Educating the Educators Dr. TS Girishkumar Professor of Philosophy The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda Education shall be a phenomenon inevitable to any living society, and it only shall make proper sense to give maximum attention to the phenomena of education with top priority. Societies that ignore education pay heavily, and decay very soon. But then, it is always very important as to the kind and nature of education we provide to the future citizens of the society. Education for Bharat Every society is supposed to have its own distinct culture, values and a way of living, apart from some religion which must have undergone a process of acculturation of the given society. To educate the future generation also should mean to educate all these things apart from providing education on the basis of some universally thought of programme. This, each society has to do individually. In present day Bharat, education has to be done with an extremely deft hand. On the one hand we are still reeling under the influence of more than one thousand years of alien rule, and on the other hand we were not given a chance to understand what we really are. The two worst evils of the world had their ways with Bharat, first the Moghuls and their brutal ways, and then the British and their destructive ways. The holocausts of the Jews are recorded on many places and the world will keep seeing those and remember. More over the holocaust also did not last that long; the most horrific part of it got over with the end of the second European war and the abrupt death of Hitler. But the holocausts of the Hindus went on for well above thousand years, and there are no records of them. No one ever knew them, no one will ever see them; and most unfortunately, most people do not know them, to remember them. But the reality is: holocaust of the Hindus was much more severe and intense than what many people could imagine. Indeed, in spite of becoming free from a political rule, the cultural and educational set back this nation received is too strong for anyone to easily over come quickly. We have had vestiges from both the rules, vestiges those still leave a longing to live in their imagined erstwhile days, style, and culture for some. Some of the insurgents could trace their roots to the over glorified Moghul days, and some others, the again over glorified British days. The English schools did have the McCauley effect in any case; albeit their bitter failures because of personalities like Shri Aurabindo and Swami Vivekananda. All text books were created by them with the sole objective of establishing the colonial master’s mastery upon people of Bharat. Why not? The sole objective of their education policy was to create a band of Bharatiyas who accept the British as their masters. Unfortunately, this also include the first Prime minister of Bharat, a ‘very’ British person in his own thoughts, though no British would have accepted him as one among them! As a result, we have an education programme with curricula which may be universal in the academic sense, but which is also traditionally and culturally alien. I suggested a universal pattern of academic education, as this is the case. The world over, the education pattern should be more or less a common one, so that a person from one corner of the globe is likely to equal another person from another corner of the globe in terms of information gathered and remembered. But, let us be very clear, that this is just one part of education, and let me call it as the academic part. There should also be another part to education, equally or more powerfully, which, I call as the cultural part. The latter, the cultural part, should naturally be distinct to each society. But I don’t think that such subtle combination is being made effectively and consciously in many places, including the Nation of ours. To a large extent, the latter, cultural part may be effectively imparted in some Nations who had not suffered larger subjugation, but how consciously this is done is a question one must think of. Difficulties with Bharatiya education On the one hand, the thousand years of alien rule had considerably devastated everything with us, including education. On the other hand, the ‘Neo-Colonialists’ who are Bharatiyas but with alien structure of mind set had been at the realm of running the matters of most things till date, which naturally include education. There are three ‘companies’ among the alien structured minds. One, the European oriented structure, which we may call European ‘Bhakts’. Second, the non-National Muslims who directly or indirectly believe in a Dar-Ul-Islam, and the third company, the communists. European Bhakts would laud everything European and look down upon anything non-European. Just think for yourselves about research papers published in Europe and in Bharat, and the treatment they get, irrespective of their merits. Nonetheless, the degrees of Bhakti may definitely vary from case to case, as some intense and some less intense. The Dar-Ul-Islam company are somewhat less rational and blind: naturally, they do not wish to accept anything else other than Islamic, but remember, Islamic as each understands creating all kinds of divisions among them. The third company, the communists are really not much different from the Dar-Ul-Islam company, communists are sometimes even more fundamentalists that the second company. Communists have this ‘projected’ internationalism from both Marx and Lenin and this makes their first postulate anti National to any Nation. In their theory, Nationalism is a threat to their communist international. This makes the communists against anything ‘National’ again, irrespective of their merits. All these three are equally strong and powerful in Bharat, and they all have an effective method of infiltrating into every establishment of the society, which primarily include education. Roughly, this is the present situation in Bharat. Sanskriti – Culture and Bharat When it comes to Sanskriti, Bharat is extremely distinct from others. Other Nations have their cultural moorings on languages sometimes, geographical specialities sometimes and sometimes it is also religion. Their culture evolved, or evolves from and through thinks like these. But the case of Bharat had ever been unique. What begins in available knowledge of Bharatiya Parampara is the Vedopanishadic knowledge tradition. In my perspective, the Vedas and Upanishads are knowledge texts primarily, which gave rise to a knowledge tradition and I call it the Vedopanishadic knowledge tradition. The evolution of Bharatiya Sanskriti is posterior to this knowledge tradition, and Bharatiya Sanskriti evolves from the Vedopanishadic knowledge tradition. It is only after these two that the transcendental longing of any human consciousness comes into existence in Bharat, as Dharma. Thus, the knowledge tradition comes first, the Sanskriti comes second, and Dharma comes third. Further, the Vedic Dharma gave rise to multiple ‘Dharmas’ pertaining to multiple roles of individuals in social existence as, for example, Acharya Dharma, Putra Dharma and so on. This becomes Bharatiya ‘Moral Philosophy’ and we have Dharma Shastras and Dharma Nitis to these effect. Normal academic education may be getting imparted, but how about Bharatiya Sanskriti and Parampara? To what extent our curricula carry Sanskriti and Parampara? When these things are not effectively done, our education is bound to be far behind the requirement of the nation society. There are occasions when we see how miserable things with us are. One of my young colleagues had gone to Vienna to present a paper basically on the Kashmiri Hindu’s problems. There were also others from Bharat. My young colleague tells me yesterday that she heard some Europeans say that ‘Indians do not know how to write papers’ after hearing some of our people. Some of our people had been using European categories and concepts as well as pattern, to do research, which become mere copying. This becomes jarring to those who do things originally, and in most cases by the time our copy cates catch up with what they disgorge, they must have gone much ahead. Hence what is repeated by our copy cats becomes their left over and that too in much primitive manner. Such things are indeed shameful to our Nation and Sanskriti, and my young college was saying, ‘Nak Kat Gaya’. What ought to be our education and curricula There is no doubt that the curricula and education those we programme should be compatible with education and curricula all over the world. But we have to create and make our Sanskriti education a reality, a thriving functional reality. Once our Sanskriti and Parampara are effectively taught to our future generation, the possibility to the three companies destroying our education shall be considerably less. Many of us are influenced by the three companies because of our ignorance of what we really are. In one word, the whole thing thrives on our un-knowledge of the reality with our own selves. We must be looking for creating the possibility of such complete education. Curricula must be created so, text books must be made available so and most importantly, teachers must be created so. Teaching the teachers It is here that educating the educators or teaching the teachers become important. Actually, it is the teachers who create an aura as well as ‘learning culture’ with every institution. ‘Somehow’, JNU became negatively oriented and against the Sanskriti and Parampara of Bharat. This may be because of extreme bias from the communists who claim to be progressive, may be the closeness with former Soviet Union, may be the then European phenomena of orientation with positivistic social sciences, modernity, post-modernity, structure and post-structure theories etc. any one among these is sufficient to drive young minds to anarchy, and one can visualise the effect of the combo. Somehow, this goes on. During my student days in JNU, long before, things were so, and like a chain, it continues till date. Further, wherever the products of JNU are in teaching, the process repeats. Where they are more in number, this becomes intense. If we open our minds and look at various universities, various departments etc. where JNU products have a foot hold we can see the same negativity misdirecting youth to anarchy. I have personally witnessed such things. This makes the dire and serious need for creating meaningful teachers to our society. We require academically brilliant teachers undoubtedly, but what we need more is culturally and traditionally brilliant minds. The API scores designed by UGC is only partial, it looks at only the academic side, and one should not be surprised if one comes across a ‘great’ researcher who is also a great anarchist. This makes educating the educators in high priority. The teachers, the educators must be highly culturally and traditionally literate apart from stable emotional literacy. Both emotional literacy and spiritual literacy shall be automatic once Cultural literacy is ensured. Nonetheless, nothing is going to happen immediately. But dispersing such thoughts is hopeful. We can aspire and hope for a situation tomorrow, where meaningful teachers shall be creating meaningful citizens of this great and mighty nation, which is bound to become Viswa Guru in the future not very far. -------------------------------------------------------------