Vivekananda foresaw the rise of India
Spirituality, Culture and Development of Indaia as emphasised by Swami Vivekananda
Swami Vivekananda’s emphasis on spirituality, culture and development is clearly incorporated in Indian model of development. How the cultural value of society and family influence over the individual is not just a theoretical idea but an effective functioning economic and commercial value is brought out in a commercial research to sell products, which says “In India, social acceptability is more important that individual achievement and is given priority in an individual’s life. Group affiliations are given precedence with family traditions and values. For most Indians, family is the prime concern and an individual’s duties lies with the family. In India people’s search for security and prestige lies within the confines of the near and dear”. It is traditional cultural values which have sustained the Indian family, society and economy, even when the Indian state had remained hostile to our dharma for almost a millennia, and continues to be even today. These values constitute the social, cultural, and civilisational capital of India.
This cultural orientation is self-evident in the Indian economy. The family savings in India which is the direct product of family culture is now 25% of the GDP and according to Goldman Sachs, a top global banker, this has ensured that India does not need foreign investment for its infrastructure development. Since 1991 to 2011 the amount of foreign investment that has funded Indian development was only 2% of the total; while the rest 98% has been funded by local savings in which the family tops with 70% of the national savings. It is the culture of protection of the elders, care of young and the responsibilities which the family undertakes as a cultural institutions, and the disciplining of the relations between humans and between humans and nature through the concept of dharma and sustained by culture that has protected our economy and society. In contrast, in the West, the care of the parents, unemployed and the infirm are all the concern of the state. All family obligations are nationalised in the West, while it is dharma and culture founded on dharma which takes care of all family obligations.
What values the West needs from Hindu India today are what is precisely at risk in India
The West needs to learn from Hindu India’s cultural values
(i) To rebuild and protect the family and social foundations of its economy,
(ii) To reinstate reverence for nature and
(iii) To revive respect for women. Individual rights, gender rights, children’s rights, elders’ rights, and other rights consciousness have undermined the respect for women and brought down the sustaining structures of the family and caused lack of reverence for nature in the Judeo-Christian Western civilisation and led to the current environmental crisis. Though, fortunately in India, these sustaining values – family and society, respect for women and reverence for nature – are still functioning form, they are at great risk because of the continuation of colonial mindset through the intensification of the process of westeriisation of the Indian intellectual, educational and media and generally the secular establishment, in the name of modernisation which is just an alibi for westernisation. The Indian intellectual establishment is unable to draw the line between the individual belief system and the country’s ethos and way of life, it tends to throw the baby out with the bath tub – namely discard national culture as conflicting with secularism, which according to the Supreme court it does not.
Conclusion
Because of the Indian establishment’s lack of intellectual and political courage and because of the concept of political correctness, the very spiritual and moral values which Swami Vivekananda emphasized and which sustain the Indian family, society, economy and environment and which the West desperately needs to import from India for its own good and even survival, are at risk in India. The public discourse promoted by the politically correct establishment is making it fashionable to follow the very western model which has brought down families, societies and economy; undermined the respect for women and made them carbon-copy the West and fight for their rights at the cost of respect; and destroyed reverence for nature which has invited the global environmental crisis. Indian people need to reinforce their conviction in those spiritual and moral values which most of them practice even today and the young India must be made to imbibe these values, first in the interest of the Indian economy, society, and environment, before India can teach these values to the West.
The world – particularly the Western world – is keen to follow our values and is already following it. Lisa Miller, the religious affairs editor of Newsweek magazine wrote a stunning article on August 14, 2009 titled “We are All Hindus now” referring to the changing American beliefs. She said that data shows ‘we are becoming more like Hindus and less like Christians in the ways we think about God, our selves, each other, and eternity; 65 per cent of us believe – like Hindus – that “many religions can lead to eternal life”; they include 37 per cent of white evangelicals, the group most likely to believe that salvation is theirs alone; a third of the Americans burn, not bury the dead; a quarter of the American believe in rebirth. The West needs us, and imports, our spiritual and cultural assets. Is not that Dhrshta Swami Vivekananda proving right? Is not America now opening the gift from Swami Vivekananda it had kept unopened for over a century? But ironically when the West is looking at us, many of our intellectuals, academics and thinkers are looking to the West! QED: To make young Indian consciously imbibe Hindu cultural values as Swami Vivekananda emphasised which contemporary India largely follows is the biggest agenda of India and also its challenge.
Our Vision
To continue Vivekananda’s agenda for India: Development with culture by reviving the rich Vedic Culture of India
Our Mission
To make young Indian consciously imbibe Hindu cultural values as Swami Vivekananda emphasised,by reviving the rich Vedic Culture of India
Our Project
To produce a feature film involving the intellectuals in India and abroad in various fields of literature,music,dance and and in the film field . and release the film throughout the world.
View this blog for project report of our`` Vandemaataram project''
View this blog for project report of our`` Vandemaataram project''
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