Author: K R Malkani
Publication: Organiser
Date: September 30, 2001
Introduction: To our secular friends,
Sanskrit is dead. Okay, but then why do they worry about something that
is dead? Fact is they fear that Sanskrit is very much alive in itself and
through other Indian and European languages. Why should anybody object
to Vedic Mathematics? After all education is a Concurrent Subject in the
Indian Constitution and States can take a different line on educational
maters. For example West Bengal Government had rejected the National Policy
on Education developed in the eighties; and, for years, they had refused
to have any Navodaya School.
Recently the National Council for
Educational Research and Training (NCERT) produced the National Curriculum
Frame-Work for School Education. Here was, in the word of NCERT Director,
Prof J. S. Rajput, "the first ever honest attempt to modernise education
by upholding not only the deepest but forgotten values of Indian civilization,
but also the sagely advice of the founding fathers of our nation." But
without waiting for the curriculum to be actually developed some friends
promptly dubbed it as "saffronisation" and even rubbished it as "Talibanisation".
Incidentally why should anybody
be allergic to saffron? It is a colour sacred not only to Indians but also
to Arabs. The Congress Flag Committee had unanimously recommended saffron
flag in place of the tricolour in 1931. And its members included Nehru,
Patel, Azad.
It is good to note that good old
retired Justice V. R. Krishna Iyer, who had earlier associated h self with
the critics, has in a letter to the HRD Minister said: "I drop my criticism
of the NCERT stand."
The Congress Chief Minister of Kerala,
Shri A. K. Anthony, has condemned the misuse of the term "Saffronisation"
and said "Saffron is, a symbol of Indianness". He added: "By using and
misusing the word off and on we are hurting the religious sentiments of
Hindus."
Another Congress Chief Minister,
Shri Digvijay Singh of Madhya Pradesh has said astrology is a science and
there is nothing wrong with teaching it. And Diggi Raja-as he is popularly
known-is an engineer by training and profession.
It is good to note that the Ministry
is today presided over by a former Head of Physics Department of the Allahabad
University. The effort by a savant like him at marrying science and spirituality
can only do good to both.
Objection has been taken to 'Vedic
Mathematics'. Now there are no mathematics as such in any Veda. But all
ancient mathematics is being called 'Vedic Maths' for the sake of convenience.
Here is a country that developed the concepts of zero, decimal and much
else besides. All that the NCERT document says is that "The students may
be encouraged to enhance their computational skills by the use of Vedic
mathematics."
Why should anybody object to that?
After all education is a Concurrent Subject in the Indian Constitution
and States can take a different line on educational matters. For example
West Bengal Government had rejected the National Policy on Education developed
in the eighties; and, for years, they had refused to have any Navodaya
School. (NCERT decisions are recommendatory and not mandatory. And even
NCERT books are optional, not compulsory.) That being so, why should anybody
object to anybody else exploring ancient sciences?
The same with astrology. Here is
a subject difficult to believe and even more difficult to disbelieve. There
are people who go to the ridiculous length of being guided in everything
by the stars. (In Tamil Nadu everything-including courts comes to a standstill
during Rahu Kaalam) But when we consider that the sun and the moon chum
up whole oceans and cause tidal waves one begins to wonder whether they
would not have some influence on life on earth.
Fact is that life is full of uncertainties.
Man, therefore, has always wanted-and tried-to know the future. From Alexander
through Napoleon to Reagan, leaders have consulted astrologers and soothsayers.
As good old Shakespeare put it in the mouth of Hamlet "There are more things
between heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your (secular and scientific)
philosophy." Even Motilal Nehru used to show Jawaharlal's horoscope to
pandits. And what shall we say about the common people.
Decades ago I used to see a 'Pandit',
complete with tilak and turban and even an artificial beard sitting on
the footpath, predicting things for passers-by. In the evening he would
wrap, up his beard and things and go home. Would it not be better to have
regular courses in astrology so that at least bogus astrologers do not
bring a bad name to astrology, for whatever it is worth. In this context
the UGC-not NCERT-has suggested astrology as a "discipline which lets us
know the events happening in-human life and in the universe on time scale."
On a lighter note, astrology can, perhaps, earn us even more employment-and
more billions-in the west than 'Information Technology'.
Incidentally, we teach meteorology.
How accurate is it? Is it any more accurate than astrology?
The other day a big scientist working
with the World Seismic Safety Initiative, predicted that "one lac people
might lose their lives" in a earthquake in Delhi. He did not say when-this
year or in the next century or the next millennium. Again the question
arises: we teach seismology; but is seismology more accurate than astrology?
There is, however, one difference between astrologers and these scientists:
the astrologers at least tell you nice things; seismologists etc. tell
you only nasty things.
A third whipping boy of our secular
friends is Sanskrit. Sanskrit, they say, is dead. Okay, but then why do
they worry about something that is dead? Fact is they fear that Sanskrit
is very much alive in itself and through other Indian and European languages.
A part from Mahatma Gandhi who said,
"Without the study of Sanskrit one cannot become a true Indian and a truly
learned man", Max Muller has said. "Sanskrit is the greatest language of
the world" and Abbe Dubois has said, "Sanskrit is the origin of modern
languages of Europe.' Why even Nehru said: "If I was asked what is the
greatest treasure which India possesses and what is her greatest heritage,
I would answer unhesitatingly that it is the Sanskrit language and literature
and all that it contains. This is a magnificent inheritance, and so long
as this endures and influences the life of our people, so long will the
basic genius of India continue." Even Dr Ambedkar was all for Sanskrit.
In September 1949, he along with B. V. Keskar, T.T.K. Durgabai, Naziruddin
and several other MPs gave notice of an amendment to the Draft Constitution
which read: "Official language of the Union shall be Sanskrit." How it
did not materialise is another story.
More recently the Supreme Court
upheld the primacy of Sanskrit. It held that "in view of the importance
of Sanskrit for nurturing our cultural heritage, making of Sanskrit alone
as an elective subject, while not conceding this status to Arabic and-or
Persian, would not in any way militate against the basic tenet of secularism."
(Justices Kuldip Singh and Hansaria, October 4, 1994).
The real fear of these friends is
that this HRD programme will revive and strengthen Indian culture. And
they have little understanding and, therefore, no appreciation, of this
culture. But culture-which includes religion-is the soul of a nation. And
every nation must protect and promote its culture. That is what value education
is all about. Life for mankind, said Freud, is hard to endure. It is religion
that humanises nature and, with that "much is already won". Religion is
an inescapable part of being human. Life is unnavigable without the mast,
sail and flag of religion.
The unintelligible cosmos (100 billion
stars in the Milky Way alone-requiring one lac light years to cover from
end to end, and still expanding) disclosed by post-modern science and philosophy,
will drive people back to the comforting certainties of supra-rational
faiths.
Some people think that science,
technology and computers are everything. They are not. Jerry Mander rightly
warns that "all technologies should be presumed to be guilty until proved
innocent". For example he points out that millions of gallons of carcinogenic
acids and solvents used in the manufacturing of computers, seep into the
soil and water and poison them (vide In the Absence of the sacred). Thanks
to chemicalised foods and carcinogenic computers, today thirty per cent
of American males are infertile; thirty years ago it was only half a per
cent (vide Miracles Do Happen by Norman Shealy). Today many of us are sold
on cloning etc. But Dr Edwin Chargoff. Professor of Biochemistry, Columbia
University Medical School sees coming "a gigantic slaughter-house, a molecular
Auschwitz in which valuable enzymes and hormones will be extracted instead
of gold teeth."
In this bewildering situation of
a "holiness gap", only belief in God can strengthen man. As Davis Kingsley
puts it: "Religion gives the individual a sense of identity with the distant
past and the limitless future. It expands his ego by making his spirit
significant for the universe, and the universe significant for him."
More. Durkheim sees the worship
of God as the disguised worship of society, the great entity upon which
the individual depended" (vide The Sociology of religion by Thomas F. O'dea).
Interestingly enough, even science
is rooted in spirituality.
Sir Isaac Newton invented calculus
and developed his theory of gravity at the age of 23, during the plague-ridden
years of 1665 and 1666. Columbia University historian Lynn Thorndyke compared
Newton's method of discovery to "that of a medium coming out of a trance".
Lord John Maynard Keynes, speaking at the Tercentenary of Newton in 1947
said, "His deepest instincts were occult, esoteric, semantic... with a
profound shrinking from the world."
Einstein was a school drop-out who
worked in a patent office because no university would have him. And yet
in an inexplicable burst of genius which can only be described as supra-mental,
he suddenly produced in one year, 1905, six Papers that created the theory
of Relativity and Quantum Physics.
Edison held over one thousand patents
including the electric bulb, phonograph and motion-picture projector. Search
magazine wrote that "much of what he put down on paper originated from
a higher source, and that he was simply a vehicle or channel through which
this information could flow freely.
This is not the first time that
our secular friends have objected to BJP approach to education policy.
A few years back they had objected to some improvements in school history
texts in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. A fitting reply came from N.J.
Nanporia, veteran editor. "The BJP is striving to do in the States it rules
what the nation as a whole should have done immediately after Independence.....
Only a well defined sense of national identity can provide the kind of
vitality and motivation a nation needs.... In calling for a national ideology,
the BJP has struck the right- note."
India is an ancient civilization
that wrested a sense of nationalism-in response to the British. It has
yet to discover an ideology of its own. And that is not something a computer
can do for us." I say - amen!
