22 HIS MAJESTY’S OPPONENT
one’s country. The spirit of self- ful fill ing yet selfless ser vice was distinct
in Subhas’s mind from “the selfish monasticism of the Middle Ages,” as
well as “the modern utilitarianism of Bentham and Mill.” It was Vive-
kananda’s radically modern interpretation of the ancient scriptures
that appealed to Subhas. His religion was based on “a rational philoso-
phy” of the Vedanta, and he dedicated his life to bringing about “a rec-
onciliation between science and religion.” His stirring call for equality
was a harbinger of modern democracy in a hierarchical society. He had
envisaged India’s future as belonging to the Sudras, “the downtrodden
masses.” His passionate cry, “Say brothers at the top of your voice, ‘The
naked Indian, the illiterate Indian, the Brahman Indian, the pariah In-
dian is my brother!’” was not just a plea for equality, but an invocation
of the value of shraddha, “faith”—faith in oneself built on profound re-
spect. If Swamiji taught the virtues of seva and shraddha, the teachings
of Vivekananda’s spiritual preceptor Ramakrishna Parahamsa, who had
been the high priest at the Kali temple in Dakshineshwar on the out-
skirts of Calcutta, brought home to Subhas the indispensability of tyag
(“sac ri fice”) through his oft- repeated dictum that “only through re-
nunciation was realization possible.”^17
The path prescribed by Vivekananda led Subhas toward a combina-
tion of individualistic yoga and social ser vice in the form of voluntary
work in the villages. The practice of yoga, representing the individual’s
pursuit of union with the godhead, was supplemented with an effort to
relieve human suf fering. The master’s teaching that “revolt is necessary
for self- fulfillment” inspired a rejection of anachronistic familial and
social conventions that restricted the sphere of community ser vice.
Sanskrit verses enjoining obedience to one’s parents were now dis-
carded in favor of those that extolled de fi ance. Friends who were pre-
pared to follow Vivekananda’s ideals seemed closer than family mem-
bers who showed little empathy or un der stand ing. Subhas remembered
later that he felt “more at home when away from home.” Yet the dra-
matic transformation that Subhas underwent in 1912 was best cap-
tured in a series of intense letters that the fif teen- year- old boy wrote to
his mother.^18
Until December 1911, the year the partition of Bengal was rescinded,
Subhas was “po lit i cally so undeveloped” (as he recorded in his autobi-