“Stop not until the goal is reached, say the Vedas. Up, up, the long night is passing, the day is approaching, the wave has risen, nothing will be able to resist its tidal fury.… The greatest sin is fear.”

-- Swami Vivekananda

“We declare our right on this earth to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights, of a human being in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary.”

-- Malcolm X


I had first thought to connect these two seemingly different life stories after coming across a particular incident in Swami Vivekananda’s life. While Swamiji was seated on a train to Bombay, he noticed a European ticket collector harshly speaking to Indian customer while collecting his ticket. Unable to witness the customer’s humiliation, Swamiji immediately confronted the conductor and castigated his behavior. Later, he explained to the customer despite holding membership in a “conquered” race, they should always maintain self-respect with whomsoever they deal with, that establishing self worth is a prerequisite to any change: internal or external.

The dynamic and controversial black leader, Malcolm X, embodied a similar message through his life work. Of course, his context was the turbulent struggle for African American civil rights in the United States, while Swamiji’s context was establishing a universal spirituality as professed through Hinduism. The purpose for investigating similarities between these two is two fold: First, to dispel the erroneous myth of Swami Vivekananda as a pure spiritualist, disconnected from the common man and Malcolm X as a violence-hungry demagogue, devoid of any spiritual foundation. The second is to unearth uncanny similarities existing between two seemingly different people working for different objectives.

Born in 1925, Omaha, Nebraska, Malcolm Little lived in a socially fluctuating environment for most of his early life. His father, Earl Little, was a proponent of the Marcus Garvey movement (a collective sentiment pushing black people in the United States to return to Africa, and therefore, reclaim their ancestral homeland). Malcolm’s first exposure to public speaking was observing his father’s vigorous efforts to teach black people truths about themselves. The experience would remain dormant for many years before resurfacing in Malcolm’s own galvanizing speeches.

Unfortunately, Earl was destined to die violently at the hand of these white racists committed to silencing him. The world Swami Vivekananda entered was not as visibly demoralizing. Over sixty years earlier, in 1863, Hinduism’s first world ambassador was born to an affluent family in Calcutta, India as Narendranath Datta. (He takes on the name Swami Vivekananda later in life) Similar to Malcolm, Naren’s father ,Vishwanath, functioned as a dynamic member of the community: a prominent lawyer. He would regularly invite society’s highest elements to his home for discussions spanning many topics. By age fifteen, Naren was regularly present during these discussions and contributed to them prodigiously. Naren had an early introduction to the philosophies of Hegel, Kant, Darwin,& Descartes, as his father had a strong fondness for Western thought. Throughout his schooling, Naren engaged in intellectual debates with his classmates, and likewise laid the foundation for the fiery orator he was to become.

Not surprisingly, Malcolm’s adolescent journey was far more turbulent. After his father’s untimely death, Malcolm and his seven siblings became wards of the state, and his mother committed to a mental institution. Malcolm attended a reform school designed to rehabilitate “problem” children and reintroduce them into society. Being the only black student in his class, he was treated as an exotic specimen, or as he calls it, a pink poodle. Nevertheless, Malcolm’s inward drive for learning manifested clearly: he was voted class president; he received excellent grades and was well liked amongst the teaching staff. However, the reality of a racially polarized environment reared its head when Malcolm’s teacher dissuaded him from becoming a lawyer, stating professional jobs were simply unattainable by “niggers.”

Before Malcolm reached his intellectual zenith, he would enter into the corrupt Harlem underground. His daily activities would range from running numbers (a highly lucrative gambling system) to narcotic distribution and abuse. Although he didn’t know it at the time, the mental depravity would prepare his mind for the transformation about to occur. Malcolm’s unscrupulous lifestyle came to an end when he was sent to the Charlestown prison on a burglary charge, for ten years. It was 1946, and Malcolm had yet to reach his twenty-first birthday.

Prison was a cocoon for Malcolm; he entered as a thoughtless, depraved sociopath, and left as an erudite scholar. Malcolm hit two huge milestones while in prison: he reclaimed his inner thirst for knowledge, and found a new purpose to utilize that knowledge in the Nation of Islam. More about Malcolm’s tumultuous relationship with the Nation will be discussed later. Malcolm was an intellectual sponge; he absorbed knowledge from the prison library, sharply recalling it in prison debates. Books became his passion; he’d later tell a London reporter, “My alma mater is books.” Even he was unprepared for the radical change, “I still marvel at how swiftly my previous life’s thinking pattern slid away from me” (X, p. 173). It was here Malcolm made the affirmation to pursue the social and psychological liberation of the black community.

Swamiji’s search for purpose was not without struggle either. While very studious and introspective in his demeanor, he experienced considerable difficulty securing his beliefs, and ultimately his mission. The fashionable account of Naren’s search usually describes his proceeding from teacher to teacher asking the simple question of “Have you seen God?” And upon a definitive “yes’ from his life-long mentor, Sri Ramakrishna, he readily accepted him and proceeded with no impediment.

However, the above account is heavily simplified. Before meeting Sri Ramakrishna, Naren was a member of the Bramho Samaj, a reformist organization that focused on philosophies and intellectual understanding of the divine, rather than a ritualistic, faith based system. The ideology fit well with Naren’s affinity for logic and reason and his strong aversion to the ritualists who mindlessly practiced blind faith. His intellectual approach prevented him from instantly accepting Ramakrishna’s unorthodox Kali worship. Dismissing his visions of gods and goddesses as hallucinations (Nikhil, p14), he referred to the behavior as that of an idiot. In actuality, Naren remained skeptical for five years before accepting Ramakrishna as an authentic teacher.

The untimely death of his father caused Naren a more caustic and painful departure from spiritual immersion. Debilitated by financial debt and no means of income, Naren found the very possibility of an all-pervading divine force as wretched and twisted. He fiercely disputed with disciples against the existence of God, mocking them as impersonating their teachers without question or thinking on their own. Ramakrishna himself was not affected though, he felt Naren’s personal struggle to reconcile his external observations with his internal spiritual tendencies.

After the shock subsided and his financial situation improved, Naren retuned his mental frequency towards spiritual practice and eventually become a monk. Even after embarking on this path, Swamiji was continually torn between his desire to help others and his own personal realization. Like most notable figures, Naren went through many behavioral changes, while not as drastic as Malcolm’s, it was not the straightforward journey it’s often portrayed to be.

While Swamiji’s firm religious foundation is widely known, Malcolm’s religious grounding is often overlooked. After accepting Islam, Malcolm was indebted to his faith as the enabler for all his social work and any public recognition. Religion provided the impetus for altering his previous thinking, and the courage to impart the change to other men and women. He believed in Islam so deeply, he actively converted other black men, particularly, those in prison: giving them the gifts he felt he received. His reflects before a talk at Harvard Law School: “Standing there by that Harvard window, I silently vowed to Allah that I never would forget any wings I wore had been put on by the religion of Islam” (p 293).

Criminals rarely have any room for God, and while he was one, Malcolm was no exception. Being a staunch atheist, he needed something formidable to accept any religious teaching in the slightest. The Nation of Islam (founded by Elijah Muhammad) was just that force, because it operated as more than just a religion. The nation presented itself as a path to political, cultural and social liberation, and that’s how it fused itself into Malcolm’s ethos. As a religion, it followed Muslim rules according to the Koran, but as a social movement it provided a sense of freedom and identity. Even though the NOI disagreed with the methods of Dr. King’s civil rights movement, their message was nearly identical: For the American black man to achieve social justice, he needed a strong moral foundation as well as a unified caucus to demand said justice. By pointing out historical incidences where white Americans have used Christianity to justify moral superiority, the NOI asserted Islam as a path to self-worth and autonomy. Such logic was not a hard sell when many black people had been marginalized, and even killed by the “good, white, Christian.” Nearly every one of the NOI’s practices was administered in the context of “breaking free” from the white man’s grip. The practice of taking the last name “X” stresses the denouncement of the slave-master’s name given to their ancestors; defiance against the white collective was coupled directly with a religious separation.

But to be successful, they demanded strict moral behavior: abstaining from drugs, alcohol, and adultery; along with the more strict Muslim disciplines of no lascivious dancing, no “deviant” music, lavish parties, etc. These were prescribed in the context of combating the powerful white super-structure: “The white man wants black men to stay immoral, unclean and ignorant. As long as we stay in these conditions, we will keep on begging him and he will control us” (X, p225). However, Malcolm’s final spiritual beliefs did not settle until internal differences between him and the NOI leadership forced him to leave. Knowing Malcolm’s strict moral verve, other corrupt NOI leaders sought to remove him as head minister, fearing their own improprieties exposed. Embracing traditional Islam and taking the Arabic name, “Malik El Shabazz”, Malcolm then formed a more universal approach to spirituality, stating “Mankind’s history has proved from one era to another that the true criterion of leadership is spiritual. Men are attracted by spirit.”

Having been treated royally by Saudi Muslims that would be considered “white”, in the US, Malcolm believed in Islam’s capability to resolve race barriers in the United States: “In two weeks in the Holy Land, I saw what I never had seen in thirty nine years here in America, I saw all races and colors, blue eyed blondes to black skinned Africans in true brotherhood!” (X, p. 369). However, the observation had been made far before Elijah Mohammed or Malcolm X even saw the Koran. During his United States visit, Swami Viveknanda wrote, “As soon as a man becomes a Mohammedan, the whole of Islam receives him as a brother. In America I have never yet seen a church where the white man and negro can kneel side by side to pray” (Nikhil., p 204). After an arduous journey, Malcolm’s newly formed group strived for social justice, but had a more universal spiritual foundation by accepting help from men and women of all faiths.

A universal approach to religion was one of Swami Vivekananda’s core beliefs. As a delegate to the 1893 Chicago Parliament of Religions, Swami asserted his desire for petty religious squabbling to end and recognized that each religion provided some merit to society: “Man has an idea that there can only be one religion… but that idea is not true. By studying the lives of all these great messengers, we find that the harmony consists in the sum total, and not in one note” (Nikhil, p. 182). Naturally, such a message was highly controversial at the time, but Swami’s presentation was met with tremendous accolade. Ironically, these words were spoken on September 11, 1893, and tragically, after 100+ years, they have yet still to be received and processed in full.

While Swamiji’s central message was religious cooperation, he was mindful that the west’s working knowledge of Hinduism was horribly flawed. Befuddled by strange requests of snake charming and rope tricks, he took every opportunity to correct misconceptions held by the American public. (Sadly, many people still hold these outrageous misconceptions). But, Vivekananda did what he could to clear out any nonsense in the public mind; he spoke of Vedanta’s thorough nature, demonstrating its containment of nearly every religious philosophy. He declared, “You may be a dualist, I may be a monist – yet both of us are good Hindus.” Such behavior demonstrates his social awareness concerning the pitfalls of colonial complacency.

Even though Swamiji had quite a few sincere Western students, many approached him only to prove Christianity’s superiority over “heathen” religions. To their surprise, Swamiji had a deep understanding of Christian theology, and commented on how the American interpretation neglected Christianity’s most basic tenets. Particularly, he disparaged the dilution of Christ’s message in the name of material pursuit: “If you want to live, go back to Christ. You are not Christians, yours is a religion preached in the name of luxury. Better be ready to live in rags with Christ than to live in palaces without him.” In addition, Swamiji’s attitude towards the missionary efforts dispatched throughout India was anything but docile. He understood that Hinduism served India’s spiritual needs, hence religious conversion had no place in the future of his country. He spoke frankly on Hinduism’s philosophical sophistication, thereby alleviating the idea that religious conversion was somehow “elevating” the minds of the people. To the people who would relegate Hinduism to hokey practices and with empty rituals, the words struck as a thunderbolt.

Malcolm also issued strong words towards those he believed committed unethical actions in the name of the Cross: “The Holy Bible in the white man’s hands and its interpretations of it have been the greatest single ideological weapon for enslaving millions of non-white human beings” (X, p. 246). Like Swamiji, he too surprised many people with his Biblical proficiency. For obvious reasons, Malcolm emphasized the racial subtext attributed to the misappropriation of Christianity, used against black men and women: “The greatest miracle Christianity has achieved in America is that the black man in white Christian hands has not grown violent. It is a miracle that 22 million black people have not risen up against their oppressors – in which they would have been justified by all moral criteria.” Just as Swamiji was critical of the potential psychological damage Christian missionary efforts would have abroad, Malcolm was equally observant of those effects domestically.

Malcolm and Swamiji’s most striking similarity is their unyielding commitment to social upliftment through education of the masses. They both had a primary goal of elevating their respective populations to achieve an unprecedented state of self-sufficiency. Having existed in what he described as “self-delusion” for nearly half his life, Malcolm had strong desires to spread the knowledge he believed would remove them from that state. Knowing that an oppressive group can only succeed if they keep the oppressed disjointed and disconnected, he called for blacks to strengthen their own sense of community, both socially and financially: “As other ethnic groups have done, let the black people, wherever possible, however possible, patronize their own kind, and start in those ways to build up the black race’s ability to do for itself. One thing the white man can never give the black man is self respect!” (X, p. 281). Malcolm also believed, as many great black leaders did, a prerequisite to ending racial animosity was unity amongst the disenfranchised peoples. He always stressed, “there can be no black-white unity, unless there is first some black unity.”

Because Hindu Swami’s are not usually associated with calls for mass social change, Swami Vivekananda surely set himself apart by speaking for the Indian masses to “rise up” and “take back their nation.” Swamiji shattered the traditional mold when his lectures and writings extended further than abstract theologies and dry scriptural theory. At the young age of 25, his observation of India’s poverty (physical and mental) convinced him that his destiny lied not in a Himalayan cave or a dense forest, meditating. Whenever thoughts of spiritual solitude approached him, he was always drawn towards the “teeming millions of India, victims of poverty and ignorance.”

What’s even more astonishing was his uncompromising resolve to deliver the message, regardless of being in a foreign land. After gaining the respect of the United States intelligentsia, he devoted an entire Parliamentary address to the plight of the Indian masses. Describing in detail the problems that confront the Indian populace, he concluded, “If the priests [of India] were organized, there is an enormous amount of potential energy that could be used for regeneration of society and humanity. I endeavored to organize it in India but failed for lack of money. It may be I shall get the help I want in America.” Knowing he was in a unique position to spread Ramakrishna’s message of universal religion and work towards India’s social benefit, he skillfully intertwined the two in his public discourses.

Two men, separated by sixty years and an entire ocean; each had different goals but similar methods. Each one's command of religion, human interaction, and the social predicaments of their respective groups, was no doubt staggering. Hopefully, comparing these two men together breaks down superficial barriers of race and religion that have continued for so long. We can accomplish the goal by turning back to the universalism held so dearly by both: Men are attracted by spirit, and all paths when followed in full, ultimately lead to the same source.