150th birthday of Swami Vivekananda is celebrated in metro Detroit, where he spoke several times

Statue of Swami Vivekananda stands inside the Bharatiya Temple in Troy, Michigan. Photo taken in 2011.

The 150th birthday of Swami Vivekananda is being celebrated this month in metro Detroit and around the world. This Sunday, Jan. 19, 2013, at 10 a.m. there will be an event marking his birthday at Troy Community Center in Michigan. Here’s a story written last year about Vivekananda’s connection to metro Detroit.

A message of peace

19th-Century spiritual leader inspires metro Detroiters

By Niraj Warikoo
Detroit Free Press Staff Writer

Published in Detroit Free Press:
Sunday, March 11, 2012

Draped in saffron robes, a 9-foot statue stands in a corner of the Bharatiya Temple in Troy of Swami Vivekananda, the 19th century spiritual leader from India who gave birth to the modern interfaith movement.
It’s a symbol of his continued influence as his 150th birthday is commemorated this year with events in metro Detroit and around the world.

At the Hindu center in Troy, Vivekananda’s message will be discussed today at a lecture, one of several such events the temple is holding to remember the man who introduced Indian philosophy to the West. During his life, Vivekananda lectured often in cities such as Detroit, Boston and New York.

As Hindu practices like yoga, meditation and vegetarianism rise in popularity in America, so does the interest in Vivekananda.A Newsweek writer is working on a biography of Vivekananda that examines his influence on a range of thinkers in the West. In January, the University of Chicago announced it was creating a $1.5-million academic chair in his name.

And with religious tensions rising today, his message of peace and tolerance is needed more than ever, his admirers say.

Vivekananda is most well-known for his speech at the World Parliament of Religions in 1893 in Chicago, where his message of universal brotherhood and diversity was praised. Coretta Scott King, the late wife of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., called Vivekananda’s talk “the most definitive statement of religious tolerance and interfaith unity in history.”

“Though they were uttered a century ago, Vivekananda’s words ring with a clarion relevance for our times, ” she wrote on the 100th anniversary of the speech.