'Charaiveti'

By Dr Subhashis Banerjee

Vivekananda had travelled within India as a 'parivrajaka' (the travelling monk) from 1888 to 1893 and in May 1893 crossed the 'kalapani' (crossing the inland water boundary) to represent India in the Parliament of World's Religion held in Chicago. This incident led to many more travels within India and the West. He was a traveller who left his impressions, views and observations in the form of letters, diaries and memoirs. A close study of such documents, as well as secondary materials, leads to questions of imperialism, identity, self-other dichotomy, comparative religion, women and acculturation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Book rivers
• Release date: Aug 24, 2020
• ISBN: 9789389914641

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Dr Subhashis Banerjee

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Copyright©: Dr Subhashis Banerjee

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Year:- 2020

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I want no name — I want to be a voice without a form. I do not require anybody to defend me —(CW 6: Epistle LIV)

The Hymn...

"Charanbai madhu vindati charantsvadu mudambaram.

Suryasya pasya sreemanam yo na tandrayate charan.

Charaiveti, charaiveti."

(Aitareya Upanishad, 7.15)

––––––––

[The honey bee, by its motion, collects honey, and birds enjoy tasty fruits by constant movement. The sun is revered, by virtue of its constant shining movement; therefore, one should be constantly in motion. Keep moving, keep moving on!]

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.

― Marcel Proust

Abbreviations

The work is dedicated to my loving parents

Prof (Dr) Dharmadas Banerjee

&

Smt. Chandra Banerjee

Contents  

Foreword

The book 'Charaiveti': (Vivekananda's Dialogue on People, Politics and Space) attempts to locate the travel writings of Viveka- nanda within the purview of postcolonial studies.

Vivekananda had travelled within India as a 'parivrajaka' (the travelling monk) from 1888 to 1893 and in May 1893 crossed the 'kalapani' (crossing the inland water boundary) to represent India in the Parliament of World's Religion held in Chicago. This incident led to many more travels within India and the West. He was a traveller who left his impressions, views and observations in the form of letters, diaries and memoirs. A close study of such documents, as well as secondary materials, leads to questions of imperialism, identity, self-other dichotomy, comparative religion, women and acculturation.

The trend of overseas journeys, which is identified in the book as crossing the dark water of the sea, had a tremendous impact on the personality of the Hindu monk. He acquired his cultural baggage during his extensive travel in India, and when he crossed the national boundary, he encountered several new faiths, customs and cultures which questioned his pre-occupied religious and cultural self. But it was not something unique in the colonial milieu; with the advent of rationalism and scientific learning, people started thinking of the new world beyond the national boundary. Their voyages to the West were an interesting phenomenon in the nineteenth-century Bengal. The socio-cultural impact of those travels, including the wanderings of Vivekananda, has been examined through their writings. The work explains how Vivekananda, who is known as a 'sannyasi,' may be tested as a secular traveller who, like many others, keenly observed people, cultures and social customs of the lands he visited. However, the book also treats him as a tourist with a particular project of representing India as a colonized country. He thus gets engaged both in the severe discourses of religion and politics. His travel writings bring out such complexity of position and experience. This book attempts to project Vivekananda as a colonial subject who had to grapple with different cultural issues of his time. Vivekananda tactfully used 'self-fashioning' as a potential tool to refute orientalist essentialization of the Western world. Thus, this critical work attempts to posit Vivekananda as an essential contributor in the postcolonial discourse of travel-writing.  

Swami Vivekananda was an avid traveller and with each of his travels, worldwide, or within the country, he left his substantial moral and spiritual footprint on the conscience of the people he met wherever he went. The author has very nicely extracted and interpreted the available travel accounts of Swami Vivekananda. In this book, we have the backdrops for many of his letters, diaries and conversations abroad. Dr Subhashis Banerjee has given a detailed history of Vivekananda's journey with minute obser- vations. His meticulous research also reveals various issues on overseas travel from third world countries. The pertinent questions of transculturation, the ambivalence of character and otherness are raised and critically evaluated by referring to Vivekananda's unguarded observations.

The author has explored a completely different discourse of understanding this Hindu monk. Any curious reader of travel literature should get a source of inspiration in this book.

This book is a secular interpretation of Vivekananda's travelogues, which justifies the liminal position of the nomadic monk. 

Professor Chidananda Bhattacharya

Department of English

Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata

Acknowledgement

Undertaking this research has been indeed a life-changing experience for me, and it would not have been possible without the support and guidance that I received from several people. I would like to extend my heartfelt gratitude and thanks to my supervisor Prof (Dr) Sravani Biswas, Professor, Department of English & Foreign languages, Tezpur University for her worthy guidance, patience and encouragements during the whole tenure of my research. Though she would never approve of the use of these words for herself, she is a person of extraordinary academic acumen. She spared her valuable time for guiding even during the period of her vacations. Any session with her would guarantee a fascinating voyage through a maze of ideas. Without her innovative ideas, this thesis would not have materialized. I do remember Prof. P.K. Das, (Dean, Humanities & Social Sciences), who guided me during his tenure as the Head of the English Department. It is also a pleasure to acknowledge all other faculty members of the English Department of Tezpur University for their support and innovative suggestions. I am grateful to Dr L. Boral, COE (TU), Prof. D.K. Bhattacharyya, Dean, Academic Affairs and Dr Biren Das, Registrar (TU) for their positive support till the end of this meticulous task. I thank Mr Bhaskar Bhattarai (UDC), Department of EFL (TU) for his kind help during the entire period of my research. I also gratefully acknowledge all the staff of the Central Library, Tezpur University. My heartfelt gratitude to Dr Teotia (IAS), the Hon'ble Secretary of Higher Education (Govt. of Arunachal Pradesh), Dr Joram Begi, Hon'ble Ex-Director of Higher & Technical Education (A.P.), respected Principal and my colleagues of Government Model College Seppa, Arunachal Pradesh for supporting me in every phase of my research work. I am sincerely thankful to Dr Raju Borthakur (NERIST, Arunachal Pradesh) and Dr Taw Aju (DNGC, Itanagar) for their unconditional love and mental support during the final phase of this work.  I am very much indebted to the scholarships of Prof. Somdatta Mandal (Visva Bharati University) and Prof. Simonti Sen (Bidhannagar College, Calcutta University) on colonial travel writings from Bengal. Their translation/edited works (which are not available in print) tremendously helped me to address a few relevant issues on colonial travel narratives. I owe my heartfelt gratitude to Dr Catherine Rolfsen and her supervisor Dr Ellen Goldberg, Professor of South Asian Religions, Queens' University, Canada for allowing me to take help from their research project (2005) on Swami Vivekananda. I am sincerely thankful to Prof. Rajagopal Chattopadhyaya (renowned Vivekananda scholar) for guiding me to find out primary sources from different libraries of India and the USA. I also remember the eminent Bengali writer Sanjib Chattopadhyaya for his inspirational talks on Swami Vivekananda. His essays on Vivekananda's life and writings in Bartaman Patrika helped me to understand Vivekananda as a man and a traveller.

I owe my sincerest gratitude to Prof. Chidananda Bhattacharya, Dept. of English, Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata, Prof. Saugata Bhaduri, Dept. of English, JNU (New Delhi) and Prof. Alan Johnson, Idaho State University (U.S.A.) for their insightful comments on the work.

My sincere thanks for the officials of the National Library (Kolkata), Rammohan Library (Kolkata), Central Library (C.U), Central Library (Visva Bharati University), Advaita Ashrama, Mayavati and Kolkata. I also got materials and suggestions from the Vedanta Society, San Francisco, California (USA). Formal acknowledgements for the use of extracts from copyright material would be too numerous for this page. References have been duly given, and I hope those are adequate.

I owe a great deal to my dear parents—Dr Dharmadas Banerjee and Smt Chandra Banerjee and my entire family for whom no words of gratitude are enough as they have always encouraged me on the path of my academic journey, and who have made me what I am today. 

Finally, I would like to express my thanks to my loving wife Mousumi (Jhunu), for her constant support and help, along with keeping me free from domestic engagements when the final thesis was being prepared.

*****

Preface

The image of Vivekananda as constructed generally is that of a Hindu' Sannyasi'. Researchers have produced a large corpus of works on him as a Hindu reformer. In most cases, his travel accounts remain untouched as researchers are more interested in the religious teachings and lectures for which he took up his travels. Vivekananda travelled almost all over the world—the countries of Asia, Europe and America. While travelling he negotiated different cultures. Thus, his travel accounts document a refreshing view of another aspect of his personality through his unguarded and personal observations. As a reformer of Hinduism, Vivekananda attempted to interpret to the world the ancient Hindu texts from a modern rational perspective. Mohapatra (1996), the noted Vivekananda scholar rightly said that his interpretation of Hinduism was a defence mechanism against the impact of an alien political power in the country... (05). His travels abroad exposed him to those Western cultures that had exported to India ideas of Humanism and Rationalism. His travels within India provided him with first-hand experience of the poverty, both physical and spiritual of the Indian masses. Thus, the paradox of a nation both exploited materially and at the same time taught rational humanism is apparent in Vivekananda's personality as revealed through his writings. The present discourse does not focus typically on the travelling elements of the Indian monk; instead, it discusses all the available narratives of Vivekananda during his extensive travel within India and abroad. Thus, this research compares two different shades of the Oriental monk – a spiritual leader and a common man (a traveller). The travelogues of Vivekananda are productive in this sense.

The book examines the available travel writings of Vivekananda (1863-1902), a 'Paribrajak Sannyasi' (the travelling monk) who travelled to/across America and Europe apart from his own country and had become one of the pioneer Hindus to establish his identity in terms of religion, spirituality and culture in the West. Further, it tries to argue on Vivekananda's acceptance of Vedic Hindu' Masculinity' (Rolfsen 15) as an opposite parallel force to refute the existing Orientalist theses on India. (Raghuramaraju 383)  After a brief discussion on the postcolonial aspects of travel literature with particular reference to the writings of Vivekananda, the thesis creates a platform of a critical argument regarding the new trend of travelling across the sea during the nineteenth-century Bengal by citing some instances to compare with the travel accounts of Vivekananda. It refers to the contemporary critics like Somdatta Mandal (2015) and Simonti Sen (2005) and has developed a further layer of argument to justify Vivekananda as a Sannyasi traveller from colonized Bengal.

Further, it outlines the entire journey of Vivekananda in India and abroad to understand the complexity of the 'Self' in his writings. Vivekananda's associations and his multilayered dialogues with the Western masses have been discussed in later chapters where his written works have been deconstructed to understand the psychological condition and complexity of a liminal colonial subject (Rolfsen 2). Travel provided him with the platform to project his country positively. Vivekananda was aware of the drawbacks of his country, and he wanted to project India's spiritual heritage in the Western world. He deliberately manipulated the ancient scriptures according to his scientific thinking. His version of Hinduism was tolerant, and the approach was humanistic. In the last chapter, the book tries to defend Vivekananda's position as a colonial subject. His receptiveness and ambivalent attitude towards any subject has been further analysed in the domain of postcolonial theory and literature. Vivekananda has been treated as a subject who willingly answered back all the established Orientalist concepts on India and the East to re-establish India's position as a spiritual leader.

Swami Vivekananda reached Chicago at the end of July 1893 via Colombo, Singapore, Japan and Vancouver (Amiya Sen 31). After reaching Chicago, he was astonished to find that his name was not enlisted in the programme and it was rescheduled to be held in September 1893 (31-32). Still, Vivekananda could find a place in America after a few days. His rhetorical skills and dignified personality made him a celebrity within no time (32-33). It is interesting to observe that, on the one hand, his spontaneous responses made him more and more an ordinary traveller. On the other, his spiritual and intellectual observations while delivering lectures placed him on a different plane. The cultural baggage that he was carrying enthused him to compare everything that he had encountered during his travel. Overall, Vivekananda's writings project him as an engaging traveller who consciously approached to ameliorate the discursive relationship between the East and the West (Rolfsen 2005, 1). Vivekananda was neither an ignorant 'Sannyasi' traveller to the West nor a common man; he was well-informed about the social conditions of the world and was highly motivated to organize an indigenous missionary to spread scientific Vedantic philosophy in the West. He chose popular fashion (CW5:105) to represent his country and 'Self' by silently avoiding the contemporary blemishes of Indian society. He knew the purpose of his travel well:

There are many things to be done, but means are wanting in the country. We have brains, but no hands. We have the doctrine of Vedanta, but we have not the power to reduce it into practice. (CW5:125)

The corpus of the present volume is both narrow and wide in the sense that Vivekananda was neither a travel writer nor a common man who travelled all over India and the West for documenting his travel experiences. His available writings are mainly based on his religious teachings. To be precise, he started his life as a 'Paribrajaka' in 1888 and completed his journey by the mid of 1902 (He passed away on 4th July 1902). The entire 'paribrajaka' life was colourful since he encountered several faiths and customs. He was so busy in his work that he hardly got any time to maintain a proper diary of his travel experiences like other contemporary travel writers. Only in a few letters from the West, Vivekananda documented his experiences in English; otherwise, his writings are scattered and written in Bengali. Moreover, all the papers, obtainable from the CW of Swami Vivekananda and in other collections, are either translated or edited by the Ramakrishna Mission, Belur or by the Advaita Ashram, Mayavati. These works focus on his spiritual teaching and his concept of religious nationalism. Extracting genuine travel experiences from the entire primary source is a challenging task for any researcher. Perhaps, for this reason, there is no such research available on Swami Vivekananda, which deals with his travel experiences. Since all the works are edited by the 'Maharajas' (Sannyasis) of Ramakrishna Mission after the death of Vivekananda, there is always a high chance of manipulation. The translated works also have lost their original fervour due to fallacious usage of the English Language. Even Vivekananda perhaps did not get much time to edit/translate his works in English to be accepted in the canon of English Literature. The editor of The Penguin Swami Vivekananda Reader (2005) also admits how research on Vivekananda has always been a complex task for a scholar. Since all the primary sources are compiled editions, we have a pre-packaged, pre-cooked, even pre-digested Vivekananda (4).

Another lacuna is the frequent addition and subtraction in the available primary works of Vivekananda. Earlier, the Complete Works (2008) was of eight volumes, and now the present edition is of nine volumes (2012) with considerable changes. A few other autobiographical works are now available in the name of Swami Vivekananda, which are extractions from his Letters (1940, 2005) and Complete Works (2008, 2012). So, it is difficult to identify the corpus of the present research. However, this critical dialogue attempts to evaluate Vivekananda from his experiences in different lands. To make the views more acceptable, the current study refers to other secondary sources and the contemporary writers who had seen Vivekananda as a traveller and a religious master. Both the primary and secondary sources helped the researcher to place Vivekananda's writings in the genre of travel literature with a difference. Even the articles in contemporary newspapers played a vital role in understanding the personality and the writings/lectures critically. Apart from this, the work is indebted to the modern critiques on 'Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Movement' and Travel Literature in general with special reference to colonial Bengal like Catherine Rolfsen (2005), Simonti Sen (2005), Amiya P. Sen (2013), Narasingha Sil (1997), Inden (1986), Niranjan Dhar (1977), Somdatta Mandal (2015), Kalpana Mahapatra (1996), Paranjape (2005) and others to provide a comparative analysis of the subject. Makarand Paranjape, the editor of The Penguin Swami Vivekananda Reader, accepts that a student of Vivekananda must turn (4) to the available scholarships on the subject and in this regard, a comparison with how the enterprise of Western scholarship deals with its canonical figures is useful (4).

The book offers fresh insights into the facts of travel writing with particular reference to 'Spiritualized Nationalism', 'Postcolonial Cultural Exchange,' 'Questioning Faith,' and 'Identity'. It widens the scope of discussion on the social and humanistic aspects of travel literature. Apart from these fundamental issues, it has broadened the scope of further study on 'Sannyasi’ travel writers in general. The work attempts to provide a new discourse of understanding travel writing as a literary genre. It primarily discusses Vivekananda as a traveller from colonial Bengal and analyses the complex personality in terms of self-fashioning, transculturation and spirituality. Vivekananda appears to be a dynamic personality through a detailed discussion of his writings. On the one hand, he is