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Swami Vivekananda was in every sense of the term, a Nation Builder, the foremost architect of our national destiny. He was a complex personality with many facets and with several talents. When Swamiji's involvement with the spirits of philosophy with all its theoretical and practical implications is widely acknowledged, the economic dimensions of his ideology should not be thrown into oblivion.
Swamiji was the first to realise that economic development is one of the essential pre-conditions for a country's effective participation in world affairs. The appalling poverty of his nation was always haunting him. After his speech in the Parliament of Religions, in the midst of universal acclamation, Swamiji could not to merely sit and enjoy a modicum of mental peace. While staying in a room furnished with luxury, instead of feeling happy in this splendid environment, he felt extremely miserable. Overcome with emotion, he fell on the ground crying out that fie should enjoy such luxury when his own Motherland remained sunk in utmost poverty. He was perturbed that when millions of dollars were spent for the personal comforts of citizens in that nation, his own countrymen slaved and died for two meals a day. "Who will raise the masses of India? Who will give
them bread?" These two questions it, Ills mind show the deep love that welled up in his heart at the thought of the poor, the distressed and the downtrodden people of his Motherland. In most of his letters, he wrote from America, one can find the eloquent utterances of' these thoughts on the removal of poverty and upliftment of the standard of living, of the masses.
DR.R.CAUVERY and PROF.U.K.SUDHA NAYAK
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