Editor’s Introduction :- swami Vivekananda (1863-1902) ones remarked that whereas it had been his personal wish to spend a life in quiet, scholarly contemplation, the Mother (the goddess Kali) had willed it otherwise. Arguably, this only makes apparent conflicting aspects within the life & work of the Swami that his contemporary & near-contemporary observers detected from time. Especially in his closing years, Vivekananda often expressed a wistful longing for ascetic withdrawal & solitude, in contrast with his lifetime of social mixing & frenzied activiry. This, in his case, was not symptomatic of the Hindu’s rerreat from the public domain in old age (in keeping with traditional prescriptions), for Vivekananda, as is will known, died when barely forty & remained, even through those short years, a most idiosyncratic sanyasi. The Man & His Work:- Vivekananda lived & worked for less than forty years, but his life must be judged not by its length but its intensity & expansiveness. It was a life spent mostly in hardship & self-denial, often oblivious of basic needs. It was a life dedicated to a cause that ultimately consumed it prematurely. Commentary on the Selections from Vivekananda in this Volume:-In a sense, very little that Swami Vivekananda spoke or wrote could be sharply separated from his thoughts on India & fellow Indians. On philosophical subjects his originality & appeal lay not in intellectually reconceptualizing the areas touched on, but in bringing these dawn to a demystified, commonplace understanding. He believed, primarily, that religion & philosophy could be suitably employed towards the material improvement of society. Vivekananda onec told Sakharam Ganesh Deuskar, editor of Hitavadi : Sir, as logeas as a dog of my country remains without food, to feed & take care is my religion, anything else is either non-religion or false religion. Whether rightly or wrongly, his idealism led Vivekananda to believe that changes to the outside world actually began with mental. His writings on religions are therefore replete with a call to courage & manliness. This manliness was not exclusive to men, & much as presentday scholarship is apt to think otherwise, qualities of inner strength, resolve, & heroism were not always gendered. Vivekananda’s plan of action in India included women as much as men. In any case, the soul, as he would often say, was sexless. Religion & the Human Revolution:- For Vivekananda the term ‘religion’ evidently carried multiple meanings. It could denote the adoration of God; a pragmatic worldview that contributed towards the positive improvement of self & society, & even a cultural paradigm that could be said to characterize a people or a nation. Since he spoke on the subject of religion from such disparate points of view, we are often left with the task of retrieving his intended meaning or situating it within its appropriate context. The Swami felt that no religion could fail to cope with the widow’s tears or bring food to hungry mouths. And yet he often questioned the tendency, allegedly common in the West, to relegate to God the functions of some municipal authority. God could not really be expected to supervise the functions of everyday life, just as the values or importance of religion could not be truly judged by extra-religious considerations. Paradoxically, then, religion had to be of practical use to society but could not be dragged to commonplace standards or expectations. The Nature of British Rule in India—ii :- The present government of India has certain evils attendant on it, & there are some very great & good parts in it as well. Of highest good is this, that after the fall of the Patliputra Empire till now, India was never under the guidance such a powerful machinery of government as the British, wielding the scepter throughout the length & breadth of the land. And under this Vaishya, as the objects of commerce are being brought from one end of the same time, as its natural sequence, the ideas & thoughts of different countries are forcing their way into the very bone & marrow of India. Of these ideas & thoughts, some are really most beneficial to her, some are harmful, while other disclose the ignorance & inability of the foreigners to determine what is truly good for the inhabitants of this country.