Swami Vivekananda: A Pioneer of Modern Indian Science

From promoting the establishment of India's top-most research university, managing finances for cutting-edge research of its times, and setting base for an advanced studies institution, Swami Vivekananda has numerous pioneering feats to his credit. He truly was a hermit with scientific-technological progress of India as his crucial objective.

We all revere Swami Vivekananda for his profound centrifugal thoughts integrating the atma (human conscience) with prakriti (universe). Still, his less spoken body of work revolves around his centripetal ideas, which teach the dharma (responsibilities) of citizens towards their nation (rashtra) and nations towards the world. These centripetal thoughts are evident from his mantra of atmano mokshartham jagat hitaya cha (liberation of the soul and the world’s good). Yet, in this vastness of inner and outer exploration, his reasoning was always abundant with science and meticulous with strategy.

Unlike the West, whose science grew antithetical to traditions and religion, Swami Vivekananda, even during the darkest of colonial clouds looming over our skies, had dedicated himself to bridge the two via Vedanta. He used his lecture series in the new Occident, the United States, and the old Occident, Western Europe, to communicate for this very purpose. The lecture series introduced him to Nikola Tesla, Lord Kelvin, and Hermann Von Helmholtz among other scientists. Their conversations are playing a stellar role in connecting Samkhya theory with modern physics of matter, energy and light. Since then, the meter of Vedantic ideas and jargon have also found congruence across domains of cosmology, neuroscience, evolutionary biology, astrophysics, physics, and chemistry.

The late 19th century was a period of socio-political famines in colonized India. Imperialism was attempting to freeze the embers of intellectual capital and patronage that would reignite the Second War of Independence. India needed a band of stalwart mass leaders to take on the mighty colonial forces by resurrecting the discourse on India’s civilizational philosophy, political outlook, tenets of law, comprehension of modern warfare, and reaching out to the vast Indian populace. But, there was a great danger of alien and ill-fitting political constructs, which were raging as wild-fires across colonies. Spiritual nationalism was the only solution, and this needed a constellation of sages who could guide the masses and the mass leaders. Swami Vivekananda was the pole star in this constellation drawing up the architecture of modern India.

Ramakrishna Paramhamsa’s initiation of Swami Vivekananda, born Narendranath Dutta, is perhaps the finest example of head-hunting one could come across. It all began in Kolkata, then the capital of British India and the fast-growing capital of India’s spiritual nationalism. Ramakrishna Paramhansa was a priest of the Dakshineshwar Kali Temple, and his mysticism attracted the nation’s commoners and elite that visited the temple. Narendra Dutta, who had come under Ramakrishna Paramhamsa’s wings, apart from his great spiritual potential, had modern academic credentials and was proficient with the then world’s lingua franca. The guru was aware of his transcendent shishya’s immense potential, which had facets that could easily open doors for him to inspire masses, political leaders, professionals, philanthropists, the Indian royalty and nobility, and the farthest most, the Western intelligentsia. It was Ramakrishna Paramhansa who had seeded the idea of Swami Vivekananda going on a tremendous global itinerant mission to unshackle India’s colonial bondage and commence India’s resurgence.

Swami Vivekananda and his immense domestic and global travels were not unplanned expeditions. After he participated in the World Parliament on Religions in 1893, he oversaw the establishment of Vedanta Societies in New York (1894) and San Francisco (1900) – the two geographical extremities of America. By the time India became an independent nation, the Vedanta Society had spread across all major cities of North America and Europe. The society became a beacon for all those venerated matha (monastic institutions) that went global to spread the essence of Sanatan Dharma across the world and quench the ignorance about India’s significance for humanity. Many of the matha, which took cues from the Vedanta Society, now have permanent not-for-profit bases worldwide and have become India’s de facto spiritual embassies. The spirituality radiating from these embassies comfort the commoners and the most prolific innovators, industrialists, and performers in this world.

Swami Vivekananda was a hermit with a grand national architecture in mind. He identified people and entrusted them to construct India’s futuristic building-blocks he was envisioning in a not too distant future. He fortified Jamsetji Tata’s plans, in 1893, to construct the swadeshi post-graduate university, the Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru. He inspired the couple, James and Charlotte Sevier, to establish Advaita Ashrama in Mayavati, Uttarakhand (in 1899), which perhaps is one of the modern world’s first institution of advanced studies. He also was instrumental in initiating India’s first English-language trans-disciplinary journal, Prabuddha Bharata (Awakened India) in 1896. Swami Vivekananda and Sister Nivedita also had inspired Jagadish Chandra Bose, the fabled biophysicist, to set up a Swadeshi cutting-edge scientific research institution, the Bose Institute of Kolkata. He was also well-informed of the significance of the modern legal concept of intellectual property, as is demonstrated by his introduction of J.C. Bose to Sarah Chapman Bull, who became the latter’s angel investor as he secretly applied for patents in Britain with her, between 1898 and 1901. All these examples demonstrate the vast spectrum of institutions and mechanisms introduced by Swami Vivekananda, many enormous in consequence and all far ahead of the times.

Much like the cyclical nature of time, India, perhaps the oldest living civilization on the planet, went from the zenith of science and knowledge to the abyss of ignorance and illusion, to again resurge into an ascending phase. Had the Ionians, or Egyptians, or Mesopotamians, been around, they would have seconded involution as witnessed by India since antiquity. Swami Vivekananda has left his indelible mark towards initiating this ascendancy by making us realize our civilization’s involution.

His words stemming from his centripetal pursuits, “no great work can be achieved by humbug; It is through love, a passion for truth, and tremendous energy, that all undertakings are accomplished,” are a constant reminder to India’s colossal young human wealth to prepare for realizing a bright future for the nation.

This blog was published in the January 2021 edition of Science India magazine published by Vijnana Bharati.