Cosmic Love and Human Apathy: Swami Vivekananda's Restatement of Religion

by Jyotirmaya Sharma

The truth is rarely simple. The common consensus is that Swami Vivekananda, as Sri Ramakrishna's chosen disciple, spread his master's message across the world. The fact, though, is that after Ramakrishna's death in 1886, Vivekananda not only shifted the devotional emphasis of the new monastic order from Kali to Shiva, he also embraced a world far removed from Ramakrishna's. Cosmic Love and Human Apathy is the story of this rupture. Integral to the tale is the issue of Hindu identity. The essays in this volume examine Vivekananda's formulation of Hinduism as religion: the most definitive restatement of Hinduism in modern history. Erudite yet accessible, consistently probing and sceptical of hoary traditions, controversial and thought-provoking, Cosmic Love and Human Apathy is an invaluable addition to the existing scholarship on one of India's greatest religious and social icons.

Genres: Hinduism

328 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

Jyotirmaya Sharma is professor of political science at the University of Hyderabad, India. In December 2010, the Swedish Collegium of Advanced Study at Uppsala elected him Fellow for the Spring Semester of 2012. The Lichtenberg-Kolleg at Goettingen has also elected him Fellow for the academic year 2012-13. His recent publications include, Hindutva: Exploring the Idea of Hindu Nationalism (Penguin/Viking, 2003; second edition published in december 2011; it has been translated into Marathi, Telugu and Malayalam) and Terrifying Vision: M.S. Golwalkar, the RSS and India (Penguin/Viking, 2007; translated into Malayalam). His critical examination of the ideas of Swami Vivekananda and 19th century restatements of Hinduism has now been published as Cosmic Love and Human Apathy: Swami Vivekananda's Restatement of Religion (HarperCollins, 2013). He is currently working on the thought of Gandhi. An edited volume titled Grounding Morality: Freedom, Knowledge and the Plurality of Cultures (co-edited with A. Raghuramaraju) was published by Routledge (2010). He has been a fellow of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies and the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, and has lectured at the universities of Baroda, Hull, Oxford, and the St. Stephens College, Delhi. He was visiting professor in democratic theory at the South Asia Institute at Ruprecht-Karls University at Heidelberg in 2005. The International House, Japan, awarded him the Asia Leadership Fellow Programme fellowship for 2008. Sharma also held senior editorial positions at the Times of India and The Hindu between 1998-2006, and continues to write occasional columns for Mail Today, Hindustan Times and Outlook.