Swami Vivekananda always said that, in a country like India the condition of the half of the citizen is horrible, and the main agenda of a civilized society should be to improve its countrymen’s condition. The very significantly Vivekananda indicates women of our society as the ‘half’ part of the society. Probably for the very first time, women were addressed as the ‘citizen’ of India. Rammohan and Vidyasagar did a lot for the female parts of the society and tried their best to make better their life. Both the noble personality actually contributes their whole life to provide women a better life in the society. Despite of all their efforts and some remarkable fight with the then conservative part of the society, women couldn’t get the ‘citizen’ remark. Vivekananda started from here. Amidst his lifelong numerous amazing works the young saint also planted the seed of citizen right of the women.
It is not true that, before Swami’s evocation to give female their citizen right, there was no change in their scenario. The condition of women started change with Vidyasagr and Rammohan’s hand. But the concept to feel women as the half of citizen in the country was new for them and also new for their male counterpart.
In pre independence India, people of the country then was engaged in the independence movement to free their ‘Mother India’. The independence of mother, sister with flesh and blood was far beyond in their thought. Vivekananda first put the thought in their countrymen’s mind. Somehow this thought channelized among the ‘half citizen’ of the country, which reached in the concept of today’s women liberty.
The present scenario is obvious quite different from the Vivekananda’s decade. It is true that the modern concept of women liberty which follows the concept of feminism in our country is far away from his theory. But it is true that he actually created the field where latter the improved idea of women liberty has come.
Very often we give credit west to bring the ideas such as ‘Feminism’ ‘Women liberty’ in our country, but the history carries the truth that, we actually started the preparation few times before.
In his 150th birth anniversary, if we try to understand this young saint’s life and work, we can rediscover our Nation and its prosperous history.
