I have come under no greater influence than the influence of the life and teachings of Swami Vivekananda. ... I have spoken of that life and have testified to the great influence that that life has had on the generation which immediately succeeded the premature departure of the Swamiji from this world. After I began to study in the college, there were friends and elders of mine who used to tell us stories of the days in 1893 when Narendra Datta (Swami Vivekananda)-as he then was - often sat on the pials of the houses of Triplicane and began to discuss with learned pandits in Sanskrit - and some of them in Madras were very learned indeed - the great truths of our religious teaching. The exposition, the dialectic skill he showed, and the masterly way in which he analysed what even to those well-educated and learned pandits were unfathomable depths of Sanskrit literature and law, greatly attracted attention from all and sundry. Swami Vivekananda was a fighter himself. He was one who knew not any kind of physical cowardice or moral cowardice. ...He is a citizen of the world. His contribution will stay on forever. His immortal soul pervades the whole universe.
