Vivekananda, Swami (1863-1902)  the patriot-saint of modern India. Swami Vivekananda, was born in Kolkata in an upper-middle class Kayastha family. His family name was Narendranath Datta and Vivekananda was his religious name. Narendranath's father, Viswanath, a prosperous lawyer in the Calcutta High Court, was an agnostic, but his mother, Bhubaneswari, was a devout Hindu. No doubt, his mother's influence worked on the religious development of Narendranath. A keen student, Narendranath graduated in 1884 and was due to appear in his Law examination in 1886, but his father's sudden death brought an abrupt end to his academic career. In 1882, Narendranath came into contact with Sri ramakrishna of Dakshineswar who, it was believed, had first hand experience of God. The spiritual transformation of Narendranath at the hands of Sri Ramakrishna began in 1882 and was completed with his realisation of the oneness of all existence in 1886.

After Sri Ramakrishna's death in August 1886, Vivekananda organised his brotherhood into a monastic order and went on a pilgrimage throughout India. At the conclusion of the pilgrimage he sat in meditation on the last rock of India (since known as 'Vivekananda Shila') at Kanyakumari. He realised that religion was the life-blood of India and that if the degraded masses of India were to be raised again, India had to be given that education, which taught men that true religion lay in serving man as one would serve God. Renunciation and service - these two were the (national) ideals of Indians - and the national energies had to be channelled along these lines.

In September 1893, at the Conference of Religions at Chicago, Vivekananda presented the supreme truth of Vedanta and discarded the myth that Hinduism centred on the image-worship. Hailed as the most eloquent speaker in the Chicago conference, Vivekananda stayed on in the West from 1893 to 1896 to preach that the essence of religion lay in the divinity of man.

Vivekananda's spiritual conquest of the West won him several western disciples, including Margaret Noble, later known as sister nivedita. The mission to the West also resulted in the founding of Vedanta societies such as in New York and London. Above all, it gave the west a glimpse of Indian spiritual wisdom and its value as an antidote to western science and technology. Vivekananda is thought to have placed India on an equal footing with the West for which his appreciative countrymen gave him a hero's welcome when he returned to India in early 1897.

In May 1897, Vivekananda founded the Ramakrishna Mission with the motto of actualising the ideal of renunciation of worldly life through education and service to humanity. In 1898, he founded Belur Math, a place that eventually became the headquarters of the worldwide Ramakrishna Movement. [Anil Baran Ray]

Bibliography  Romain Rolland, The Life of Vivekananda and the Universal Gospel, Calcutta, 1965; Christopher Isherwood, Ramakrishna And His Disciples, Calcutta, 1980; Sister Nivedita, 'The Master As I Saw Him', The Complete Works of Sister Nivedita, Vol 1, Calcutta, 1982; Swami Nikhilananda, Vivekananda: A Biography, Calcutta, 1982; Marie Louise Burke, Swami Vivekananda In The West: New Discoveries, 6 vols, Calcutta, 1983-1987.