“Not this. Not in saffron. Can you please find a photo of Swami Vivekananda in white?”

I remember this question that became an inside joke in Kanyakumari Vivekananda Kendra circles in 1993. The Human Resource Ministry of the Government of India was organising an event at Kanyakumari to commemorate the centenary of the ‘Chicago Address’ of Swami Vivekananda at the World Parliament of Religions.

As then minister Arjun Singh was allergic to saffron, the officials were in a hurry to get a photo of Swami Vivekananda to adorn the dais but without getting blamed for any saffronization. Those days, Photoshop was not around in printing presses and hence the desperation.

From the days of direct colonialism of the British day to the indirect colonialism of the Nehruvian era, colonial forces of both the empire and the mind, have always found a formidable enemy in Swami Vivekananda.

British Intelligence followed him closely and he figured in their intelligence reports even before he became famous and even after he died.

Simultaneously, there was an attempt to differentiate ‘the spiritual’ Swami Vivekananda from the ‘political’ national liberation movement.

As early as 1892, Calcutta Commissioner of Police had observed about Swami Vivekananda: ‘His real name was not known’. The same year, yet another IB report from Bombay found him ‘to be very clever, and, though a Sannyasi, to take an interest in politics.’