Yuva Bharati Magazine - September 2018

In this issue

This year is the 125th year of Swami Vivekananda’s speech at Parliament of Religions, which we in Vivekananda Kendra celebrate as Universal Brotherhood Day. The welcome and adoration that was given to the speeches of Swami Vivekananda during the Parliament of Religions at Chicago made it clear that world is in need of the message of Bharat, but Bharat has to awaken to its sense of duty. The Parliament of Religions was organised as the part of the celebration of the 400th anniversary of the European discovery of America by Columbus. The purpose of the Parliament was to proclaim the Christianity as the ‘Only True Religion.’ The exclusive approach considers one’s religion as the only true religion. Once this exclusive approach is adopted then others’ religions are not tolerated. This intolerance impels the followers of exclusive religion to set out on large-scale conversion of others even by fraud and force. Swami Vivekananda was aware that it is the exclusive approach of these Semitic religions like Christianity and Islam, which was responsible for so much bloodshed and human massacre in the human history.(For example 120 million native Americans were massacred by European Christians after Columbus discovered America. Or as described by Will Durant in the book “History of human Civilization” the bloodiest period in human history was the Muslim invasion period in India.) It is this exclusive approach which is the biggest obstacle in the realization of brotherhood of man.