An erudite oration on religion and how it determines the ethical culture of the nation by Swami Vivekananda will be commemorated this week, 125 years after it was delivered at Kumbakonam.
To mark the quasquicentennial milestone, Ramakrishna Math in Thanjavur will install a stone inscription of Swami Vivekananda’s exhortation, ‘Arise, Awake and stop not until the goal is reached’, at Thanjavur railway station on February 3.
Vivekananda had arrived in Thanjavur while on his way to Madras from Ramnad and was accompanied by three other Swamis (Shivananda, Niranjananda and Sadananda) and some American friends. He eventually spent three days in Kumbakonam meeting the townsfolk and well-wishers before resuming his journey to Madras.
The line is taken from the speech delivered by the noted Hindu thinker and seer in Kumbakonam on February 3, 1897, after his return to India from World Parliament of Religions held in Chicago, USA, in September 1893.
“Whenever we have followed ideas from Swamiji’s speech, as a nation, we have succeeded. The inspiring phrase ‘stop not’ made us determined to gain our independence. We will be more successful if we make this effort ceaseless and constant in our life,” Swami Vimurthananda, Adhyakshya, Ramakrishna Math, Thanjavur, told The Hindu .
A learned exposition on the Hindu faith and the role of socio-political morality, the speech lays out a framework of tenets whose relevance seems undimmed by the ages. “If it ever becomes possible to bring the largest portion of humanity to one way of thinking in regard to religion, mark you, it must be always through principles and not through persons. No civilisation can grow unless fanatics, bloodshed, and brutality stop. No civilisation can begin to lift up its head until we look charitably upon one another; and the first step towards that much-needed charity is to look charitably and kindly upon the religious convictions of others,” said Swami Vivekananda in the Kumbakonam address.
The speech also reaches out to an India that was yoked to the British Raj, and poised on the threshold of self-determination. Quoting from the Katha Upanishad , he said, “Let us proclaim to every soul: Uttisthata Jagrata Prapya Varannibodhata — Arise, awake, and stop not till the goal is reached. Arise, awake! Awake from this hypnotism of weakness.Noneis really weak; the soul is infinite, omnipotent, and omniscient. Stand up, assert yourself, proclaim the God within you, do not deny Him! Too much of inactivity, too much of weakness, too much of hypnotism has been and is upon our race. O ye modern Hindus, de-hypnotise yourselves.”
This was to become a recurring motif in Vivekananda’s speeches and writings, and was seen as a clarion call for national reawakening.
