Most of us have heard of Swami Vivekananda. We know about the famous Chicago speech. We have seen the photograph. But how many of us have actually read him?

Swami Vivekananda for Our Times is a collection of Vivekananda's own words, put together by Rajiv Sikri, a retired diplomat who spent over thirty years in the Indian Foreign Service. Sikri first read Vivekananda seriously during a posting in Kazakhstan in the late 1990s. The ideas stayed with him. Years later, he went back, read all nine volumes of Vivekananda's complete works, and made notes. This book is the result of that personal effort.

The complete works run to over five thousand pages. They were never written as a single book. Vivekananda's thoughts came out in speeches, letters, and conversations, spread across a decade of travel. Most people are never going to read all of that. What Sikri has done is go through everything and organise the most important ideas into nine themes, from religion and philosophy to India's strengths and weaknesses. You can read the whole book or go straight to whatever interests you most.

What strikes you reading this is how direct Vivekananda was. He was not vague or distant. He spoke plainly, sometimes bluntly. He criticised what he thought was wrong, praised what he believed in, and never tried to sound more complicated than necessary. He once said that the greatness of a teacher lies in the simplicity of his language. He meant it, and it shows.

His ideas also feel surprisingly current. He spoke about the unity of all religions at a time when that was a radical thing to say. He talked about India's potential when the country was still under colonial rule. He believed that real strength came from within, not from fear or imitation. Over a hundred years later, these are still ideas worth sitting with.

Sikri is clear in his preface that he is not a scholar and did not set out to write an academic book. He wanted to understand Vivekananda for himself, and he wanted to make that understanding available to others who felt the same way. That straightforward intention comes through on every page. He does not tell you what to think. He gives you Vivekananda's words and lets you find your own way into them.

If you have always meant to read Vivekananda but never quite knew where to start, this is the book. It will not overwhelm you. It will not talk above you. It will simply give you one of India's greatest minds, clearly and without fuss, and let you decide what to do with what you find.

Read more by ordering your copy here.