(This story was written by me in September, 2004)
Right from childhood, Swamiji had read all religious books, renounced the world and spent his life preaching. His believed that religion can’t be taught to poor as they are too busy worrying about food and hunger. So he focused only on rich. He opened many schools to teach religion to rich and propagating religion in other ways. Other thing about swami was that he believed and propagated that ‘all religions are same’ and acceptance of people of all religions. His basic teaching was that all of us are part of same God and so we should have compassion for our fellow being, rich or poor.
His organization did a lot for poor. He opened charity hospitals, schools for children and elderly in many villages. It is heard that he also used his influence to work with authorities for getting electricity in villages. In fact it appeared that service to the poor was a much bigger part of his organization than religious preaching.
Soon after his death, I had the privilege to visit his private cottage. It was filled with books and his writings. I picked up his personal diary. It looked like a manuscript of his autobiography. I happened to see the last paragraph, which read –
“So I have spent 40 years of my life of lie, pretending to be something I am not. I do not believe in God. I do not believe in any religion. I am a non believer. But what else could I do! If God is there, which I know he is not, I hope he will understand”.
That stunned me. I was familiar with Swami’s handwriting and it was indeed written by Swamiji himself. I casually browsed the book. It was indeed his autobiography, describing how he came from poor family, saw lot of hardships, was very concerned, right from childhood, about eliminating poverty, concern for poor, difference between rich and poor and so on. How he got exposed to religion and then became Swami. I was familiar with most of his life from then on.
But I could not find anything that explained the last paragraph. I could neither get it out of my mind. The following lines of last paragraph were right in front of my eyes –
“So I have spent 40 years of my life of lie, pretending to be something I am not. I do not believe in God. I do not believe in any religion. I am a non believer. But what else could I do! If God is there, which I know he is not, I hope he will understand”.
My busy schedule did not allow me to read the entire manuscript, line by line. But I carefully glanced again. Somewhere in early chapters, where he was describing his life when he was around 20 years old, was this paragraph.
“I realized that it was impossible to fight this. And also who knows the result of conflict, when the benefits will come, if at all. The better chance is to get as much as possible from ‘them’ in some other way. So if we could somehow generate passion in them for us, then we could get something out of ‘them’. Also if we could generate some kind of fear, that could help further. The Vedanta offered both. The philosophy of oneness (all beings being equal), concept of rebirth and many other concepts of Vedanta could be used to achieve this goal. Probably, ‘they’ had enough resources and did not want anything more in this life, and would be willing to let go some of those resources to secure their next lift. So I learned some religion and started teaching ‘them’. Soon I realized that, I had no credibility and I was not being effective. Also to how many people could I teach or convince as an individual? I saw a need for a big organization doing it. I was left with no option. The only chance was to devote my life to religion, gain credibility as Swami, create an organization and then approach them. It was against all my beliefs, I had to kill myself, but what else could I do…”
It was easy for me to figure out that his reference to ‘them’ was for rich and ‘us’ for poor like himself.
I had a whole new perception about his life. Swamiji had been deeply concerned about poverty in the world and saw an inherent social injustice rendered to poor. He saw religion as a way to get large sums of money from rich in the form of donations, which he used for well being of poor.
It took time to reconcile to what I had read. Suddenly a fear crept into my mind. His autobiography had been published. What if people came to know about this aspect of his life? I acquired the published book and glanced. To my surprise and relief, the last paragraph and related text from the middle had been carefully removed and were not part of the published work.
Interesting. A very deep point made through a short story.
Ashok
mittals79@hotmail.com
(comment received via email)
Dear Neeraj
It was a matter of immense pleasure to read your blog after big gap.
I liked the story.
– I D
indersavita@rediffmail.com
(comment received via email)
It is not weird. I call it using systemic weakness to meet your objective: good or bad. There are many examples. All those who reach top & are not known being devilish are positive examples as one needs to make a lot of compromises with (middle class) value system. People like Harshad Mehta are the bad ones. It takes courage either way.
Bye!
ARUN
arun_kumar100@hotmail.com
what a lovely short story. why dont you write more stories. i have always asked you to write, when you sent me your article that was my reaction.
love
Gauhar Raza
Scientist
Head, SCM
National Institute of Science Communication and Information Resources
New Delhi
That was a very nice read. This may be the reality of so many Swamis at least on the side of taking from ‘THEM’ !
That is so true Garima.