On 26th and 27th November, 2013, the Institute held a Commemorative Seminar to mark the 150th Birth Anniversary of Swami Vivekananda. The proceedings on this seminar could not be published due to various vagaries like the failure of the then Director to hold election and subsequent take over of the Institute by the Department of Higher Education, Govt. of West Bengal and appointment of the D.P.I. Dr Nimai Chandra Saha as the Administrator. He was on the right track but the general election of the Institute became due and I was duly elected as the new Director. The mantle of publishing it has now fallen upon me and it is shortly going to be published under my aegis.
We are fortunate to have Swami Atmapriyananda's keynote address on Swami Vevekananda's global vision. He is noted as an expopent of Vivekananda's Vedantic idea of civilization. The book begins with this learned article. Then follows Sunetra Mitra's article on "Indian society in the eyes of the Paribrajak". The readers will like to supplement it by Shankariprasad Basu's Vivekananda and Samakalin Bharatbarsha. Madhumala Sengupta deals with Vivekananda's idea on "Women's Education". As a Professor of Education in Calcutta University, she has been the fittest person on the subject. Arunima Roy Chowdhury comes out next on "Complete Empowerment of Women" as seen by Vivekananda. This is a supplementary to the previous article by Palas Mondal who tries to assess Vivekananda's link with Bengal Revolutionaries. Sister Nivedita was the main link but Vivekananda's stress on physical culture corroborates it. Then comes the unique article by Sumit Mukerji on some prophetic utterances by Swami Vivekananda with an attempt to prove their prophetic nature. Nirban Basu tries to stress Vivekananda's link with the Indian Left. This is generally trumped up by the Left historians through the possible co-sharing of ideas of Vivekananda by his brother Bhupendranath. The readers will judge how far this is tenable or tenuous. This is hammered further by Pratyaya Dutta who discovers Socialism in Swamiji's economic ideas. It is well known that Swamiji had more social ideas than economic as embodied in the Ramakrishna order.
Maitreyi Sengupta tries to view Vivekananda as the Leader-Manager. Certainly, Swamiji was the leader of the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Movement and founder of the Ramakrishna order.
Goutam Mukhopadhyay takes a different route to assess Swamiji's thoughts on music which should be interesting. Amalendu Chakraborty pays his tribute to Swamiji by recalling his ideas on Vedanta. The emphasis should have been on practical vedanta which was nothing else but universal humanism and a call to serve mankind as can be found in his Chicago lecture. The next two articles by Abhijit Dutta and Amit Dey are on "Vivekananda and Christianity and "Vivekananda and Islam". They have done justice to their topics. Jahar Sen follows next with an assessment of Swamiji's message in a post-religious world. It is for the readers to judge whether the world has really become post-religious or not. Swami Suparnananda, a practising economist legitimately writes on the economic thoughts of Swami Vivekananda mainly his thoughts on mass uplift. Srimanti Chowdhury highlights the literary assests of Vivekananda's travel literature particularly his perception of beauty. Sumanta Niyogi takes up the issue of religion as an agent of change as reflected in Swamiji's life and work. Similarly Chittabrata Palit takes up "Swami Vivekananda's impact on the Youth Movement" - a rallying point for the youth to-day.
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