General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: The Indian Election of 2014 (informed ramblings) [View all]Recursion
(56,582 posts)IIRC Gandhi met Vivekananda once right when he returned from South Africa. It's odd that Vivekananda, Gandhi, and Tagore were practically contemporaries (all born in the 1860s) but we (or at least I) definitely think of Vivekananda as belonging to the generation before Gandhi (Tagore sort of fits in both).
The time after Vivekananda's death was what I've seen called "the unmaking of Bengal" (there's a book called that or something like it I'm reading now). Communalism overcame nationalism among Bengalis, to nobody's ultimate benefit (other than the British).
Actually there are two "what-if's" here: what if both Vivekananda and Bose had lived to see independence, and what if Vivekananda had survived but Bose's plane had still crashed? My guess is that in either case (but particularly in the first case), East Pakistan would have been dead as a concept, which IMO at the time would have made the entire partition more difficult for the British.
As to the movement's leadership in this alternate reality? That's a very interesting question. Could Vivekananda have had the same close relationship with Ghaffar Khan that Gandhi did? I'd like to think so; Vivekananda's own speeches at the parliaments of religion suggest he believed it was possible, and his conduct of the Ramkrishna missions suggests he could carry it into practice. Even if he wasn't doing day to day leadership (and, let's face it, the man was notoriously bad at practical details -- he only met Dr. Wright in Boston because he had lost his train tickets to Chicago...) having his presence as a senior religious figure would have to have been a positive support for the INC and Quit India. Particularly given his fame in the US and Europe, the British would have found it much harder to shuffle him off or silence him. And, frankly, it might have tempered some of the Hindu communalism that began to develop as independence loomed. But specifically, I don't think he could have overcome Gandhi's political acumen, organizing ability, and mass media genius -- my own guess is that Gandhi would have still been "the leader", whether in name or simply in fact.
We'll never know, of course, but I can't imagine a world that he lived in for longer could have been anything but better for that fact...