The  Tourism Department of the Government of India, a couple of years back, in an effort to create a brand identity for promoting and marketing India as a fascinating and must see destination, launched a contest inviting participants to write a brand statement that best captures the spirit of our country.

If Thailand is “Amazing” and Malaysia is “Truly Asia”, the contest went on to ask  “What is India?”.  If one attempts to contain the spirit of India in such few words, then one must follow what Swami Vivekananda said, way back in 1897, at Madras, describing our country as “The Eternal India”.

After his return from his first visit to the West, Swami Vivekananda delivered a series of lectures at Colombo in January, 1897, entitled, “India, the Holy Land” and “The Vedanta Philosophy”. Thereafter, he came to Madras where in his first lecture, he said,

“My India, arise. Where is your vital source? In your Immortal Soul…..

“Each nation, like each individual, has one theme in this life, which is its centre, the principal note around which other notes comes to form the harmony… If any one nation attempts to throw off its national vitality, the direction, which has become its own through the transmission of centuries, that nation dies… In one nation political power is its vitality, as in England. Artistic life in another and so on. In India, religious life forms the centre, the keynote of the whole music of national life….”

What then is the spirit of India. What is this new faith, this word that the world is awaiting?

“The other great idea that the world wants from us today – more perhaps the lower classes than the higher, more the uneducated than the educated, more the weak than the strong – is that eternal grand idea of the spiritual oneness of the whole universe. The only Infinite Reality that exists in you and in all, in the self, in the soul.  The infinite oneness of the Soul is the eternal sanction of all morality, that you and I are not only brothers. But that you and I are really one… Europe wants it today just as much as our downtrodden races do, and this great principle is even now unconsciously forming the basis of all the latest social and political aspirations that are coming up in England, in Germany, in France and in America.”

Before his departure for the West in 1893, Vivekananda had extensively travelled throughout the length and breadth of India, trying to discover her true spirit.  As Romain Rolland in his “The Life of Vivekananda” writes: “ From North to South, the ancient land of India was full of gods; yet the unbroken chain of their countless arms formed only one God.  He (Vivekananda) realized their unity of flesh and spirit. He realized it also in communion with the living of all castes and all outside caste.”

Vivekananda had not only known India, he was “verily our great national hero”, as Sister Nivedita proclaimed shortly after the passing way of Swamiji.  Nivedita said, “Vivekananda saw before him a great Indian nationality, young, vigorous, fully the equal of any nationality on the face of the earth.”

In August 1898, Vivekananda had published a beautiful poem, “To the Awakened India”, which is a real manifesto of active energy and realized faith:

“Awake, arise and dream no more!
This is the land of dreams, where Karma
Weaves unthreaded garlands with our thoughts.
Of flowers sweet or noxious – and none
Has root or stem, being born in naught, which
The softest breath of Truth drives back to
Primal nothingness. Be bold, and face
The Truth! Be one with it! Let visions cease.
Or, if you cannot, dream but truer dreams,
Which are Eternal Love and Service Free.”

Before Vivekananda, the day seemed to have dawned for the “great India” of old to resume its ancient mission; that of evangelizing the earth.   But unlike “God’s chosen peoples’ in the past, who have interpreted their duty in the narrow sense of spiritual imperialism,   Vivekananda,   the  Vedantic missionary, chose to respect the natural faith of each individual.   It was his desire to re-awaken the Spirit in man, “to guide individuals and nations to the conquest of their inner kingdom, by their own ways which are best suited to them, by the means corresponding best to the needs from which they suffer most.

Vivekananda himself was the embodied unity of a nation containing a hundred different nations, divided and sub-divided into castes and sub-castes. His claim to greatness lies in the fact that he not only proved its unity by reason, but stamped it upon the heart of India in flashes of illumination. It may justly be said that India’s destiny was changed by him, and that his teachings re-echoed throughout humanity.

It was Vivekananda who made the world find itself face to face with an awakened India.  This new India is impregnated with the soul of Sri Ramakrishna.   The twin stars of Paramhansa and Vivekananda who translated his thoughts into actions, dominates and guides her present destinies.