ABSTRACT
Swami Vivekananda’s appearance on the Indian socio-religious scene represented for many the high noon of Hindu revival. His role and contribution is contested terrain, with the right keen to appropriate him, and the left in broad agreement that sufficient grounds exist for the appropriation. Swami Vivekananda was the most forceful advocate of the regeneration of Indian spiritual principles, which he declared would naturally purge society of its vices. Vivekananda was so committed to human problems that, notwithstanding his assertion that he was first and foremost a poet, there is little by way of contemplative descriptions of the verdant or austere beauty of the mountains even though he had spent months of solitude in the mountains. Vivekananda represented Hinduism at the parliament. The idea of emergent nationhood can also clearly be discerned in his speeches at Chicago. Vivekananda thought of religion as a way of living rather than a mode of behaviour.
