A monk and a heartened disciple of Ramakrishna, Swami Vivekanand has been an influential personality who inspired by millions of people worldwide. His morals and magnetic aura are being celebrated even after a century of his demise. Born on 12th January 1863, Swami Vivekananda was a spiritual thinker who was very vocal about the importance of youth in the process of nation-building. Swami Vivekananda had incredible understanding and knowledge of philosophy, religion, literature, Vedas, Puranas and Upanishads. He decided to take his ideals and imprint them on a larger scale by addressing the youth of the country and empower them to fight against the British Raj in the late 19th century. His weapons in this battle with the Britishers were education and peace. Furthermore, he backed every single word that he uttered with intensive research and thorough knowledge of the subject. In order to honour his vision and motivate youth to act on it, National Youth Day is celebrated o 12th January across the country. Here are some little known facts about the great monk:
In 1887, Vivekananda was walking with Swami Premananda on the streets of Varanasi, when a group of monkeys chased them. The two sanyasins ran for their lives. Suddenly, an old sanyasin shouted: Stop, stand up against the animals. Both the sanyasins stopped in their tracks, and the pack of monkeys also stopped eyeing both of them. Vivekananda later narrated this in New York. His advice was: “Always stand up to adversities. Face obstacles with courage. If we want to attain salvation, we have to face up to nature, we can’t run away from nature. If we want to remove fear, obstacles and ignorance, we have to declare war against them.”
The great figure who toured America and England and was known for his brilliant eloquence scored only a 47% at the university entrance level examination, a 46% in the FA (later this exam became Intermediate Arts or IA), and 56% in his BA exam.
Taking advantage of his penury, many well-to-do ladies who were enamoured of him tried to woo him. He preferred to starve than fall for such temptations. To one such lady, he said, “Shun these worthless desires and call upon God.”
Though Vivekananda used to respect and worship women, entry for them was strictly prohibited in his monastery. Once when Swamiji was ill his disciples fetched his mother. Seeing his mother he shouted, “Why did you allow a woman to come in? I was the one who made the rule and it is for me that the rule is being broken.”
After the death of his paternal uncle Taraknath, his wife Gyanadasundari ousted Vivekananda’s family from their ancestral house and filed a suit in the court. Vivekananda fights the various litigation suits for 14 years and on the last Saturday of his life on 28 June 1902 he puts an end to the court case after paying some financial compensation.
Swamiji used to borrow books from the library and return it the next day. The librarian doubted whether he really read the books or not. So the librarian tested him by asking questions from a random page of the books. Swamiji answered them correctly and also quoted lines from the same page.
After his father’s death, the family was reduced to poverty. On many mornings Vivekananda would tell his mother that he had lunch invitations and he would go out so the others would get a larger share. He writes, “On such days, I had very little to eat, sometimes nothing at all. I was too proud to tell anyone…”
Vivekananda’s tireless service took a toll to his physical body. His words of wisdom to his disciples were “Learn from my experiences. Don’t be so hard on your body and ruin your health. I have harmed mine. I have tortured it severely, and what has been the result? My body has become ruined during the best years of my life! And I am still paying for it.”
‘The Monk as Man’ by well-known Bengali author Shankar states that Swamiji suffered from 31 ailments. Insomnia, migraine, malaria, diabetes, indigestion, bloodshot eyes, asthma, liver and kidney disease are some of the ailments.
Swami Vivekananda predicted that he would not live beyond 40 years. He died on July 4, 1902, at the age of 39 years.
