Jealousy is the Biggest Obstacle
Swami Vivekananda
Appreciation or no appreciation, I am born to organise these young men, nay, hundreds more in every city are ready to join me, and I want to send them rolling like irresistible waves over India bringing comfort, morality, religion, education to the doors of the meanest and the most downtrodden. And this I will do or die.
Our people have no idea, no appreciation. On the other hand that horrible jealousy and suspicious nature which is the natural outcome of a thousand years of slavery make them stand as enemies to every new idea. Still the Lord is great.
Three things are necessary to make every man great, every nation great:
- Conviction of the powers of goodness.
- Absence of jealousy and suspicion.
- Helping all who are trying to be and do good.
Why should the Hindu nation with all its wonderful intelligence and other things have gone to pieces ? I would answer you. Jealousy. Never were there people more wretchedly jealous of one another, more envious of one another’s fame and name than this wretched Hindu race. And if you ever come out in the West, the absence of this is the first feeling which you will see in the Western nations.
Three men cannot act in concert together in India for five minutes. Each one struggles for power and in the long run the whole organisation comes to grief. Lord ! Lord ! When will we learn not to be jealous ! In such a nation, and especially in Bengal, to create a, band of men who are tied and bound together with a most undying love in spite of difference, is it not wonderful ? This band will in- crease. This idea of wonderful liberality joined with eternal energy and progress must spread over India, it must electrify the whole nation and must enter the very pores of society in spite of the horrible ignorance, spite, caste-feeling, old boobyism, and jealousy which are the heritage of this nation of slaves.