INDIAN RACE NEVER STOOD FOR WEALTH....THE VITALITY OF THE RACE, THE MISSION OF THE RACE IS RELIGION; AND BECAUSE THAT HAS NOT BEEN TOUCHED, THERE THAT RACE LIVES.

But we find that the Indian race never stood for wealth. Although they acquired immense wealth, perhaps more than any other nation ever acquired, yet the nation did not stand for wealth. It was a powerful race for ages, yet we find that that nation never stood for power, never went out of the country to conquer. Quite content within their own boundaries, they never fought anybody. The Indian nation never stood for imperial glory. Wealth and power, then, were not the ideals of the race.

What then? Whether they were wrong or right -- that is not the question we discuss -- that nation, among all the children of men, has believed, and believed intensely, that this life is not real. The real is God; and they must cling unto that God through thick and thin. In the midst of their degradation, religion came first. The Hindu man drinks religiously, sleeps religiously, walks religiously, marries religiously, robs religiously.

Did you ever see such a country? If you want to get up a gang of robbers, the leader will have to preach some sort of religion, then formulate some bogus metaphysics, and say that this method is the clearest and quickest way to get God. Then he finds a following, otherwise not. That shows that the vitality of the race, the mission of the race is religion; and because that has not been touched, therefore that race lives.
- Swami Vivekananda
The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda/Volume 8/Lectures And Discourses/My Life And Mission
(Delivered at the Shakespeare Club of Pasadena, California, on January 27, 1900)