-laws slapped sections 304 B (dowry death), 498 A (dowry) and 34 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) on him. Once in, Mishra realised there were several other inmates who barely knew about the current status of their cases. With the help of Phoenix, kiosks that display the case records of an inmate from his thumb impression have been set up. Now, an inmate, with his thumb impression, can buy any product from the canteen and the money will be debited directly from his account. Mishra was acquitted of all charges in July 2014. By February 2015, he had set up his company Invader Technologies. His software has proved to be path-breaking for prison management and has been installed in all jails in Haryana. (Based on a report by Smt Sneha Agrawal in DAILY MAIL, December 17, 2015 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/indiahome/indianews/article-3364815). Idea: Shri. N.Sadagopan
FIVE



Shri Siddhi Nath Singh is RSS Kshetriya Sanghchalak or the regional head for Bihar and Jharkhand and the chairperson of RSS' social development wing, Rashtriya Seva Bharti. Singh, a resident of Jharkhand's electricity hub Patratu in Ramgarh district, has been imparting free skill training and creating livelihoods for the youth of hundreds of villages across the country at his firm Kalpataru. But what makes the engineer-turned-entrepreneur different from others is the devotion with which he remains involved in changing the lives of every youth in Hafua (Jharkhand, Bharat), with a population of approximately 1,000 people, around 70 km north of capital Ranchi. Some two decades back, a mere mention of Hafua used to alert the police and intelligence agencies. Majority of those involved in bank robberies and snatching incidents in Ramgarh and Ranchi were traced to this village. Children did not go to school and elders never worked in the fields even though most of them had vast tracts of land in their names. It was during one of his sojourns to the village, while researching on storage of rain water, that 68-year-old Singh came across a few parents who were worried about the future of their teenage children. Over the last 15 years, Singh has provided skill training to no less than 150 Hafua men, who are now working across India and in the Gulf, earning handsome salaries. Their children now go to schools and the living standard of their families has also improved. And in return they have nothing else, but, praise for Singh. "Hafua residents do not have any criminal case for the last 10 years. We are now earning with dignity and living with pride," said Zubair Ahmad, who has been working with the RSS leader's firm for the last 12 years. Lal Mohammad Ansari, a landlord and whose five sons have been Singh's students, said that he stands as an epitome of religious harmony at a time when some feel that the country has grown intolerant. (Based on a report by Shri Vijay Murty (Patratu, Jharkhand) in HINDUSTAN TIMES, January 8, 2016).


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Congress, who is intolerant?

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Begin forwarded message:

From: "Manmohan Vaidya " <mmohanngp@gmail.com>
Date: 5 December 2015 1:24:36 PM IST
To: <mmohanngp@gmail.com>
Subject: FW: Congress, who is intolerant?

 

 

From: S G Naravane [mailto:sgnaravane@yahoo.com]
Sent: 30 November 2015 18:04
To: jayantss66@gmail.com
Subject: Congress, who is intolerant?

 

http://www.vijayvaani.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?aid=3784R K Ohri30 Nov 2015

We are living in interesting times. A comical debate about the intolerance of Hindus, initiated by a cabal supported by the Congress Party, is raging across the country. A number of communalists, masquerading as secularists, have been railing against the Narendra Modi-led government, painting it as intolerant. Some Bollywood stars like Aamir Khan and Shahrukh Khan have joined the mob of protestors. Even well-known musician, AR Rahman, jumped into the flawed debate.

 

Worldwide, Hindus are known as a tolerant and pacifist community. Taking undue advantage of Hindu tolerance, the UPA government led by Ms Sonia Gandhi and Dr Manmohan Singh practiced blatant discrimination against them on several occasions during their decade-long rule. Yet no secular-communalist protested nor raised his/her voice against discrimination against the majority community.

 

To set the record straight, some notable instances of intolerance against Hindus in the decade long UPA regime may be recounted, in no particular order. 

 

On December 9, 2006, came Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's famously infamous statement that Muslims and minorities would have the first claim on the nation's resources, which virtually condemned the Hindu majority to the status of second class citizens. By some quirk, the statement was made on the birthday of UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi! 

 

In 2011, the then Union Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde announced that a Muslim IPS officer was being appointed as Director, Intelligence Bureau, which involved three competent IPS officers being superseded without justification. No secular busybody or shrill media anchor ever dared ask the Sonia Gandhi-Manmohan Singh dyarchy why the careers of V Rajagopal, RN Gupta and Yashovardhan Azad were sabotaged.

 

In 2013, a Lt. Governor was to be appointed in Delhi. An RTI inquiry by Subhash Agarwal revealed that a panel was proposed in a Home Ministry note on 5th October, 2012, viz., SY Quraishi, former Chief Election Commissioner; Salauddin Ahmed, former Chief Secretary of Rajasthan; Anwar Ahsan Ahmed, former Secretary, Border Management in the Ministry of Home Affairs; Shamim Banu, former Additional Chief Secretary, Karnataka; and GS Kang, former Chief Secretary of Bihar. 

 

Obviously, it was pre-decided that only a person from one community would be appointed as Lt. Governor of Delhi. Interestingly, one of the retired officers on the panel had faced a CBI investigation. Finally, the post went to Najeeb Jung, a former Vice Chancellor of Jamia Millia Islamia, who had organized a demonstration alleging that the Batla House shootout of September 19, 2008, was a fake encounter staged by Delhi Police against the Indian Mujahideen.

 

Ms Leela Samson was appointed chief of Kalakshetra, Sangeet Natak Academi and Censor Board by the UPA, possibly solely on account of proximity to Ms Sonia Gandhi. She had reputedly been a dance teacher to Priyanka Vadra. During her tenure, she worked zealously to erase the Hindu identity of Kalakshetra by removing Hindu symbols and icons like Lord Ganesha, besides getting embroiled in corruption (the cases are on-going). She cleared Aamir Khan's controversial movie 'PK' despite the film containing highly objectionable scenes casting slurs on the Hindu faith. As an aside, one may mention that 'pk' is the internet handle for Pakistan, just as 'in' is for India.

 

Discrimination against poorest Hindus 

 

By using the Sachar Committee's flawed and fabricated  findings, former Union Minister of Minorities Affairs, Salman Khursheed, deprived the unlettered daughters and sons of nearly 34 crore Hindus living below the poverty line, mostly in rural areas. The very conception of the committee was a grave constitutional impropriety. The task assigned to Justice Sachar had in 1992 been entrusted by Parliament to the National Minorities Commission by enacting a special law called The Minorities Commission Act, 1992. It assigned all responsibility for protection of the rights of minorities and ensuring their welfare to the Minorities Commission. Thus, Dr Manmohan Singh's act of constituting a High Level Committee in March 2005, by executive fiat, for one religious minority, was patently unconstitutional and bad in law. The worst aspect of the sinister move was that Justice Sachar, being well versed in law, did not advise the Prime Minister of this blatant violation of the Constitution.

 

For decades, a bogey has been propagated that Muslims are economically and educationally more disadvantaged than Hindus. This falsehood is used by the vote bank lobby to bestow disproportionate benefits and concessions, including nearly 20 million scholarships and concessional educational loans exclusively on Muslims and four other minorities. During Salman Khursheed's press conference on May 29, 2012, it was revealed that not a single scholarship was given to the daughter or son of the poorest Hindu. Nor were cheaper educational or entrepreneurial loans advanced to any Hindu poor, while funds worth several lakh crores were advanced to the children of five minorities (Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Parsis and Sikhs).

 

Religion-based strategy of discrimination

 

This strategy of religion-based discrimination followed the divisive vote bank policy enunciated in the Prime Minister's notorious "Muslims First" policy. It deprives crores of poor Hindus in rural India and urban jhuggies of any share in the 20 million scholarships awarded to five minorities, including four economically and educationally well placed communities (Christians, Parsis, Buddhists and Sikhs).

 

The data pertaining to infant and child mortality, degree of urbanization, life expectancy at birth, available in the public domain proves that Hindus, not Muslims, are the most disadvantaged religious group. Only in the matter of Literacy, Hindus with 65.1% literacy are marginally ahead of Muslims who average 59.1%. Yet, Justice Sachar did not have the courage to point out that the single factor responsible for lower Muslim literacy average was the lower ratio of literacy among Muslim women (50.1%), lower by 3.6% than the national average of female literacy at 53.7%. Justice Sachar also disregarded the diktats of Muslim religious leaders restricting education of girls beyond a certain age and insistence on the veil.

 

Plight of Hindus living below poverty line

 

Unfortunately, the most vocal Hindus, including spiritual gurus, tele-media analysts, self-anointed intellectuals and political leaders, belong to the prosperous or well-to-do middle class. They are remained indifferent to the pathetic economic condition of the poorest families, especially those trapped in terminally-ill rural areas. This allowed the children of 34-35 crore (340 million) poorest Hindu families to be denied a rightful share in 20 million scholarships in order to promote the 'exclusive development' of five minority communities. And this was done in the garb of 'inclusive development'! This ongoing discriminatory policy was launched by the then Prime Minister with great fanfare in June 2006, as part of the Prime Minister's New 15 Point Programme for Welfare of Minorities. 

 

Falsehood publicised in Sachar Report

 

Justice Sachar deliberately refused to consider the documented fact that according to the National Family Health Surveys Nos. 1 (1992-93) and 2 (1998-1999), Muslims were better placed than Hindus in four major human development indices, namely Infant Mortality, Child Mortality, degree of Urbanisation, and Life Expectancy at Birth. Despite admitting this important fact (pages 37-38), Sachar took recourse to suppressio veri, suggestio falsi by attributing it to the specious argument that it could be due to better child feeding practices prevalent among Muslims. Instead of candidly admitting that Muslims were better fed and had access to better medical care, he decided to weave the yarn of 'better child feeding' practices among Muslims.

 

Another instance of suppressio veri, suggestio falsi is the description of the plight of Muslim women (page 13, Chapter 2): "Everything beyond the walls of the ghetto is seen as unsafe and hostile – markets, roads, lanes and public transport, schools and hospitals, Police Stations and government offices." Can any Indian honestly believe that Muslim women are treated so shabbily in India? Many more instances of fudging facts and propagating falsehoods can be cited; they are omitted for want of space.

 

Rebuttals galore of Justice Sachar's Report

 

The first well-documented rebuttal of the flawed findings of Justice Sachar came on Sept. 2, 2006, when a paper was circulated by Prof. Sanjay Kumar of the Centre of the Study of Developing Studies, New Delhi, in a seminar at the Indian Institute of Public Administration. The research showed that there was hardly any difference in the economic and educational status of Hindus and Muslims. Prof Sanjay Kumar's research, based on a survey by the CSDS in 2004, showed that the proportion of 'the very poor' Indians was higher among Hindus (31%) than among Muslims (24%). 

 

Mysteriously, this important finding based on a survey was ignored by Justice Sachar despite a clear directive in the Prime Minister's Notification dated March 9, 2005 to the High Level Committee to "obtain relevant information from Departments /agencies of the Central & State Governments and also conduct an intensive literature survey to identify the published data, articles, and research on  relative social, economic and educational status of Muslims in India at the State, regional and district levels" to address problems faced by Muslims.

 

Prof. Sanjay Kumar's research paper highlighting these important findings was duly sent to Justice Sachar by our think tank, Patriots' Forum, with a formal request for an audience. Both were ignored.

 

The second rebuttal of Justice Sachar's findings came in October 2010 when the National Health Survey-3 (2005-2006) revealed a quantum jump of 5.4 years (from 62.6 years) in the life expectancy of Muslims within a short span of 7 years, i.e., between 1998 and 2005. The inordinate delay in releasing these findings helped facilitate the implementation of Sachar Committee's recommendations favouring the Muslim community. 

 

The third rebuttal of Justice Sachar's facts was made by Rajesh Shukla, Senior Fellow, National Council of Applied Economic Research, in the Economic Times, New Delhi, on April 5, 2007. Dr Shukla reconfirmed that there was hardly any difference in the economic status of Hindus and Muslims. His survey also disclosed that the Sikh community were 'the Sardars in Prosperity,' with Christians close behind them.

 

The fourth rebuttal of Justice Sachar's findings came on February 24, 2011, in the reply to a Parliament Question answered by Vincent H. Pala, Minister of State for Minorities, in the Lok Sabha, admitting that the Centre had no data pertaining to the number of persons living below the poverty line according to religious denomination. If as late as the year 2011, the government had no data about the number of Muslims and Hindus living below the poverty line, why were the fudged findings of Justice Sachar accepted and implemented several years ago?

 

The fifth demolition of the Sachar Committee came on October 24-25, 2011, when in a seminar jointly organized by the United Nations Development Programme and India's Planning Commission, at Claridge's Hotel, two scholars from Jawaharlal Nehru University (Sukhdeo Thorat and Amaresh Pandey) presented a research paper reconfirming that there had been far greater poverty reduction among Muslims than among Hindus  between 2004-2005 to 2009-2010.

 

Despite such research-based rebuttals of the Sachar Report, the discrimination against the poorest Hindu children living below the poverty line continues. According to a half page advertisement published in The Pioneer, New Delhi, on Feb. 15, 2014, "over Rs. 1,95,000 crore of bank credit was showered on 5 minorities". In contrast, not one rupee of bank credit reached the 34 crore Hindus living below the poverty line. The former Prime Minister owes the nation an explanation for this sad state of affairs caused by his government during a decade in office.

 

The author is a retired Inspector General of Police, Arunachal Pradesh

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Rangoli

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Mukti mohmad sayid on rss

Vetanta footprints in distant America

 

http://www.thestatesman.com/news/opinion/vedanta-footprints-in-distant-america/99481.htmlAsoke Basu27 October, 2015

There is a saying among early settlers in North America that an idea is known by the footprints it leaves behind. By the early twentieth century, Americans had discovered the eternal footprints of Vedanta. The eminent Austrian philosopher Moriz Winternitz surmised that 'if we wish to understand the beginnings of our own (Western) culture…, we must go back to India, where the oldest literature of an Indo-European people is preserved'.

At the turn of the twentieth century, the East's messenger of Vedanta was Swami Vivekananda, who journeyed in 1893 from India to America to attend the first Parliament of the World Religions, which was held in the bustling manufacturing hub of Chicago. Vivekananda was the leading disciple of Sri Ramakrishna, who practiced an extraordinary religious ecumenism. Vivekananda once recalled about his teacher: 'He was not what one might call a very learned man…, but a very bold one, deeply imbued with the spirit of Vedanta philosophy, (who) obtained a wonderful insight into the spiritual world…. He was the living commentary on the Vedas and their aim'.

The earliest Vedic canon, the Rig-Veda (1500–1200 BCE), is an extant collection of 1,028 hymns and 10,600 verses, organized into ten books (Mandalas). It is both universal and eternal, in that the hymns boldly affirm that 'Truth is one, (although) wise men (and women) call it by various names'. The sages remind us that truth is complex and that no single state or society can lay claim to 'truth' that is based on a single-minded moral guardianship over freedom, liberty, and justice.

Despite Vivekananda's declining health, he returned to the United States in 1899. During his stay, as in earlier years, he shied away from the two extremes of Hindu orthodoxy and missionary Christianity. Unlike dogmatism or conversion, the modern sage from the East drew many Americans to the Vedanta philosophy by quintessentially decoding the moral language of the Vedic texts into four aspects of yoga: karma-yoga (action); bhakti-yoga (devotion); raja-yoga (stillness of mind); and jnana-yoga (knowledge of the divine).

Soon, centres were being officially recognized by the Ramakrishna Math's head office in Belur Math and incorporated across America. In 1894, the first Vedanta center of worship, the Vedanta Society of New York, opened its doors to the community at 34 West 71st Street, where it is still located. Only six years later, when Vivekananda visited San Francisco in 1900, his northern California devotees chartered the Northern California Vedanta Society. In 1910, the Ramakrishna Vedanta Society opened a centre in Boston, Massachusetts. In 1925, the Society opened a center in Portland, Oregon.

Between 1928 and 1939, the Vedanta centres in America nearly doubled in number. In 1928, the Society opened a centre in Providence, Rhode Island. In 1930, it added a centre in Chicago, Illinois, where Swami Vivekananda delivered a memorable speech to the congress. In that same year, the society opened a centre in Los Angeles, California. Then, in 1933, the Society opened a second centre in New York City, this one at 17 East 94th Street.

In 1938, Swami Satprakashananda started the Vedanta Society of St. Louis, Missouri. Also during that year, the Society opened the centre of the Vedanta Society of Western Washington, in Seattle. In 1939, the Society opened a centre at the Vedanta Society of Berkeley, California. In 1953, the Society opened a centre at the Vedanta Society of Sacramento, California. Most recently, in 2005, the Society opened a centre at the Vedanta Center of St. Petersburg, St. Petersburg, Florida.

By the early twentieth century, outstanding scholars, both born in America and immigrants from Europe, became active members of local Vedanta centres. For example, two prominent faculty members at Harvard College, the Russian émigré Professor Pitrim Sorokin, head of the department of sociology, and Dr. Gordon Allport, a professor of psychology, were members of the Boston centre. Dr. Allport presented the book, 'Hindu Psychology, Its Meaning for the West', authored by Swami Akhilananda to the public of the West. Professor Joseph Campbell, who was a faculty member in the department of religion at Sarah Lawrence College, collaborated with Swami Nikhilananda, who founded the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda centre in New York. In the Saint Louis centre, Dr. Houston Smith, also a professor of religion was closely associated with Swami Satprakashananda. Three British intellectuals, Gerald Heard, Aldous Huxley, and Christopher Isherwood, were members of the centre in Southern California, and actively collaborated with its chief monk, Swami Prabhavananda, in advancing the Vedanta message.

But why have Americans been drawn to the Vedanta philosophy? Starting with the spellbound audience attending the first congress, as well as those individuals who organized the thirteen fully accredited centres stretching across America, this basic question must be asked. What soulful string did Vivekananda pull that made Americans join the Vedanta order?

Vivekananda may not have fashioned a new faith; nonetheless, the Vedic philosophy that he advocated is timeless, positing that each of us has a divine capacity and natural desire to know God. In America, Vivekananda combined spiritual humanism with common pragmatism. With super-sharp intelligence, the itinerant monk reminded everyone that he belonged 'to a religion which has taught the world both tolerance and universal acceptance'. He highlighted the liberal values of the sacred texts of all the world's religions. This monk strongly believed that social inequality grows out of the narrow sectarianism that divides humanity. Vivekananda repeated in public speeches and private discussions that human liberty can be searched for and located, not in the material artifacts of history, but in the pristine self-realization that the soul is immortal and divine. Birth and death are mere events in time and space.

Vivekananda had a vigorous and dramatic style of delivery as he contrasted human beings' longing for truth with greed. Much like the Western orchestral symphony (think Brahms), almost always, Vivekananda was deliberative in that he contrasted human beings' inner aspiration to truth to the rising capitalist theology. The lecture themes sought to close the gap between the inner-directed sacred Self and the other-directed secular self. He cautioned the world against the ethical costs of raked modernity.

In this vital sense, Vivekananda's presentations to the audience had a song-like quality. His self-styled timbrel character represented the world as a continuous unsliced reality. Judging from the follow-up questions that were thrown at him by skeptical members of the audience, Vivekananda's direct, blunt, but always poised replies affirmed the eternal presence of the ancient coda of truth. America clearly witnessed that Vivekananda's goal was not an imaginative evocation, but a call to follow the footprints that would lead them to the hymnal road to liberation.

The writer is an emeritus professor of sociology.

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