Swami Vivekananda, was one of India’s foremost religious philosophers. Known for his humanistic approach to the Vedas, the sacred texts of Hinduism, Vivekananda provided a window to the West to access the religion. He was a proponent of the Vedanta philosophy in the United States and England, and appeared as a spokesperson for Hinduism at the World’s Parliament of Religions at Chicago in 1893.

The audience was captivated by Vivekananda; one of the accounts described him as “an orator by divine right and undoubtedly the greatest figure at the Parliament”. On his return to India with a small group of Western disciples in 1897, Vivekananda founded the Ramakrishna Mission on the banks of the Ganga near Kolkata.

Today, at a time when polarisation and fundamentalism has gripped the country, Vivekananda’s approach to Hinduism offers a salve. From a pitch for inclusivity to preaching universal tolerance, Vivekananda propagated Hinduism as a safe space that “has sheltered the persecuted and the refugees of all religions and all nations of the earth”.