Brahmachari (bachelor) and Sannyasin (ascetic)
are two entirely different things.
Swami Vivekananda did not receive sannyasa deeksha (initiation into asceticism) from anyone.
Instead, his guru, Sri Rama Krishna Paramahamsa, gave him saffron robes and instructed him to live a life of renunciation. As such, he was not a sannyasin but a brahmachari dressed in saffron, similar to later day RSS pracharaks though the latter don’t wear ochre robes.
Additionally, Swami Vivekananda was a Freemason.
He joined the Anchor and Hope Lodge in 1884 and became a Master Mason within three months. During tough times in Chicago in 1894, a fellow Freemason provided letters of introduction to other Freemasons there, ensuring Swami Vivekananda was treated kindly.
In his speech at the first World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893, Swami Vivekananda declared, “We believe not only in universal toleration, but we accept all religions as true.”
This idea shaped the Ramakrishna Mission, which he founded. Swami Vivekananda and his Ramakrishna Mission focused on presenting themselves as “universal” rather than emphasising their Hindu roots, a stance that reflects a form of self-denial.
This represents a negation of Hindu identity in favour of an elusive “universal” or “global” perspective.
Unsurprisingly, the Ramakrishna Mission argued for a non-Hindu identity and sought minority status by claiming it upheld the equal truth of all religions and equal respect for all faiths.
Hindu texts emphasise the primacy of Vedic wisdom and rituals within their own framework, rather than addressing or validating other religions such as Christianity, Islam, or Buddhism as equally true.
The Hindu Pluralistic Perspective prioritises a shared essence beneath varied traditions rather than endorsing other religions.
How could Swami Vivekananda overlook the core principle that Hindu tolerance stems from the belief that truth can be reached via different routes—though not all are equally valid and necessarily lead to truth—and crucially excludes tolerance of the intolerant?
He didn’t overlook it.
Instead, he intentionally reframed #HinduTolerance as “universal toleration” to appeal to his Christian hosts and audience and advance his Pseudo-Hindutva agenda.
By dubiously asserting that Hindu accepts “all religions as true,” he set the stage for disarming the intellectual defence and undermining the spiritual integrity of Santana Dharma.
In the context of inter-religious ‘dialogues’ arranged by the Church, Sita Ram Goel in his brilliant critique ‘History of Hindu-Christian Encounters’ listed its three sinister purposes namely:
1. “Hindus who participate in it recognize explicitly or implicitly that Christianity is a religion and that those who are out to spread it have a legitimate place in this country.
2. “The second purpose of ‘dialogue’ is to search for and locate segments of Hindu spiritual tradition which sound or can be made to sound similar to some Christian tradition. A ‘common ground’ between Hindu Dharma and Christianity can then be proclaimed and used for conveying Christianity in Hindu attire.
3. “The third purpose is to probe for points of resistance which Hindu mind may harbour vis-a-vis Jesus Christ, the Christian message and the Christian missions so that mission strategy can be suitably revised for overcoming the resistance.”
And Swami Vivekananda fitted their bill, as much of what he said at the first World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893 was Pseudo-Hindutva garbage.
The fact that he was elevated to the status of a cult figure back home in India immediately after his 1893 Chicago speech suggests huge Christian patronage.
Why would the Church promote a genuine Hindu defender?
That is not the end of Swami Vivekananda’s Pseudo-Hindutva story. I
In a letter dated June 10, 1898, to Mohammed Sarfaraz Husain of Nainital, Swami Vivekananda wrote,
“……. yet practical Advaitism, which looks upon and behaves to all mankind as one’s own soul, was never developed among the Hindus universally.
On the other hand, my experience is that if ever any religion approached to this equality in an appreciable manner, it is Islam and Islam alone.
Therefore I am firmly persuaded that without the help of practical Islam, theories of Vedantism, however fine and wonderful they may be, are entirely valueless to the vast mass of mankind.
For our own motherland a junction of the two great systems, Hinduism and Islam – Vedanta brain and Islam body – is the only hope.”
Everyone should read this letter to understand that Swami Vivekananda was the forerunner of #Modern, #Westernised, #Globetrotting, #Secularised #HinduGurus who distort and #Commercialise Hindu thoughts and traditions.
Did Vinayak Damodar Savarkar’s focus on Hindu unity draw inspiration from Swami Vivekananda’s suggestion to borrow the ABrahamic concept of a strong body-politic to rebuild a robust Hindu nation?
Unlike Chandranath Basu, both Vivekananda and Savarkar tried to force the square peg of Hindutva into the round hole of Abrahamic prophetic monotheism. This is impossible without reshaping—and thus Abrahamising—Sanatana Dharma, which would effectively destroy it.
Koenraad Elst, @ElstKoenraad, in a blog post of August 17, 2013, aptly described this Harmful Hindu Tendency:
“…. a psychology of self-repudiation which is fairly widespread in the anglicized segment of Hindu society, stretching from actual repudiation of Hinduism to the distortive reformulation of Hinduism itself after the model of better-reputed religions.
In a typical symptom of the colonial psychology, many Hindus see themselves through the eyes of their once-dominant enemies, so that catechism-type books on Hinduism explain Hinduism in Christian terms, e.g., by presenting many a Hindu saint as ‘a Christ-like figure’, modern translations of Hindu scriptures are often distorted in order to satisfy non-Hindu requirements such as monotheism.
This can take quite gross forms in the Veda translations of the Arya Samaj, where entire sentences are inserted in order to twist the meaning in the required theological direction.
The eagerness to extol all rival religions and to be unsatisfied with just being Hindu is one more symptom of the contempt in which Hinduism has been held for centuries, and which numerous Hindus have interiorized.”
Living in denial is another common problem among Hindus, especially since the medieval and modern eras. It is a flawed coping mechanism where individuals or communities refuse to face harsh realities, often to avoid stress or anxiety. While this offers short-term relief, it causes lasting harm.
Ask any Hindu who survived the horrors of Partition or the genocide in Kashmir or religious persecution elsewhere—they often avoid discussing it.
They don’t want to revisit the pain, leaving even their children unaware of these events.
Modern Hindu Gurus and Leaders often behave worse, ignoring external threats to Hindus and Hindu religion, and instead urging victims to be kind to their aggressors.
They misinterpret the doctrine of Karma to instil false guilt in the persecuted Hindus.
As a result, modern Hindu society has erased its collective memory of the genocidal persecution and atrocities it endured.
In the absence of institutionalised memory it ends up forgetting its heroes and even honouring its tormentors.
In ancient times, this was not the case.
Hindus documented their struggles in the form of Puranas, Itihasas, dramas, and folklore. These stories were shared widely including through storytellers, balladeers, plays, and skits, ensuring the community remembered its trials and learned how to face threats. The Ramayana, Mahabharata, Bhagavatam, etc recount ancient Hindus’ challenges and solutions—stories still familiar today.
In contrast, few Hindus today know what happened during the medieval or modern periods.
Gandhi’s three monkeys symbolises this blackout of truth of genocidal persecution of Hindus since medieval period.
Compounding this problem of living in denial, centuries of dhimmified living under the Islamic and Christian foreign rule created a pandemic among most Hindus and their Gurus.
That they claim to know more about Islam and Christianity than Muslims or Christians themselves.
Ramakrishna Paramahamsa reportedly made such a claim, and his disciple Swami Vivekananda, a Freemason, absorbed this mindset.
By such fantastic claims and self-induced ignorance they transpose Hindu Inclusiveness & Tolerance onto the doctrinally intolerant ABrahamic Religions.
This leads to the flawed idea that, “all religions are same or true”.
It is not that they do it with any malice.
It stems from laziness—not reading Islamic or Christian texts critically or from a Hindu perspective.
Even the few Hindus who study these texts rarely analyze them objectively. Instead, they cherry-pick vague verses to validate the otherwise anti-Hindu doctrines, preaching them to naive Hindus.
Meanwhile, Mullahs and Missionaries critically study Hindu Texts to discredit them.
Modern Hindus also cling to a naive belief in ‘universal human goodness,’ unable to grasp how intolerant doctrines corrupt and destroy that goodness.
The claim that “all religions are same or true” intellectually numbs and spiritually weakens Hindus, blinding them to existential threats from those very religions.
They even excuse and self-justify anti-Hindu violence as misinterpretations of the Quran or Bible by “misguided” followers, when in fact, Muslims and Christians often follow their texts truthfully.
Christians and Muslims mock this ignorance and self-deception.
It must be credited to Swami Vivekananda that, while brilliantly presenting himself as a Great Hindu Champion, he actually embodied and promoted all the aforementioned modern Hindu Ailments, and more.
#PseudoHindutva