"My heart was fluttering and my tongue nearly dried up,"Swami Vivekananda was to write later. "I was so nervous and could not venture to speak in the morning." Just when it seemed doubtful whether the Hindu monk would speak at all, Swami Vivekananda arose to share with that unique gathering. Bowing to Devi Saraswati, he began - "Sisters and Brothers of America..." Suddenly to his utter amazement, hundreds of people in the audience were on their feet, applauding. "Here was a soul greeting thousands of other souls in sweet and loving terms- 'Sisters and Brothers' ," one eye-witness later recalled. "...Or was it the Divine power behind him that seized the audience by a whirlpool of spiritual ecstasy?" This event took place on September 11, 1893, at the Art Institute of Chicago. Today, more than hundred years later, while the legend of Swami Vivekananda's success at the Parliament of Religions lives on, few know exactly what he said. It is generally believed that he did Hindus proud. But was Swami Vivekananda's action a claim of Hindu greatness? Or, was it a call for mutually respectful give and take between different religions -an expression of the hopeful potential of all humanity? The time had come, Vivekananda said in his opening speech, to root out the "horrible demons" of sectarianism, bigotry and fanaticism which had destroyed entire civilisations. The bell that tolled at the start of the Parliament, he hoped, would be "the death- knell of all fanaticism, of all persecutions with the sword or with the pen, and of all uncharitable feelings between persons wending their way to the same goal." This sentiment had already been expressed by others at the Parliament. What sealed Swami Vivekananda's place of prominence in history was the enfranchising declaration that all human beings were inherently "Children of Immortal Bliss."
"Allow me to call you brethren, by that sweet name - heirs of immortal bliss-yea, the Hindu refuses to call you sinners!" said Vivekananda in his main speech called 'Paper on Hinduism'. "...Come up, O lions, and shake off the delusion that you are sheep; you are souls immortal, spirits free, blest and eternal; ye are not matter; ye are not bodies; matter is your servant, not you the servant of matter ." God - "the pure and formless one, the Almighty and the All merciful" he said, was to be worshipped not out of fear but through love. Far superior to loving God for hope of reward, in this or the next world, was "to love God for love's sake."
Keeping the spirit of this day Kendra Organised a competition for students. 1300 students participated. yesterday prize distribution function was organised at prabhat towers gunfoundry hyderabad. more than 400 people participated in the function. Dr. A Ramachandra Aryasri, Director and Professor School of Management Studies JNTU was chief guest and Dr. Y.V.Krishna Kumari, Head of the Department of Telugu. V.V.College was main speaker. In all 56 students got prizes.
