Swami Vivekananda...was a democratic saint. He revived for us the idea of nationhood. He was the first of those, who made it possible to think of India as a whole irrespective of the existing differences of class, creed, colour and custom. He pleaded for the driving away of everything that would prevent the union of India. He knew that unless India was one spiritually and intellectually, India could not step into the outer world. A distracted, quarrelsome, feeble minded India would not be of any assistance in the world and therefore he said, Unite ... our ship of religion and of State is now laden full of many cargos, precious, some by no means precious, some wholly nugatory. We must throw aside such cargo. The storm is there. The great winds are blowing and unless the useless cargo is thrown aside, the ship will sink. The Swami asked us to sink the unnecessary cargo. And unless we got that lesson India will perish as the several other nations have perished. ...His gospel was the gospel of courage, of hope and admiration, of eschewal and assimilation.
