Vivekananda on British Rule

How He Understood the British

Vivekananda’s knowledge of world history, coupled with his deep and penetrating intellect and direct experience, made him realize the real nature of British imperialism which, unfortunately, the Indian leaders of his time could not comprehend.

Those leaders, though conscious of the occasional lapses of the British rule, thought that on the whole it was beneficial to the people. To many of them the rule was “divine dispensation” and they readily took an oath of allegiance.

But Vivekananda considered the British rule as nothing but Satanic, with merciless exploitation as its sole objective. In the following words of Vivekananda we find rare socio-political insight, couched in poetic diction: “Therefore, the conquest of India by England is not a conquest by Jesus or the Bible as we are often asked to believe, neither is it like the conquest of India by Moguls and the Pathans. But behind the name of the Lord Jesus, the Bible, the magnificent palaces, the heavy tramp of the feet of the armies .... shaking the earth, the sounds of war trumpets, bugles, the drums, and the splendid display of the royal throne; behind all these, there is always the virtual presence of England—that England whose war flag is the factory chimney, whose troops are the merchant men, whose battle fields are the market places of the world and whose Empress is the gold-studded Goddess of Fortune.”

The Congress which spearheaded the national struggle afterwards was not the Congress of Vivekananda’s time. Vivekananda objected to the “mendicant policy” of that Congress, comprised as it was of toothless petitions and appeals to the British Raj; he urged the nationalists to come down from their high pedestal of intellectual and worldly superiority to the grass-root level and mix with the lowliest of the lowly and share their sufferings; he inspired them for self-organization through man-making education, and to sacrifice their all for the country. The latter-day Congress accepted practically all his programs.