The World is One Family: Vedanta in the Thought of Mahatma Gandhi

Presented at the Vedanta Society of New York on October 20, 2019

Gandhi: Great Soul and Imperfect Human Being

Today, I would like to speak about Vedanta in the thought of Mahatma Gandhi. I feel that this is an especially appropriate topic to discuss at this time, given that this month marks Gandhiji’s 150th birth anniversary (which occurred on October 2nd).

I would like to begin my remarks by noting that I am aware that Gandhi is a controversial figure for many, even today, more than seventy years after his assassination on the 30th of January, 1948. He is widely revered in the Western world, where he has inspired other admired figures like Martin Luther King, Jr. who similarly dedicated their lives to the causes of social justice and human dignity. He has recently become a controversial figure in South Africa, due to renewed scrutiny of his views on the relationship between the Indian community and the indigenous peoples of that country. And he has long been controversial in India, where, while being admired by many, he is also criticized for various decisions and pronouncements which he made, especially in connection with the Partition of India and Pakistan–an event which resulted in the deaths of possibly as many as two million people, and the displacement of fourteen million more (including, I would note, my mother-in-law and her family, as well as many of my friends and close acquaintances).

I do not intend to explore in my remarks today the areas in which Gandhi can be criticized. I would simply like to note at the outset that Gandhi was an imperfect human being: a claim with which he would no doubt be the first to agree, admitting quite openly, as he did in his writings, to a great variety of personal shortcomings, sometimes with a brutal honesty which sometimes makes for an uncomfortable reading experience. I have had the good fortune to get to know members of Gandhi’s family, who similarly attest both to his greatness and to his all-too-human fallibility.

The point I wish to make, here at the start, is precisely this: that Gandhi was both a great soul–a mahātma in the true sense–and an imperfect human being, subject to a range of criticisms. One can admire the genuine spiritual greatness in another person without having to believe that person was perfect and never made a mistake. Unfortunately, in our increasingly polarized world, if one utters even a word of criticism toward a beloved figure, one is immediately taken to be on the ‘other’ side (whatever that may mean), from that figure’s followers. And if one has admiration for a particular figure, it is assumed that one cannot tolerate any criticism of that figure whatsoever. All sense of nuance is being lost as humanity divides itself into warring ideological camps.

Even Nathuram Godse, the man who murdered Mahatma Gandhi, acknowledged the depths of Gandhi’s spiritual greatness, reverently touching his feet in an ancient Hindu gesture of respect before brutally assassinating him. The contradiction between these two, almost simultaneous acts, well illustrates the conflicted feelings that many in India have for this historically important figure.

Vedanta in the Thought of Mahatma Gandhi

The influence of Vedanta upon the thought of Mahatma Gandhi is extensive and profound. It is, of course, very understandable that this should be the case. He was a lifelong adherent of the Vaishnav tradition of Hinduism, growing up in a devout Gujarati Vaishnav family. He was also deeply pluralistic and open to influences from a variety of spiritual traditions, which is of course a trait of Indian culture tracing back to ancient times, to the teaching of the Ṛg Veda: ekaṃ sat viprā bahuḍhā vadanti. “The Real is One; the wise speak of it in many ways.”[1] In addition to Vaishnav Hinduism, he was deeply influenced by the Jain tradition–an influence to which we shall have an occasion to return shortly. Rājchandra Mehta, founder of the Jain Kavi Panth tradition, was a very dear friend of Gandhi’s. His influence on Gandhi was so profound that he is often referred to as ‘Gandhi’s guru.’ Later on in life, Gandhi would also be deeply moved by the New Testament, and by the Sermon on the Mount in particular (upon which Swami Prabhavananda, the founder of the Vedanta Society of Southern California, would eventually write a famous commentary, published under the title The Sermon on the Mount According to Vedanta).

The chief source, however, to which Gandhi refers again and again throughout his many writings is the Bhagavad Gītā. Gandhi called the Gītā his “dictionary of daily reference.”[2] The Bhagavad Gītā is of course a central Vaishnav text; but it is also a central source for Vedanta, as part of the Prasthānatraya, or ‘triple foundation’ of Vedanta, alongside the Brahma Sūtras and the Upaniṣads. Gandhi gave a series of lectures on this important Hindu text, which was published in 1946 as a book under the title The Bhagavad Gītā According to Gandhi.

In addition to the Vedantic influences he received from his upbringing, as well as his close and deep reading of the Gītā, Gandhi was also a great admirer of both Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda. The imprint of the thought of both of these major figures and shapers of the modern Vedanta movement can be clearly discerned in his works. Indeed, Gandhi wrote the following of Sri Ramakrishna:

The story of Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa’s life is a story of religion in practice. His life enables us to see God face to face. No one can read the story of his life without being convinced that God alone is real and that all else is an illusion. [Sri] Ramakrishna was a living embodiment of godliness. His sayings are not those of a mere learned man but they are pages from the Book of Life. They are revelations of his own experiences. They therefore leave the reader an impression which he cannot resist. In this age of skepticism Ramakrishna represents an example of a bright and living faith which gives solace to thousands of men and women who would otherwise have remained without spiritual light. Ramakrishna’s life was an object-lesson in Ahimsa. His love knew no limits geographical or otherwise. May his divine love be an inspiration to all.[3]

Regarding Swami Vivekananda, Gandhi actually tried to visit Swamiji in 1902, when the Indian National Congress was holding its annual meeting in Calcutta. Gandhi was thirty-two years old at the time, while Swamiji, only thirty-nine, was, tragically, on his death bed and was unable to receive visitors.[4] One would very much like to have access to the alternative reality where these two figures met and managed to speak to one another. Were such a conversation to have occurred and to have been recorded, the resulting document would certainly be a source of enlightenment for the rest of humanity.

The Vedantic influences on Gandhi’s thought are so extensive that one could likely write a book enumerating and exploring them. I have found Gandhi’s thought echoing that of Thakur and Swamiji most clearly, though, in three particular areas: his commitment to serving the poor, his religious pluralism, and his rejection of prejudice based on birth-caste, or jāti.

On Serving the Poor

The idea of karma yoga involving seva, or selfless service, as a path to God-realization is one of the most distinctive elements emphasized by Swami Vivekananda throughout his life. This idea was first sparked in Swamiji’s mind when, as the young Narendranath Datta, and disciple of Sri Ramakrishna, he heard his Master make the statement, “Jība Śiba.” In other words, the jīvas, or living beings, are one with Śiva: with God. All souls are divine. Service to any living being is therefore service to God. Daridra Narāyaṇ, or God in the form of the Poor, thus became a central ideal for Vivekananda, who later wrote:

Blessed are they whose bodies get destroyed in the service of others. Wealth, and even life itself, the sage always holds ready for the service of others… ‘In this evanescent world, where every-thing is falling to pieces, we have to make the highest use of what time we have,’ says the Bhakta [or devotee]; and…the highest use of life is to hold it at the service of all beings.[5]

Swamiji also wrote, however, that one should, “Offer everything you have unto the service of the Lord.”[6] But there is no contradiction between these statements. Because of the all-pervasive presence of Brahman, dwelling within all beings–because the jīva is Śiva–a practitioner of Vedanta does not distinguish, according to Vivekananda, between “the service of the Lord” and “the service of others.” The service of the Lord is the service of others, and the service of others is the service of the Lord. In Swamiji’s words, “‘They worship Me best who worship My worshippers. These are all My children and your privilege is to serve them’ — is the teaching of Hindu scriptures.”[7]

Swami Vivekananda’s vision of seva is not a vision of charity. The ideal of charity tends to assume class distinctions among different groups of human beings based upon material wealth. It encourages the wealthy to aid the ‘less fortunate’ out of the goodness of their hearts: an act which can be done out of pride and with a sense of moral superiority based on the idea that one has earned one’s wealth, and that if others are not similarly fortunate, it must be due to some moral failing or flaw. This is something that Vivekananda strongly rejects. He says:

Do not stand on a high pedestal and take five cents in your hand and say, ‘Here, my poor man,’ but be grateful that the poor man is there, so that by making a gift to him you are able to help yourself. It is not the receiver that is blessed, but it is the giver. Be thankful that you are allowed to exercise your power of benevolence and mercy in the world, and thus become pure and perfect.[8]

The ‘less fortunate’ are God in human form, offering us an opportunity to serve, and thereby realize our own divine potential.

In terms of what kind of service, specifically, is most helpful to the poor, Swamiji offers, again, not a vision of charity, which tends to assume that contemporary disparities of wealth are a natural feature of society, and will always exist. Swamiji offers a more radical vision of enabling the self-empowerment of the poor, largely through education. He writes:

The only service to be done for our lower classes is to give them education, to develop their lost individuality. That is the great task between our people and princes. Up to now nothing has been done in that direction. Priest-power and foreign conquest have trodden them down for centuries, and at last the poor of India have forgotten that they are human beings. They are to be given ideas; their eyes are to be opened to what is going on in the world around them; and then they will work out their own salvation. Every nation, every man and every woman must work out their own salvation. Give them ideas — that is the only help they require, and then the rest must follow as the effect.[9]

This emphasis on self-empowerment, which Gandhi would convey with his concept of swaraj, or self-rule, is one of the strongest links between the thought of these two figures.

Seva, again, for Vivekananda is not subservient to–much less a diversion from–the spiritual path. It is the spiritual path, in a concrete manifestation that is no less valuable than the study of the scriptures, the practice of meditation, or devotional worship. And it is also an expression of spiritual liberation, not to be seen so much in a linear, cause-and-effect manner, but in a dialectical fashion, as both means and embodiment.[10] This is in keeping with the broader Vedantic ideal that the ethical virtues are, for those of us who are still on the path to realization, a means toward that realization; but for those who have attained realization, they are simply the spontaneous reflection of that realization. A sādhak, one who is on the spiritual path, serves in order to attain realization. A realized being serves for the sheer joy of serving.

The most obvious embodiment of Vivekananda’s ideal of seva, upon which he has had the clearest and most direct influence, is in the service work that is carried out by the sannyāsīs of the Ramakrishna Order and their lay supporters. I would like to argue, though, that there is also a direct line of continuity from Swami Vivekananda’s ideal and Gandhi’s constructive program–to the extent that Gandhi could well be regarded as a practical Vedantin of the Vivekananda school of thought.

The “Constructive Programme” is the title of an essay by Mahatma Gandhi which was first published in 1941, with a revised and enlarged edition appearing in 1945. In this essay, Gandhi defines the constructive program as the “construction of Poorna Swaraj or complete Independence by truthful and non-violent means.”[11] More than a mere political program for Indian independence from British rule, however, the constructive program, as Gandhi presents it, involves a complete transformation of Indian society, through peaceful means, into a just, or dharmic, social order that is characterized by independence, not only in a conventional political sense–although it includes such independence–but in a spiritual sense as well. It is a holistic program for the transformation of not only the nation, but of the communities and the individuals that constitute it. One can see Gandhi’s constructive program as an extension of Swamiji’s spiritual ideal, which is aimed mainly at the individual, to the whole of society.

True independence, according to Gandhi’s thought, “is never exclusive. It is, therefore, wholly compatible with interdependence within or without.”[12] As a spiritual ideal, it also cannot, at least at the societal level, be identified with any particular, concrete embodiment of it, but can only be approached asymptotically. In Gandhi’s words, “Practice will always fall short of the theory, even as the drawn line falls short of the theoretical line of Euclid. Therefore, Independence will be complete only to the extent of our approach in practice to truth and non-violence.”[13] These twin ideals of truth and nonviolence–satya and ahiṃsā–are indispensable to the goal and to one another.

This is very close in its sensibility to Swami Vivekananda’s teaching, in regard to karma yoga, that, “This world is like a dog’s curly tail, and people have been striving to straighten it out for hundreds of years; but when they let it go, it has curled up again.”[14]

This does not mean that specific, concrete goals are not to be achieved as part of the process of the unfoldment of the higher ideal. Indeed, Gandhi’s “Constructive Programme” essay consists largely of an outline of such concrete goals and practical suggestions for their achievement. The idea is that, even as specific problems are solved, it is in the nature of the material world that, so long as we inhabit it–so long as we inhabit saṃsāra, the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth–we will be involved in problem-solving. Problems exist in order to be solved, in order to give us spiritual exercise, as it were, that will enable us to realize our potential divinity. As Swamiji says:

The world is a grand moral gymnasium wherein we have all to take exercise so as to become stronger and stronger spiritually.[15]

On Religious Pluralism

The first concrete goal that Gandhi outlines is communal unity. Here we see a particularly strong resonance with the Vedantic teaching of both Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda on the harmony of religions, or dharma-samanvaya. As Gandhi writes that:

Everybody is agreed about the necessity of this [communal] unity. But everybody does not know that unity does not mean political unity which may be imposed. It means an unbreakable heart unity. The first thing essential for achieving such unity is for every Congressman [or member of the independence party which Gandhi led], whatever his religion may be, to represent in his own person Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Zoroastrian, Jew, etc., shortly, every Hindu and non-Hindu. He has to feel his identity with every one of the millions of the inhabitants of Hindustan. In order to realize this, every Congressman will cultivate personal friendship with persons representing faiths other than his own. He should have the same regard for the other faiths as he has for his own…In such a happy state of things there would be no disgraceful cry at the stations such as ‘Hindu water’ and ‘Muslim water’ or ‘Hindu tea’ and ‘Muslim tea.’ [In Gandhi’s time, Hindus and Muslims drank from segregated wells and tea stalls.] There would be no separate rooms or spots for Hindus and non-Hindus in schools and colleges, no communal schools, colleges and hospitals…The beginning of such a revolution has to be made by Congressmen without any political motive behind the correct conduct. Political unity will be its natural fruit.[16]

It is significant that the communal unity that Gandhi advocates is not merely a political stance. It is not ‘vote bank politics.’ Gandhi’s ideal is, rather, a sincere embrace of the religious other, from which political unity would naturally flow. It is therefore not unlike the ideal that Vivekananda outlines in his various discourses on the world’s religions and to which he refers as “universal religion.” In the effort to realize this ideal, Vivekananda rejects superficial notions of mere tolerance in favor of the “unbreakable heart unity” of which Gandhi writes. For although tolerance is certainly preferable intolerance, it falls far short of the holistic Vedantic ideal. Swami Vivekananda, rejecting both tolerance and exclusion, writes:

Our watchword, then, will be acceptance, and not exclusion. Not only toleration, for so-called toleration is often blasphemy, and I do not believe in it. I believe in acceptance. Why should I tolerate? Toleration means that I think that you are wrong and I am just allowing you to live. Is it not a blasphemy to think that you and I are allowing others to live? I accept all religions that were in the past, and worship with them all; I worship God with every one of them, in whatever form they worship Him. I shall go to the mosque of the Mohammedan [that is, Muslim]; I shall enter the Christian’s church and kneel before the crucifix; I shall enter the Buddhist temple, where I shall take refuge in Buddha and in his Law. I shall go into the forest and sit down in meditation with the Hindu, who is trying to see the Light which enlightens the heart of everyone…Not only shall I do all these, but I shall keep my heart open for all that may come in the future. Is God’s book finished? Or is it still a continuous revelation going on? It is a marvelous book — these spiritual revelations of the world. The Bible, the Vedas, the Koran, and all other sacred books are but so many pages, and an infinite number of pages remain yet to be unfolded. I would leave it open for all of them. We stand in the present, but open ourselves to the infinite future. We take in all that has been in the past, enjoy the light of the present, and open every window of the heart for all that will come in the future. Salutation to all the prophets of the past, to all the great ones of the present, and to all that are to come in the future![17]

Gandhi, along similar lines, writes:

Religions are different roads converging upon the same point. What does it matter that we take different roads so long as we reach the same goal? In reality there are as many religions as there are individuals. I believe in the fundamental truth of all great religions of the world. I believe that they are all God-given, and I believe that they were necessary for the people to whom these religions were revealed. And I believe that, if only we could all of us read the scriptures of different faiths from the standpoint of the followers of those faiths we should find that they were at bottom all one and were all helpful to one another.[18]

And both Vivekananda and Gandhi are echoing the words of Sri Ramakrishna:

I have practiced all religions–Hinduism, Islam, Christianity–and I have also followed the paths of the different Hindu sects. I have found that it is the same God toward whom all are directing their steps, though along different paths. He who is called Krishna is also called Shiva, and bears the name of the Primal Energy, Jesus, and Allah as well–the same Rama with a thousand names.[19]

God can be realised through all paths. All religions are true. The important thing is to reach the roof. You can reach it by stone stairs or by wooden stairs or by bamboo steps or by a rope. You can also climb up a bamboo pole…Each religion is only a path leading to God, as rivers come from different directions and ultimately become one in the one ocean… All religions and all paths call upon their followers to pray to one and the same God. Therefore one should not show disrespect to any religion or religious opinion.[20]

Very much in the spirit of Ramakrishna, Gandhi’s pluralism was itself pluralistic: that is, in the very act of articulating his view that many religions and philosophies are able to express the truth and to take their sincere practitioners ever closer to the realization of their potential divinity, he drew upon multiple traditions. Specifically, he drew upon the Jain philosophy of anekāntavāda (which I mentioned in the presentation that I gave here in June, on Vedanta and Jainism).

While Gandhi did embrace, in many of his writings, Advaita philosophy, he also spoke and wrote frequently of a personal God–distinct from humanity and from the rest of the universe–and of the importance of discerning and behaving in accordance with this God’s will, and of the actions of God as an agent in human history–theistic concepts much more in line with Vaishnav Dvaita philosophy, or with Abrahamic monotheism, than with the ultimately impersonal and formless, or nirguṇa Brahman of Advaita Vedanta.

In early 1926 or late 1925, this apparent inconsistency in his thought was pointed out by a reader of Gandhi’s English-language newspaper, Young India, in a letter to the editor. Gandhi’s response to this letter, in the January 21, 1926 issue, reveals the debt of his thought to Jainism:

I am an advaitist and yet I can support Dvaitism (dualism). The world is changing every moment, and is therefore unreal, it has no permanent existence. But though it is constantly changing, it has a something about it which persists and it is therefore to that extent real. I have therefore no objection to calling it real and unreal, and thus being called an Anekantavadi or a Syadvadi. [Syādvāda is the Jain doctrine that claims are true syāt: that is, in a certain sense, or from a certain point of view, rather than being absolutely true or false.]

Gandhi continues:

But my Syadvada is not the syadvada of the learned, it is peculiarly my own. I cannot engage in a debate with them. It has been my experience that I am always true from my point of view, and am often wrong from the point of view of my honest critics. I know that we are both right from our respective points of view. And this knowledge saves me from attributing motives to my opponents or critics. The seven blind men who gave seven different descriptions of the elephant were all right from their respective points of view, and wrong from the point of view of one another, and right and wrong from the point of view of the man who knew the elephant. I very much like this doctrine of the manyness of reality. It is this doctrine that has taught me to judge a Musalman [a Muslim] from his own standpoint and a Christian from his. Formerly I used to resent the ignorance of my opponents. Today I can love them because I am gifted with the eye to see myself as others see me and vice versa. I want to take the whole world in the embrace of my love. My anekantavad is the result of the twin doctrine of Satya and Ahimsa [truth and nonviolence].[21]

For Gandhi, again, openness to the truths of others is not merely a matter of political expediency, or what we might today call ‘political correctness.’ It stems from the core nature of existence, and is an application of the ancient yogic values of truth and nonviolence.

On Eliminating Casteism

After communal unity, the second goal Gandhi outlines is the removal of untouchability–and by extension, of caste prejudice in general–which he calls a “blot and curse upon Hinduism.”[22] Here, again, he echoes Swami Vivekananda, who was quite clear, and characteristically blunt, in his rejection of caste and untouchability, which interfered with human beings’ ability to see God in one another. Swamiji fiercely ridiculed what he called the “Don’t-touchism” of the Hinduism of his time, deriding it as “kitchen religion” for its emphasis on rules regarding dining between the members of different castes:

The present religion of the Hindus is neither the path of Knowledge or Reason–it is “Don’t-touchism.”–“Don’t touch me.” “Don’t touch me.”–that exhausts its description. “Don’t-touchism” is a form of mental disease. Beware! All expansion is life, all contraction is death. All love is expansion, all selfishness is contraction. Love is therefore the only law of life. See that you do not lose your lives in this dire irreligion of “Don’t-touchism.” Must the teaching (Atma-vat sarvabhuteshu)–“Looking upon all beings as your own self”–be confined to books alone? How will they grant salvation who cannot feed a hungry mouth with a crumb of bread? How will those, who become impure at the mere breath of others, purify others?[23]

Finally, as we have already seen, Vivekananda viewed the most vital service that could be rendered to the poor of India as education, which could enable them to empower themselves–or, in his words, “work out their own salvation.” Here, too, there is a direct line of continuity between Gandhi’s thought and Swami Vivekananda’s. Recall that Swami Vivekananda specifically links education with making the poor aware of their situation of political oppression. The particular kind of education he has in mind is one which will allow them to “develop their lost individuality.” “Priest-power and foreign conquest have trodden them down for centuries, and at last the poor of India have forgotten that they are human beings. They are to be given ideas; their eyes are to be opened to what is going on in the world around them; and then they will work out their own salvation.”

Gandhi, again echoing Vivekananda, says that the education that he has in mind, although including “literary education”–or education in the conventional sense of the term–will consist primarily of liberating knowledge that will enable the people to under-stand their situation and lift themselves above it.

The villagers know nothing of foreign rule and its evils. What little knowledge they have picked up fills them with the awe the foreigner inspires. The result is the dread and hatred of the foreigner and his rule. They do not know how to get rid of it. They do not know that the foreigner’s presence is due to their own weaknesses and their ignorance of the power they possess to rid themselves of the foreign rule. My adult education means, therefore, first, true political education of the adult by word of mouth.[24]

Conclusion

In celebration of the one hundred fiftieth birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, we ought to acknowledge the profound debt his thought process owes to Vedanta (and of course to Jainism and to various systems of thought upon which he drew, putting his spirit of pluralism into action). We began by acknowledging that Gandhi himself was an imperfect human being: as are we all, so long as we are in the process of unfolding our as-yet-unrealized divine potential. This ideal of a divine potential, realized by Sri Ramakrishna and proclaimed to the world by Swami Vivekananda, was the very ideal which Gandhi sought to manifest in the social and political realms. It is an ideal that we still seek to realize today, not in the utopian belief that the world–the curly of tail of the dog–can ever be made to conform fully to our limited ideas of perfection, but in the belief that, as Swamiji has taught, the very effort to do so may itself serve to draw us each individually nearer to the ideal, even as we resolve specific, concrete problems in the world, utilizing our problems like the exercise equipment in the grand moral gymnasium of life.

What Thakur, Swamiji, and Mahatma Gandhi all encourage us to do is to realize that, in the words of the Mahā Upaniṣad, vasudhaiva kutumbakam.[25] “The world is one family.” In other words, the world is a mirror of our own consciousness. We cannot transform the world without transforming our consciousness, and we cannot transform our consciousness without transforming the world. What we do to others, we do to ourselves. Let us therefore live lives of compassion, seeing ourselves in others, and others in ourselves. In the words of Swami Vivekananda, “Do not injure another. Love everyone as your own self, because the whole universe is one. In injuring another, I am injuring myself; in loving another, I am loving myself.”[26] This is the core message of Mahatma Gandhi, and the message of Vedanta.

[1] Ṛg Veda 1.164: 46c

[2] Mohandas K. Gandhi, The Story of My Experiments with Truth (1957), p. 265

[3] Cited in Satyam Roy Chowdhury, ed., Ramakrishna for You

[4] Joseph Lelyveld, Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India (New York: Vintage Books, 2012), 50

[5] Vivekananda, Complete Works, Volume 3, “Para-Bhakti or Supreme Devotion: Universal Love and How It Leads to Self-Surrender,” pp. 81–84.

[6] Vivekananda, Complete Works, Volume 1, “Krishna,” pp. 437–445.

[7] Swami Vivekananda, Complete Works, Volume 4, “My Master,” pp. 154–187.

[8] Swami Vivekananda, Complete Works, Volume 1, Karma Yoga, p. 76.

[9] Swami Vivekananda, Complete Works, Volume 4, “Our Duty to the Masses,” pp. 361–364. Emphasis in the original.

[10] I owe this insight to Rita D. Sherma, personal communication.

[11] Gandhi, “Constructive Programme: Its Meaning and Place” (Ahmedabad: The Navajivan Trust, 1945), p. 7

[12] Ibid.

[13] Ibid.

[14] Swami Vivekananda, Complete Works, Volume 1, Karma Yoga, p. 79.

[15] Ibid, p. 80

[16] Gandhi, “Constructive Programme,” p. 8

[17] Swami Vivekananda, Complete Works, Volume 2, “The Way to the Realisation of a Universal Religion,” pp. 359–374.

[18] Glyn Richards, A Sourcebook of Modern Hinduism, p. 156, 157.

[19] Swami Nikhilananda, The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, p. 60.

[20] Richards, p. 65.

[21] Gandhi, Complete Works (1981), p. 30.

[22] Gandhi, “Constructive Programme,” p. 10.

[23] Swami Vivekananda, The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Volume 6, pp. 319–320.

[24] Gandhi “Constructive Programme,” p. 17

[25] Mahā Upaniṣad 6:71–73.

[26] Vivekananda, Complete Works, Volume 1, p. 364.