SWAMI VIVEKANANDA hailed by Americans as a cerebral Hindu monk following his spell binding address delivered at the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago on September 11, 1893 was deeply impressed by the presence of a huge number of women at his numerous lecture events in the USA. In a letter to one Haripada Mitra written from Chicago on September 28, 1893, he paid glowing tribute to the women of America and remarked, “Oh, how free they are! It is they who control social and civic duties. Schools and colleges are full of women and in our country women cannot be safely allowed to walk in the streets! Their kindness to me is immeasurable. Since I came here, I have been welcomed by them to their houses. They are providing me with food, arranging for my lectures, taking me to market, and doing everything for my comfort and convenience. I shall never be able to repay in the least the deep debt of gratitude I owe to them. Do you know who is the real Shakti-worshipper? It is he who knows that God is omnipresent.”
Outrageous Conduct of BAPS Monks
133 years later on September 7, 2026, outrageous actions of a 100 monks of Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (‘BAPS’), a Hindu religious sect, vis-a-vis women staff of Eiffel Tower in Paris has tarnished India’s image leading to the French people and the whole of France got outraged.
Those 100 monks during their visit to the Eiffel Tower in Paris asked its management to keep its women staff away from their sight. Such disgraceful conduct in French soil, apart from contravening India’s constitutional values, which provides equal space to women in the public sphere, brutally assaulted the enduring values of the French Revolution anchored in the ideals of ‘Liberty, Equality and Fraternity’. The Republican ideals of France have been shaped by those values and continue to nourish them and inspire other countries including India.
