Swami Vivekananda

•    Narendranath Datta was born in Kolkata on 12 January 1863.
•    1881 : Narendra met Sri Ramakrishna at Dakshineshwar and became his disciple. 
•    After Sri Ramakrishna’s death in 1886, his disciples formed a new monastic brotherhood, and Narendra took sannyasa, becoming Swami Vivekananda.
•    Social Action : He linked spiritual awakening with social service through the idea of Practical Vedanta. 
•    He founded the Ramakrishna Mission (1897) to carry out humanitarian relief and social work.
•    He made education — combining secular knowledge with spiritual strength — the central instrument for national regeneration and mass upliftment.
•    He acted as India’s first great cultural ambassador to the West and restored civilisational self-confidence at a time of colonial inferiority.
•    Swami Vivekananda’s 1893 Chicago address universalised India’s spiritual message and made him the world’s foremost interpreter of Vedanta to the West.
•    He proclaimed the doctrine of the potential divinity of the soul, placing self-confidence and self-realisation to be the foundation of human progress.