LET INDIA ALONE
(New Discoveries, Vol. 2, p. 314.)
[Daily Eagle, April 8, 1895]
Then It will Come Out All Right,
Says Swami Vivekananda
The English people were given a raking over last night by Swami Vivekananda of India, who lectured to a throng at the Pouch mansion. (Of which no verbatim transcript is available. Cf. the newspaper report “Some Customs of the Hindus”, Complete Works, II: 515-17 , for a complementary report of the same lecture.) He said that the English used three B’s — Bible, brandy and bayonets — in civilizing India. The preacher went ahead with the Bible to get the lay of the fortifications. The English, he said, had exaggerated the social conditions of India in their writings. They got their ideas from the Pariahs, who were a sort of human scavenger. No self-respecting Hindoo, he declared, would associate with an Englishman. The story about widows throwing themselves under the chariot of Juggernaut he declared to be a myth. Child marriage and caste he agreed were bad. Caste, he said, originated with the mechanics’ guilds. What India needed was to be let alone, and it would come out all right.