Prime Minister Narendra Modi paid tributes to Swami Vivekananda on Monday at a students’ convention to mark the 125th anniversary of Swami Vivekananda’s Chicago address and Pt Deendayal Upadhyaya’s centenary celebrations.
Read: Swami Vivekananda, ‘youngster from India won over the world’
The theme of the convention was ‘Young India, New India’.
Here are highlights of PM Modi’s speech:
-- India is changing, India’s standing at the global stage is rising and this is due to Jan Shakti.
-- There is no life without creativity. Let our creativity also strengthen our nation and fulfil the aspirations of our people.
-- There is no better place for creativity and innovation than university campuses.
-- Swami Vivekananda had given the concept of ‘One Asia.’ He said that the solutions to the world’s problems will come from Asia... Today, the world says 21st century is Asia’s century... One Asia has the potential to solve the world’s problems. We should look at his ideas in today’s concept.
-- Both knowledge and skills are equally important.
{{/usCountry}}-- Both knowledge and skills are equally important.
{{/usCountry}}-- The correspondence between Swami Vivekananda and Jamsetji Tata will shows the concern Swami JI had towards India’s self-reliance.
-- I want to specially mention all those people who are working tirelessly to keep India clean... We clean the country or not, we don’t have the right to litter.
-- Do we have the right to say Vande Mataram? We eat paan and spit it out and then say Vande Mataram, we litter and say Vande Mataram? If anyone has the right to say Vande Mataram in the country, it is the people who clean the country.
-- Swami Vivekananda did not believe in sermonising. Swami Vivekananda converted ideas to idealism and made an institutional framework... He gave birth to Ramkrishna Mission Ashram, not Vivekananda Mission Ashram.
-- More than being in search of a Guru, Swami Vivekananda was in search of the truth.
-- Swami Vivekananda said that only rituals will not connect an individual to divinity...he said ‘Jan Seva is Prabhu Seva’.
-- Swami Vivekananda raised his voice against the social evils that has entered our society.
-- Just with a few words, a youngster from India won over the world and showed the world the power of oneness. The 9/11 of 1893 was about love, harmony and brotherhood.
-- Today is 9/11...this day became widely spoken about after 2001 but there was another 9/11 of 1893 which we remember. 125 years ago, there was a 9/11, when a young man from the country, wearing ‘gerua-vastra’, which the world wasn’t acquainted with, says PM Modi as he pays tribute to Swami Vivekananda.
11.25am: Prime Minister Narendra Modi begins addressing a convention of students.
-- Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s tweet: “This speech by Swami Vivekananda, delivered on this day in 1893, continues to reverberate & inspire generations.”