Explain Educational thoughts of Swami Vivekanand. Discuss how these thought are important for solving today's social problems?
Answers
Answer:
Today we find ourselves in a world beset with horrendous problems and dilemmas, and we have not yet evaded the threat of nuclear war. What does Swamiji have to say to us? It plays out on two levels: first as he addressed the problem on the level of the problem; and later, how he made us look behind it.
Crime and public morality
The facts are that punishment for crime often foments more crime than it prevents. The enforcers of law are as often corrupt and unlawful as not. And we could go on and on.
Family breakdown
We have known for long that just producing valedictorians and spelling geniuses in not enough to warranty the continuity of high culture. Hear Vivekananda: “It is the culture of the heart, really, not that of the intellect, that will lessen the misery of the world.” “It is culture that withstands shocks, not learning! And we are finding that our children face many shocks, more every day.
“If it is social opinion that makes us moral, then really we are little better than animals,” he said. “It is inner strength only that can curb the vicious tendencies.” He told Indian boys, “You will be nearer to God by playing football than by studying the Gita.” “Strength is the medicine for the world’s disease.”
Explanation:
INTRODUCTION
India has had from time immemorial a strong sense of cultural unity. Swami Vivekananda was the one who revealed the true foundations of this culture and was able to define and strengthen the sense of unity as a nation. He gave Indians proper understanding of their country’s great spiritual heritage and thus gave them pride in their past. He pointed out to the Indians the drawbacks of western culture and the need for India’s contribution to overcome these drawbacks. Thus he made India a nation with global mission.
Swamiji strengthened India’s nationalist movement by implanting a sense of unity, pride in the past and sense of mission. Several eminent leaders of India’s freedom movement have acknowledged their indebtedness to him. Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of independent India wrote, “Rooted in the past and full of pride in India’s prestige, Vivekananda was yet modern in his approach to life’s problems, and was a kind of bridge between the past of India and her present…His mission was the service of mankind through social service, mass education, religious revival and social awakening through education”. Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose remarked, “Swamiji harmonized the east and the west, religion and science, past and present. And that is why he is great. Our countrymen have gained unprecedented self-respect, self-reliance and self-assertion from his teachings”.
Swamiji’s unique contribution to the creation of new India was to open the minds of Indians to their duty to the downtrodden masses. He spoke about the role of labouring classes in the production of country’s wealth. He was the first religious leader in India to speak for the masses, formulate a definite philosophy of service and organize large-scale social service.