Cosmic Love and Human Apathy: Swami Vivekananda’s Restatement of Religion

The interesting work explores the message of Vivekananda to show how it is different from that of his master, Sri Ramakrishna Paramhans. It examines how Vivekananda, contrary to Ramakrishna, rejected Kali worship and Ramakrishna’s longing ecstasy for god and his simulation of Radha’s love for Krishna as weeping and moaning excesses. Instead, he recommended beef, physical strength and awakening of the youth, and the Bhagavad Gita as the answer to India’s problems. The essays deal with Vivekananda’s perception of Hinduism foregrounding the Vedic-Vedantic discourse in the context of Hindu self-images. They stress the importance of the West in his vision of Hinduism. Importantly, they point out that his Hinduism, his ‘religion of India’, meant necessarily marginalisation of other religions and religious thought nonconforming to it.