Wednesday, May 8, 2019

Reforms Based on Vedanta Alone

There is infinite power of development in everything; that is my belief. One atom has the power of the whole universe at its back. 
All along, in the history of the Hindu race, there never was any attempt at destruction, only construction. 
One sect wanted to destroy, and they were thrown out of India: They were the Buddhists. We have had a host of reformers -- Shankara, Ramanuja, Madhva, and Chaitanya.
These were great reformers, who always were constructive and built according to the circumstances of their time. 

This is our peculiar method of work. All the modern reformers take to European destructive reformation, which will never do good to anyone and never did. Only once was a modern reformer mostly constructive, and that one was Raja Ram Mohan Roy. 
The progress of the Hindu race has been towards the realisation of the Vedantic ideals. 
All history of Indian life is the struggle for the realisation of the ideal of the Vedanta through good or bad fortune. 

Whenever there was any reforming sect or religion which rejected the Vedantic ideal, it was smashed into nothing 

            - Swami Vivekananda, 
              Interview in ‘The Hindu’ Madras (February 1897)


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