In 1893, Swami Vivekananda set sail to America to participate in the World’s Parliament of Religions with just one introductory letter to a high-society couple. This article draws attention to Sri Varada Rao who gave that letter.
Introduction
Prior to Swami Vivekananda’s departure from India in 1893 to attend the Parliament of Religions in Chicago, one Mr. Varada Rao from Madras gave him a letter of introduction to a high-society couple in Chicago.
This is how the Life put it:
One of his Madras friends, Varada Rao, wrote to a lady of his acquaintance in Chicago about the Swami. She and her husband belonged to the highest Chicago society, and were very kind to the Swami. Thus began a friendship that lasted as long as the Swami lived. All the members of the family came to love him dearly, to appreciate his brilliant gifts, and to admire the purity and simplicity of his character, to which they often bore loving testimony. We, however, do not definitely know their names; but in the opinion of some researchers they were Mr. and Mrs. Milward Adams.
In the Life’s electronic version (Swami Vivekananda: Life, Works, and Research) later, this statement has been replaced by: “One of his Madras friends, Varada Rao, introduced him to a socially prominent Chicago couple, who were, as the Swami wrote on 20 August 1893, ‘so very kind to me.’” Someone eventually realized that it could not have been Mr. and Mrs. Milward Adams, whom Swamiji came to know much later. The couple to whom Varada Rao had introduced Swamiji was Mr. and Mrs. Erskine Mason Phelps. It took over one hundred years to finally solve the mystery.
Whereas the identity of the “socially prominent Chicago couple” was established, owing to the serendipitous discovery of a letter that a Unitarian woman had written to a Chicago divine, that of Varada Rao’s wasn’t; it has been haunting some resolute researchers ever since.
Regardless of whether Swamiji enjoyed his stay at the Phelps residence or not, Rao was singularly instrumental in arranging for Swamiji’s first accommodation in an American home. That was a big deal, which deserves Varada Rao a place in history.
Going back a little, it has been alleged that Swamiji never revealed the couple’s name in any of his letters, which was why nobody was able to determine their identity.4 But that is not entirely correct. In a letter he wrote to Prof. J. H. Wright on September
1893, he seems to have mentioned a name “Theles.” He wrote, “I have received a letter from Mr. Theles of Chicago giving me the names of some of the delegates and other things about the Congress.”
It appears that Swamiji wrote “Phelps,” but it was transcribed incorrectly as “Theles” in the Complete Works. Swamiji had been with the Phelpses less than a month ago, and apparently was corresponding with them, at least for a short period after he had left Chicago for New England.
According to the Chicago Historical Society, many prominent Chicagoans failed to leave their personal papers behind—Erskine Mason Phelps being one of them. Here was a lost opportunity to find some of Swamiji’s letters.