A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

"Take542 THE TRUE METHOD OF SOCIAL REFORM.tences. They are shot down ;no law for their murderers ;^or they are niggers, they are not human beings, theyare not even ai^mals, and that is the effect of such a violenttaking away of evil by law or by fanaticism. Such is thetestimony of history against every fanatical movement,even for doing good. I have seen that. My own experience has taught me that. Therefore, I cannot join vtaiyone of these condemning societies. Why condemn? Thereare evils in every society ; everybody knows it ; everychild of to-day knows it he can stand ;upon a platform andgive us a haranague on the evils in Hindu society. Every*uneducated foreigner who comes in globetrotting, takes avanishing railway view of India, and lectures most learnedly on the awful evils in India. We admit it. Everybodycan show what evil is, but he is the friend of mankind whofinds a way out of the difficulty. Like the drowning boywho cried to the philosopher, when the philosopher waslecturing him "me out of the water first,"so ourpeople cry, We have had lectures enough, societies enough,papers enough, where is the man who lends us a hand todrag us out ? Where is the man who loves us really ?Where is the man that has sympathy with us ?"Aye, thatman is wanted. That is where I differ entirely from thesereform movements. A hundred years they have been here.What good has been done excepting the creation of a mostvituperative, a most condemnatory literature ? Would toGod it was not there !They have criticised, condemned,abused the orthodox until the orthodox have caught theirone, and paid them in their own coin, and the result isthe creation of a literature in every vernacular which isthe shame of the race, the shame of the country. Is thisreform? Is this leading the nation to glory ? Whose faultis this ?