Save the Vivekananda Ashram – Sitpah Selvaratnam

12 January 2015 was the 152nd birthday of Swami Vivekananda. In India, this day is declared and celebrated annually as National Youth Day in recognition of Swami Vivekananda’s inspiration towards a new age of unity.

Here at the Vivekananda Ashrama, Brickfields, in the midst of efforts to Save the Vivekananda Ashrama Brickfields, a heartwarming, soul stirring public show of solidarity was displayed and experienced from 11am to 11pm on 11 January 2015.

On short notice, 4 days to be precise, a sterling line-up of cultural performance, spiritual discourses and of patriotic reflections all came together as an expression of the Malaysian communities’ voice of gratitude to the founding fathers, who in 1895 secured the Vivekananda Ashrama land and soon thereafter constructed this elegant heritage site.

As the doors of the Vivekananda Ashrama, Brickfields swung open to the public for the first time in decades, the public’s thirst to savour the spirit of the past and values held sacred, led to a continuous stream of people flowing into the gardens and hall of the Vivekananda Ashrama, Brickfields.

Time seemed enlarged. People relaxed and mingled, strolling into the hall for performances and out onto the lawn to enjoy the serenity of the Vivekananda Ashrama.

As I reflected on the unity and peace that the occasion inspired, beginning with the harmony the Trustees’ of the Ashram exhibited by yielding to the plea of the Save the Vivekananda Ashrama Brickfields Action Committee to have the Vivekananda Ashrama opened for the 152nd year celebration, I sought out and read the much acclaimed speech of Swami Vivekananda in Chicago in 1893 at the World Parliament of Religions.

Swami Vivekananda was only 30 years of age then, but his words of wisdom are most relevant today in the midst of social, racial and religious tensions; not only in Malaysia but the world over.

Perhaps we can learn a thing or two from just Swami Vivekananda’s Opening and Concluding Speeches at Chicago in September 1893; reproduced below. His was a message of tolerance and universal acceptance. A message that in all sects there are great people of exalted character, that every religion seeks to help, assimilate and to bring peace and harmony, not to fight, destroy or cause dissention.

So, let the great exalted people of every sect stand and speak up now, to sound the death – knell of all fanaticism.

(i) “I will quote to you, brethren, a few lines from a hymn which I remember to have repeated from my earliest boyhood, which is everyday repeated by millions of human beings, “As the different streams having their sources in different places all mingle their water in the sea, so, O Lord, the different paths, which men take through different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee.”

Sectarianism, bigotry, and its horrible descendant, fanaticism, have long possessed this beautiful earth. They have filled the earth with violence, drenched it often and often with human blood, destroyed civilization and sent whole nations to despair.

Had it not been for these horrible demons, human society would be far more advanced than it is now. But their time is come, and I fervently hope that the bell that tolled this morning in honour of this convention may be the death-knell of all fanaticism, of all persecutions with the sword or with the pen, and of all uncharitable feeling between persons wending their way to the same goal.”

Response to welcome

(ii) “Much has been said of the common ground of religious unity. I am not going just now to venture my own theory. But if anyone here hopes that this unity will come by the triumph of any one of the religions and the destruction of the other, to him I say, “Brother, yours is an impossible hope.”

Do I wish that the Christian would become Hindu? God forbid. Do I wish that the Hindu or Buddhist would become Christian? God forbid.

The seed is put in the ground, and earth and air and water are placed around it. Does the seed become the earth, or the air, or the water? No. It becomes a plant, it develops after the law of its own growth, assimilates the air, the earth, and the water, converts them into plant substance, and grows into a plant.

Similar is the case with religion... If the Parliament of Religions has shown anything to the world it is this: It has proved to the world that holiness, purity and charity are not the exclusive possessions of any church in the world, and that every system has produced men and women of the most exalted character.

In the face of this evidence, if anybody dreams of the exclusive survival of his own religion and the destruction of the others, I pity him from the bottom of my heart, and point out to him that upon the banner of every religion will soon be written, in spite of resistance: “Help and not Fight,” “Assimilation and not Destruction,” and "Harmony and Peace and not Dissension."