The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda/Volume 3/Reports in American Newspapers/Hindu Civilisation
HINDU CIVILISATION
[Although the lecture at Streator on October 9 was well attended, the
Streator Daily Free Press of October 9 ran the following somewhat dreary
review:]
The lecture of this celebrated Hindoo at the Opera House, Saturday night,
was very interesting. By comparative philology, he sought to establish the
long admitted relationship between the Aryan races and their descendants in
the new world. He mildly defended the caste system of India which keeps
three-fourths of the people in utter and humiliating subjection, and boasted
that the India of today was the same India that had watched for centuries
the meteoric nations of the world flash across the horizon and sink into
oblivion. In common with the people, he loves the past. He lives not for
self, but for God. In his country a premium is placed on beggary and tramps,
though not so distinguished in his lecture. When the meal is prepared, they
wait for some man to come along who is first served, then the animals, the
servants, the man of the house and lastly the woman of the household. Boys
are taken at 10 years of age and are kept by professors for a period of ten
to twenty years, educated and sent forth to resume their former occupations
or to engage in a life of endless wandering, preaching, and praying, taking
along only that which is given them to eat and wear, but never touching
money. Vivekananda is of the latter class. Men approaching old age withdraw
from the world, and after a period of study and prayer, when they feel
themselves sanctified, they also go forward spreading the gospel. He
observed that leisure was necessary for intellectual development and scored
Americans for not educating the Indians whom Columbus found in a state of
savagery. In this he exhibited a lack of knowledge of conditions. His talk
was lamentably short and much was left unsaid of seeming greater importance
than much that was said. [1]
- Notes
- ↑ It is clear from the above report that the American Press, for one reason or another, did not always give Swamiji an enthusiastic reception.