In Honour of Swami Vivekananda and Rajmata Jijabai

 

          

                                                        Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902)   

                  

                                                 Rajmata Jijabai (1598-1674) with Shivaji

 

On January 12 every year, we celebrate the birth anniversaries of two great Indians whose lives were spent in shaping the history of our country and how it is perceived globally.  One of them, Swami Vivekananda, was a spiritual leader who took Indian religion and philosophy to the western world; the other, Rajmata Jijabai popularly known as Jijau, was the mother of Chhatrapati Shivaji, the founder of the Maratha empire, widely credited with having inculcated in him the concept of Swaraj (self-rule).   

Although separated by over 200 years, there were certain common ideals that they lived up to during their lifetimes. Today, leftrightthodasacenter attempts to go off the beaten track to trace these commonalities which Indians, indeed the whole world, can take inspiration from even today.  

In the words of Swami Vivekananda himself, “Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life – think of it, dream of it and live in that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success and that is the way to success and that is the way great spiritual giants are produced.” 

Vivekananda’s Absolute was a person’s own higher self; he believed that to labour for the upliftment of humanity was the noblest endeavour. All living beings were an embodiment of God, therefore one served God when one served humanity. Well-versed in the Hindu scriptures, he stressed on the universal and humanistic rather than their ideological and dogmatic aspects. He dedicated his entire life to infuse this belief into Hindu thought. He played a leading role in reviving Hinduism as a unifying force in creating the concept of Indian nationalism as a means of fighting the British. He would go on to introduce Hinduism to the world at the Parliament of the World Religions in Chicago in 1893, referring to the western audiences in his famous speech as his “sisters and brothers of America.”  But it was in his efforts to spread the message of the Bhagvad Geeta, revive Hinduism, address social issues and fight the injustice of colonialism that his one idea transcended the hundreds of years between him and Jijamata, perfectly matching her belief in Swaraj.   

Jijamata, the widow of Shahaji Bhonsle, lived and breathed her husband’s legacy, of unifying Indians through their belief in the Geeta, in the Epics, to establish a righteous nation where there was no injustice. She brought up her son Shivba on this one idea to the total exclusion of all else, like Vivekananda advocated hundreds of years later.  It was her upbringing, her firm, unshakeable belief in religion as a means of service of the less fortunate and securing the rights that they were denied, that sowed the seeds of the great Maratha empire under the banner of her son, Chhatrapati Shivaji who challenged the mighty Mughals on the one hand and the rising power of the British, even after Shivaji was no more.   

Let us not forget what they spent their entire lives to set out before us….again the words of Vivekananda “We are responsible for what we are, and whatever we wish ourselves to be, we have the power to make ourselves. If what we are now has been the result of our own past actions, it certainly follows that whatever we wish to be in future can be produced by our present actions; so we have to know how to act." 

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