THE MISSION OF THE VEDANTA : 1.

(On the occasion of his visit to Kumbakonam, the Swamiji was presented with the following address by the local Hindu community:)


A very small amount of religious work performed brings a large amount of result.

If this statement of the Gita wanted an illustration, I am finding every day the truth of that great saying in my humble life.

My work has been very insignificant indeed, but the kindness and the cordiality of welcome that have met me at every step of my journey from Colombo to this city are simply beyond all expectation.

Yet, at the same time, it is worthy of our traditions as Hindus, it is worthy of our race; for here we are, the Hindu race, whose vitality, whose life-principle, whose very soul, as it were, is in religion.

I have seen a little of the world, travelling among the races of the East and the West; and everywhere I find among nations one great ideal which forms the backbone, so to speak, of that race.

With some it is politics, with others it is social culture; others again may have intellectual culture and so on for their national background.

But this, our motherland, has religion and religion alone for its basis, for its backbone, for the bed-rock upon which the whole building of its life has been based.

Some of you may remember that in my reply to the kind address which the people of Madras sent over to me in America, I pointed out the fact that a peasant in India has, in many respects, a better religious education than many a gentleman in the West, and today, beyond all doubt, I myself am verifying my own words.

There was a time when I did feel rather discontented at the want of information among the masses of India and the lack of thirst among them for information, but now I understand it.

Where their interest lies, there they are more eager for information than the masses of any other race that I have seen or have travelled among.

Ask our peasants about the momentous political changes in Europe, the upheavals that are going on in European society — they do not know anything of them, nor do they care to know; but the peasants, even in Ceylon, detached from India in many ways, cut off from a living interest in India — I found the very peasants working in the fields there were already acquainted with the fact that there had been a Parliament of Religions in America, that an Indian Sannyasin had gone over there, and that he had had some success.

By Swami Vivekananda.

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