A new biography explores the life of Vivekananda, a Hindu ascetic who promoted a more inclusive vision of religion
One morning in September 1893, a 30-year-old Indian man sat on a curb on Chicago’s Dearborn Street wearing an orange turban and a rumpled scarlet robe. He had come to the United States to speak at the Parliament of the World’s Religions, part of the famous World Columbian Exposition. The trouble was, he hadn’t actually been invited. Now he was spending nights in a boxcar and days wandering around a foreign city. Unknown in America, the young Hindu man, named Vivekananda, was a revered spiritual teacher back home. By the time he left Chicago, he had accomplished his mission: to present Indian culture as broader, deeper and more sophisticated than anyone in the U.S. realized.
Every American and European who dabbles in meditation or yoga today owes something to Vivekananda. Before his arrival in Chicago, no Indian guru had enjoyed a global platform quite like a world’s fair. Americans largely saw India as an exotic corner of the British Empire, filled with tigers and idol worshippers. The Parliament of the World’s Religions was meant to be a showcase for Protestantism, particularly mainline groups like Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists and Episcopalians.
So the audience was astonished when Vivekananda, a representative of the world’s oldest religion, seemed anything but primitive—the highly educated son of an attorney in Calcutta’s high court who spoke elegant English. He presented a paternal, all-inclusive vision of India that made America seem young and provincial.
“I am proud to belong to a religion which has taught the world both tolerance and universal acceptance,” he declared on September 11, 1893. “We believe not only in universal toleration, but we accept all religions as true. I am proud to belong to a nation which has sheltered the persecuted and the refugees of all religions and all nations of the earth. I am proud to tell you that we have gathered in our bosom the purest remnant of the Israelites, who came to Southern India and took refuge with us in the very year in which their holy temple was shattered to pieces by Roman tyranny. I am proud to belong to the religion which has sheltered and is still fostering the remnant of the grand Zoroastrian nation.”
Vivekananda was well-equipped to bridge cultural divides. As a young man named Narendranath Datta, he’d attended Christian schools where he’d been steeped in the Bible and European philosophy. According to one story, his introduction to Indian spirituality came by way of a lecture on English romantic literature. A professor, a Scottish clergyman, mentioned the ecstasies of a nearby guru called Ramakrishna during a discussion of transcendental experiences in William Wordsworth’s poem “The Excursion.” The students ended up paying Ramakrishna a visit, and Datta went on to embrace Ramakrishna as his guru and adopt a renunciate’s name, Vivekananda, which meant “the bliss of gaining wisdom.”
Now, in Chicago, Vivekananda’s words were warm and inviting, but they were also the words of an activist. That same year, Mohandas Gandhi had arrived in South Africa, where he upended the social order by walking on whites-only paths and refusing to leave first-class railroad cars. Vivekananda likewise wanted to show the world that Indians would no longer be demeaned and defined by European occupiers. He found sympathetic audiences in America, a country that liked to think of itself as anti-colonialist (even as it was on the verge of annexing Hawaii and the Philippines).
After speaking to the crowd in Chicago, Vivekananda traveled to Detroit, Boston and New York; he met people who’d been exploring new belief systems, including Christian Science. Many of his listeners were women who applauded his message that the divine was present in every human being, transcending gender and social status. Sarah Ellen Waldo, a relative of Ralph Waldo Emerson, later recalled the experience of strolling through Manhattan with Vivekananda by her side: “It required no little courage to walk up Broadway beside that flaming coat. As the Swami strode along in lordly indifference, with me just behind, half out of breath, every eye was turned on us.” Another female enthusiast was invigorated by “the air of freedom that blew through the room” when Vivekananda debated the president of Smith College. The woman’s father disapproved of her interest in the Indian guru, but when a new calf was born to her family, she defiantly named it “Veda” (after the Hindu scriptures of the same name).
Vivekananda spent many of his remaining years traveling around the U.S. and Europe. He died of mysterious causes in 1902, at the age of 39. But generations of Indian gurus who traveled to the West went on to follow his highly successful approach, whether visiting British spiritualist societies or lecturing to middle-aged audiences in Los Angeles living rooms. In the 1960s, the Beatles launched a more youthful wave of interest when they visited India. But the underlying message of teachers from the East has changed little since Vivekananda’s first visit: The individual is cosmic, and meditation and yoga are universal tools for experiencing that underlying reality, compatible with any culture or religion.
Such stories and insights about Vivekananda’s life come alive in Guru to the World, a rich and insightful new biography by Ruth Harris, a historian at the University of Oxford’s All Souls College. Smithsonian spoke to Harris about Vivekananda’s travels through the West and how they gave rise to a kind of Eastern spirituality that most Westerners would recognize today.