Sri Ramakrishna and the Freedom Movement - SWAMI VEDANISHTHANANDA

75th Anniversary of India's Independence The year 2022 is significant for India as it celebrates 75 years of attaining independence from the colonial domination. It was after a long struggle that we could free our motherland from foreign rule and make this "tryst with destiny".

On the eve of independence, the first Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, observed:

At the stroke of midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance....The achievement we celebrate today is but a step, an opening of opportunity, to the greater triumphs and achievements that await us.¹

This year gives us the opportunity to evaluate whether we have marched forward towards "greater triumphs and achievements" as mentioned above. And in this report-card we need to look into the past as well as the future that is, before and after 1947.

Spirituality: The Soul of India

The soul of India is her spirituality. It was this that Swami Vivekananda again and again proclaimed through his lectures and writings. In his words: "This is the very reason that this nation has lived on, in spite of hundreds of years of persecution, in spite of nearly a thousand years of foreign rule and foreign oppression. This nation still lives, it still holds to God, to the treasure house of religion and spirituality."2

If the freedom of India is actually a journey to know or realise her spirit and manifest it in the lives of her citizens, then looking back at 75 years of her independence, we understand that the journey has only begun. The struggle for "real freedom" is a continuing process and evolves as we move forward in time.

Real Freedom

When we look at the spiritual tradition of India from its ancient past, we find many definitions of "freedom" which are much above the political independence which most people understand as the freedom we got in 1947.