More than a hundred years ago Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) gave a talk entitled The Mission of the Vedanta, proclaiming the Vedantic essence of life that should become universal, not in the sense of dogmatic religious imposition but in the discovery of the first principles on which is founded the harmony of existence. His work in India and abroad had made a deep impression in the hearts of the perceptive and the alert of the time and there was good reason to be proud of his achievements. That one can be assertive without being aggressive is what one sees in this staunch preceptor of values based on spiritual ideology. We present in the following excerpts from the address he delivered at Kumbhakonam, a centre of religious learning in the South.

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