THE DEDT WHICH WORLD OWES TO INDIA

" The debt which the world owes to our Motherland is immense. Taking country with country, there is not one race on this earth to which the world owes so much as to the patient Hindu, the mild Hindu. Here activity prevailed when even Greece did not exist, when Rome was not thought of, when the very fathers of the modern Europeans lived in the forests and painted themselves blue.

Even earlier, when history has no record, and tradition dares not peer into the gloom of that intense past, even from then until now, ideas after ideas have marched out from her, but every word has been spoken with a blessing behind it and peace before it. We, of all nations of the world, HAVE BEEN A CONQUERING RACE, and that blessing is on our head, and therefore we live "

- Swami Vivekananda

FIRST PUBLIC LECTURE IN THE EAST January 15, 1897

Lectures from Colombo to Almora