Swami Vivekananda’s French Interview: A New Discovery

We are happy to present what, to the best of our knowledge, is a hitherto unknown interview given by Swami Vivekananda in French language to a newspaper in France. Interestingly the interview was published on 11 September 1900, exactly seven years after Swamiji burst upon the world from the platform of the Parliament of Religions in Chicago. Swami Surarchitananda discovered this interview during an online archive search and Ms. Irina Croitor has translated it into English.

- JACQUES BONZON.

Swami Vivekananda’s proficiency in French is a documented fact. In Exposition Universelle held in Paris in 1900, he spoke on “highly technical matters before a gathering of scholars”in French.1 A news item published in the Indian Mirror on 12 December 1900 mentions that he delivered “a very impressive and eloquent speech in French at Paris.”2 During this period, he gave an interview to the French newspaper La Liberte.

La Liberte published this interview titled ‘Eastern Interviews: Swami Vivekananda’ on  Mardi,3 11 September 1900. Jacques Bonzon, evidently a reporter affiliated to the paper, interviewed the world renowned sannyasin from India. Swami Vivekananda answered questions on a wide range of subjects— monasticism in India and its hierarchy, finding a guru, monastic vows, monastic community and leaving monastic life; caste system in India; evolution of religion in India; God, Nature, Soul; superstitious cult and miracles; polygamy, the ideal of womanhood; and organisation and education in the West.

The interview:

EASTERN INTERVIEWS

Swami Vivekananda

India is taking revenge. For four centuries, Christian Europe has been sending her missionaries who, by their own admission, have left her quite resistant.

India, today, wants to convert its converters. The other evening I had a conversation with a Hindu missionary, Mr. Vivekananda, who is going to preach sound doctrine throughout the world and who has stopped for a few months in France.