C Traditional Wisdom - Advaita AshramaHe examines the utility of Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives in guiding heuristic processes as well as in assessing learning, and also

C Traditional Wisdom c

ÙIKØÁ: LEARNING

c]nôv;u v{:bk Jtatu yd{k g;T v{ih; ltbÆtugk =Ættlt& >g=uMtk ¶u˜Xk g=rhv{btme;T v{uKt ;=uMtk rlrn;k dwntrJ& >>When chil dren, O Brihaspati, giv ing names to ob jects, sent out Vak’s first and ear li -est ut ter ances, all (knowl edge) that was ex cel lent and spot less, trea sured withintheir hearts, was dis closed through (Vak’s) grace. (Rig Veda, 10.71.1)

ytatgtoÀvt=bt=útu vt=k rN˜g& ôJbuÆtgt >vt=k mc{ÑatrhÇg& vt=k fUtjul rJà=r; >>The stu dent learns a fourth from his teacher, a fourth through his own in tel li gence, afourth from is fel low pu pils, and the re main ing fourth in course of time (by ex pe ri ence).

yvqJo& fUtu~rv fUtuNtu~gk rJ‘;u ;J Cthr; >Ôgg;tu J]r°btgtr; Ggbtgtr; m½tgt;T >>Wonderful in deed is this trea sure of yours, O Bharati (god dess of learn ing)! It in -creases with ex pen di ture and dwindles on hoarding!

gôg ltÂô; rlst v{Òtt fUuJjk ;w cnw¶w;& >l m stltr; Ntôºtt:ø =Jeo mqvhmtrlJ >>He that has not cul ti vated his in tel li gence but has merely heard of many things canscarcely un der stand the real im port of the scrip tures, like the spoon that has no per -cep tion of the taste of the soup it touches. (Mahabharata, ‘Sabha Parva’, 54.1)

I have seen that the knowl edge de rived by rea son ing is of quite a dif fer ent kindfrom the knowl edge de rived through med i ta tion; and quite dif fer ent from this again is the Knowl edge that dawns by His rev e la tion. (Sri Ramakrishna)

There is only one pur pose in the whole of life—ed u ca tion. (Swami Vivekananda)

11 PB - SEPTEMBER 2005

PRABUDDHABHARATA

Arise! Awake! And stop not till the goal is reached!

Wrút²;std{;ŒtËgJhtrªtctuÆt; >

Vol. 110 SEPTEM BER 2005 No. 9

� This Month �

The problems with education in India arelegion. Inadequate school coverage, low lit-eracy rates, outdated teaching methods, lackof motivation for higher and continued edu-cation—all result in Indian citizens function-ing much below their actual potential. Theeditorial, Educating Our Children, intro-duces the essays that explore some of theseissues in this number.

Prabuddha Bharata—100 Years Agodraws upon a poem by Eva Best, an excerptfrom Pascal and editorial comments to un-derline the power of thought.

The Vedas, as the primary scriptures ofHinduism, are meant to govern the socio-re-ligious norms of its body politic. Savants andscholars have regularly unravelled the vari-ous layers of meaning and insight inherentin these mantras in order to place them inthe context of contemporary concerns.Swami Sunishthanandaji’s Vedic Concept ofEducation is a fascinating attempt to exam-ine the philosophical, sociological, ethical,and psychological aspects of education witha perspective provided by Vedic mantras.The author is a monastic member of Rama-krishna Mission Ashrama, Medinipur.

‘Education is the evolving of the intellect bybringing the infinite power of the soul to actupon thought,’ points out Swami Tadanandajiin Education: Cognitive Objectives andVedanta. He examines the utility of Bloom’staxonomy of educational objectives in guidingheuristic processes as well as in assessinglearning, and also points out how this hierar-chy is consonant with the Vedantic idea of ed-ucation as ‘manifestation of the perfection al-ready in man’. The author is Director, Schoolof Languages, Ramakrishna Math, Hyderabad.

Learning is the essence of the endlessprocess termed education, in both its secularand spiritual aspects. It is distinct from bothliteracy and schooling and is the true deter-minant of greatness. This is brought homeelegantly in Learning: A Lifelong Processby Dr N V C Swamy, Dean of AcademicProgrammes, Swami Vivekananda YogaAnusandhana Samsthana, Bangalore.

The Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) is anambitious programme for universalizing ele-mentary education in the 6-14 years agegroup. Ramakrishna Mission Vidyalaya,Coimbatore, has played a seminal role in thisthrough its International Human ResourceDevelopment Centre (IHRDC) for the dis-abled, which has successfully implementedinclusive education for disabled children. In-clusive Education is an instructive report byDr M N G Mani, Director, IHRDC.

Soon after Keshab Chandra Sen madeknown the teachings of Sri Ramakrishna tothe general public, several collections ofthese illuminating sayings were publishedby various writers. Swami Chetananandaji,Minister-in-Charge, Vedanta Society of StLouis, has made available an absorbing ac-count of these texts beginning with The Gos-pel of Sri Ramakrishna according to GirishChandra Sen.

Swami Sandarshananandaji of Rama-krishna Mission Vidyapith, Deoghar, con-cludes his critique of contemporary histori-ography in History, Religion and Human-ity, highlighting the impact of the personali-ties of Sri Krishna, Buddha and SwamiVivekananda, and the latter’s own syntheticvision of history.

PB - SEPTEMBER 2005 12

Educating Our Children

EDITORIAL

If you hap pen to walk into the pre mises ofthe Ramakrishna Math at Domalguda inHyderabad in the morn ings, you are likely

to see sev eral young pre-school and pri maryschool chil dren of the lo cal ity grouped to -gether mer rily, hav ing milk and snacks. If youask them to re cite a Gita shloka for you, theyare likely to break into a cho rus, and if youraise your voice and say ‘Jay Sri Guru Maha-rajji ki … ‘ their gusty ‘Jay!’ may take yourcheerleadership in stincts by sur prise.

· The Ramakrishna Mis sion cen tre inBatti ca loa, Sri Lanka, runs a home for or phanchil dren with about two hun dred in mates.The ashrama is lo cated within the ‘ter ri tory’ of the Tamil Ti gers (LTTE). One would not be sur -prised if one finds the el derly swami in chargeof the ashrama wend ing his way to the nearbyLTTE camp look ing for one of his mi nor wardswho has gone miss ing. He would ar gue per -sua sively with the Ti gers to al low his ward togo back with him and com plete his ed u ca tionwhen he would be free to choose his fu ture ca -reer. The Ti gers would re lent even as theywould ac cuse him of be ing ‘un pa tri otic’.

· The Abujhmarh jun gles of Bastar dis trict in Chhattisgarh are home to sev eral Naxa litegroups. Re li gion and tra di tional so cial hi er ar -chies are anath ema to the Naxals. If you are ateacher at one of the ‘Tribal Ser vice Cen tres’ ofRamakrishna Mis sion Ash rama, Narain pur,you may find one of the Naxals tell ing you todis con tinue forc ing the chil dren into pray ers,not teach them such self-abas ing hi er ar chi calprac tices as of fer ing pranams to el ders, nor or -ga nize such bour geois func tions as the hoist -ing of the na tional flag on Re pub lic Day.

These vi gnettes bring into sharp fo cuscer tain very im por tant as pects of the ed u ca -tional pro cess that one is likely to over look

while for mu lat ing ed u ca tional pol i cies andim ple ment ing them. Why should the Naxalstar get prac tices that ap pear rather in noc u ousto the or di nary ob server? Why should theLTTE spe cif i cally fo cus on pre-teen and teen -age re cruits? Can the ‘Jay!’ of the Domalgudachil dren pro vide an an swer to these que ries?

The State of Our Education

In his es say ‘Learning: A Life long Pro -cess’ Prof. Swamy high lights the con cept oflearn ing as the core of the ed u ca tional pro cessand la ments the fail ure of our con ven tionaled u ca tion sys tem to fos ter gen u ine learn ing.Prof. Krishna Kumar, Di rec tor, Na tionalCoun cil of Ed u ca tion, Re search and Train ing,points out that ‘the con ven tional text book is aref er ence book, stuffed with in for ma tion, of -fer ing no room to think for one self or for in ter -dis ci plin ary link ages’. He adds: ‘The bur denthat cur ric ula and text books place on chil drenis com pounded by the stress and anx i etycaused by our mem ory-based ex am i na tionsys tem. The rate of fail ure is high and mod er -ate suc cess car ries lit tle value or mean ing. Thesys tem seems de signed to stig ma tize the ma -jor ity, ig nore the di ver sity of po ten tial and jus -tify the ex clu sion of the mar ginalized.’

None of these ob ser va tions are novel inthem selves. Swami Vivekananda had pointedout over a hun dred years ago that the sys temof ed u ca tion then cur rent—wherein ‘the mind is crammed with facts be fore it knows how tothink’—was ‘all wrong’. Ma hatma Gan dhiand Rabindranath Tagore had been crit i cal ofthe co lo nial sys tem of ed u ca tion for sti fling‘so cial ini tia tive and cre ativ ity’. So the prob -lem of In dian ed u ca tion is es sen tially theprob lem of con tin u a tion of an un healthy leg -acy de spite sig nif i cant at tempts by gov ern -


ments and pol icy mak ers and mo ti vated in sti -tu tions and in di vid u als to ini ti ate in no va -tions. The lat est in this line of ef forts is the Na -tional Cur ric u lum Frame work Re view,which, ac cord ing to the em i nent edu ca tion istProf. Yash Pal, aims at ‘start ing a free dommove ment to re lease chil dren from the ty ran -ni cal re gime in which schools en velop them’.

Un for tu nately, In dia’s ed u ca tional prob -lems are more ba sic. Prof. Swamy calls at ten -tion to the dis tinc tion be tween ed u ca tion andlit er acy. In dia is home to nearly half of theworld’s il lit er ates. So the pri mary chal lengebe fore it is to at tain uni ver sal func tional lit er -acy. The Na tional Ed u ca tion Pol icy for mu -lated in 1986 (and mod i fied in 1992) rec og -nized the Na tional Lit er acy Mis sion, Uni ver -sal iza tion of El e men tary Ed u ca tion and Non- for mal Ed u ca tion as the three in stru ments toerad i cate il lit er acy.

In No vem ber 2000, the Sarva ShikshaAbhiyan (SSA) was launched. It aimed at pro -vid ing qual ity el e men tary ed u ca tion to allchil dren in the 6-14 years age group through acom pre hen sive com mu nity-owned ap proach.Coimbatore dis trict in Tamil Nadu is one ofthe mod els of suc cess in SSA and RamakrishnaMis sion Vidyalaya has played a key roletherein. It serves as a model for in te gra tion ofdis abled (the Vidyalaya pre fers the term ‘dif -fer ently abled’!) chil dren into the ed u ca tionalmain stream. Dr M N G Mani’s es say in thisnum ber fea tures this suc cess story.

The Ramakrishna Mis sion runs over 850ed u ca tional in sti tu tions ca ter ing to nearly2,20,000 stu dents. A sig nif i cant pro por tion ofthis ef fort is di rected to pri mary and non-for -mal ed u ca tion. Numerous other vol un taryand gov ern men tal agen cies contribute to the6.64 lakh pri mary and 2.19 lakh up per pri -mary schools in In dia. Yet the rather slow risein the over all lit er acy rate (from about 20% to65% over the last fifty years, when most South -east and East Asian coun tries were post ingrates of over 75-80% twenty years ago) is ev i -dence of the in ad e quacy of these ef forts.

Two sig nif i cant lo gis tic prob lems areham per ing ef forts at to tal lit er acy: 1) the in -abil ity to en rol all chil dren el i gi ble for pri mary ed u ca tion, and 2) poor re ten tion rates of stu -dents at all lev els. Thus, of the nearly 200 mil -lion chil dren in the 6-14 years age group an es -ti mated 18% are not en rolled in any school.The school drop out rate at the pri mary level isclose to 40% and that at the up per pri marylevel just un der 55%.

Much plan ning has gone into ad dress ingthese draw backs. Swami Vivekananda’s callto have the ‘moun tain go to Mohammed’ byreach ing out to peo ple at their homes andworkstations has been par tially an sweredthrough the non-for mal ed u ca tion cen tres.The ‘mid day meal’ schemes are aimed at notonly pro vid ing nu tri tion for the most un der -priv i leged pop u la tion of chil dren but also atin creas ing en rol ment and school re ten tionrates. Fur ther strat e gies to make pri mary ed u -ca tion both an at trac tive and a use ful prop o si -tion are the need of the hour.

Fostering a Literate Environment

Lit er acy has been var i ously de fined bylin guists and so cial his to ri ans as ‘a ver bal skillin volv ing the abil ity to con trol the vi sual me -dium of lan guage’, as ‘a call for the par tic i pa -tion of the so cially de prived masses in thewrit ten her i tage’, or as ‘an en abling fac torwhich cre ates con di tions con du cive to lin guis -tic in no va tions and imag i na tive cre ativ ity’. Inmore con crete terms, lit er acy has tra di tion allybeen equated with the three R’s—read ing,writ ing and arith me tic. The func tional in ter -pre ta tions have var ied be tween so ci et ies andover time. Thus in the most un der de vel opedso ci et ies the abil ity to sign one’s name maystill suf fice to pass as lit er ate while the 1966Adult Ed u ca tion Act of the US Con gressadopt ed com ple tion of sec ond ary school asthe cri te rion of func tional lit er acy (by whichcrite rion 25% of US cit i zens are il lit er ate!).

A con cept par tic u larly relevant to the In -dian sit u a tion is that of ‘en vi ron men tal lit er -


450 Prabuddha Bharata

acy’. This re fers to the ‘un spe cial ized com pe -tence in volved in gen er ally deal ing with a lit -er ate en vi ron ment’. Such lit er acy need neverbe taught, just as oral lan guage is picked upwith out school ing. It is the type of lit er acy thatis ac quired through par tic i pa tion in a lit er ateen vi ron ment in which writ ten signs, warn -ings, la bels, cat a logues, menus, trade marks,head lines, sports scores, and the like are ubiq -ui tous. It is a well-doc u mented fact that thegrowth of ‘prac ti cal lit er acy’ in any so ci ety ismore closely re lated to the den sity and rich -ness of the lit er ate en vi ron ment than the pro -fu sion of schools.

It is there fore vi tally im por tant that notonly must a lit er ate en vi ron ment be cul ti vated,fos tered and en riched, but also spe cial ef fortsneed to be made to ex tend this rich ness to even re mote ar eas of the coun try. The re cent boomin in for ma tion tech nol ogy and elec tronic con -nec tiv ity has started pen e trat ing our vil lages,with con cepts like e-chaupal hav ing caught theimag i na tion of the peo ple. Pres i dent Dr Ab dul Kalam has given a call for ‘pro vi sion of ur banfa cil i ties in ru ral ar eas’. En tre pre neurs are be -com ing more aware of the po ten tial for busi -ness in ru ral and tra di tion ally back ward ar -eas. All these socio-eco nomic fac tors pro vide a highly con du cive at mo sphere for the growthof a lit er ate en vi ron ment. Our ed uca tionistsneed to col lab o rate with and con scious ly ex -ploit these forces to en sure that our ru ral chil -dren have at least the crit i cal level of en vi ron -men tal cues that would make read ing as nat u -ral as learn ing to speak. Ishwarchandra Vid-yasagar is famed to have learnt the nu mer alsfrom the mile stones as he walked with his fa -ther from their vil lage to Cal cutta. Less tal -ented chil dren could prob a bly do the samewith a greater den sity of such cues.

Intelligent Handling of Intelligence

The na tional cur ric u lum re view de fineslearn ing as ‘the re sult of ex pe ri ence, and thestu dent as some one who con structs knowl -edge while at tempt ing to make sense of the

world’. The ex pe ri en tial world of most un der -priv i leged In dian chil dren is far re moved fromtexts and their nar ra tives. Even as a tod dler,this child may be learn ing to cope with grind -ing pov erty and crush ing frus tra tions, emo -tional de pri va tions and abuse, an al co holic fa -ther and an over bur dened mother—all ofwhich can se verely ham per for mal learn ing.On the other hand, a child who has learnt theskills to ne go ti ate its way through these emo -tional hand i caps is likely to be better equip ped for life, even with out any for mal school ing,than many of those sup posed to coach him.

The pre-school and early pri mary schoolyears are most cru cial for the for ma tion of‘emo tional in tel li gence’—the abil ity to rec og -nize and han dle one’s emo tions, to mo ti vateone self to per sist in the face of fail ures andfrus tra tions, and the skill to com mu ni cate,em pa thize and han dle so cial sit u a tions ef fec -tively. It has also been am ply dem on stratedthat emo tional in tel li gence is a better pre dic -tor of suc cess in life than the stan dard IQ,which tests only ver bal and math e mat i cal-log -i cal abil ity.

The plu ral ity of intelligences is now awell-rec og nized fact. The mu si cal abil i ties of avo cal ist, the kin aes thetic skills of ath letes andgym nasts, the spa tial perceptivity of art istsand ar chi tects, the com mu ni ca tive com pe -tence of a teacher or ther a pist are all spe cific‘intelligences’ that can stand out even at thepre-school level and which need to be iden ti -fied and fos tered at that level it self.

All the same, it is emo tional in tel li gencethat makes for har mo ni ous hu man de vel op -ment and the con stit u ent com po nents of thisin tel li gence are pre cisely what make for thatpoorly de fined term ‘char ac ter’. The pro tag o -nists in our vi gnettes were all try ing to use thepli abil ity of this emo tional in tel li gence in chil -dren for causes they thought best. Our pri -mary ed u ca tion teach ers need to fo cus on thisemo tional in tel li gence if they are to im proveen rol ment and re tain their stu dents, and alsomake cit i zens with char ac ter. �


Educating Our Children 451

Prabuddha Bharata—100 Years Ago

September 1905

Feel ing is like soil. Germs are no more in her ent in the one than in the other. As by care ful cul ti va -

tion a piece of ground can be freed from the seeds of all ob nox ious growths, in the same way

can a man rid his feel ing of the germs of all un de sir able emo tions. A habit, an emo tion, or an

im pulse is only a spe cial ised form of the raw ma te rial feel ing. The cul ti va tion or ed u ca tion of feel ing

con sists in pro duc ing those spe cial ised forms of it which are de sir able and kill ing out those that are

un de sir able. A form of feel ing is in di vidu al ised and strength ened in pro por tion to the in ten sity with

which it is called out and the num ber of times it is re peated. Con versely, it is weak ened and dis-

individualised … the more it is ne glected and the more it is crowded out by forms of an op po site char -

ac ter. Thought is the agency which not only cre ates a form of feel ing, but sus tains it. Thinking of a

thing out lines a form in the feel ing-stuff. This is the germ. Fed by thought the germ de vel ops into de -

sire and the rest of the se ries. De prived of thought it dwin dles and dies. A de sire can not ex ist long if it

is not thought upon. The form cut off from its sup ply of life soon dis in te grates.

—from ‘Occasional Notes’

The Power of Thought

Man is but a reed, weak est in na ture, but a reed which thinks. It needs not that the whole uni -

verse should arm to crush him. A vapour, a drop of wa ter is enough to kill him. But were the Uni verse

to crush him, man would still be more no ble than that which has slain him, be cause he knows that he

dies, and the Uni verse has the better of him. The Uni verse knows noth ing of this.

Not from space must I seek my dig nity, but from the rul ing of my thought. I have should no more

if I pos sessed whole worlds. By space the Uni verse en com passes and swal lows me as an atom, by

thought I en com pass it.—Pascal


Think beau ti ful thoughts, and set them adrift

On Eter nity’s bound less sea!

Let their bur dens be pure, let their white sails lift

And bear away from you the com fort ing gift

Of your heart-felt sym pa thy.

For a beau ti ful thought is a beau ti ful thing,

And out on the in fi nite tide

May meet, and touch, and ten derly bring

To the sick and the weary and the sor row ing

A so lace so long de nied.

And a soul that hath buf feted ev ery wave

Ad ver sity’s sea hath known,

So weak, so wan, so de spair ing, grows brave

With that beau ti ful thought to suc cour and

save—

The thought it has made its own.

And the dull earth-senses shall hear its cry,

And the dull eyes see its gleam,

And the ship-wrecked hearts, as they wan der by,

Shall catch at its prom ise, and straight way try

To wake from their dis mal dream.

And ra di ant now as a heav enly star,

It grows with its added good,

Till over the wa ters the light gleams far

To where the des o late places are,

And its les sons are un der stood.

And glad are the eyes that be hold the ray,

And glad are the years that hear

The mes sage your sweet thought has to say

To the sor row ing souls along the way,

Who needed its word of cheer.

—Eva Best

Vedic Concept of Education

SW AM I SUNISHTHANANDA

Introduction

The Vedas, like any other scrip ture, areeter nal inspirers. They in spire us to leadhigher lives. Even if we were to suppose

that they may not cre ate an urge to wards agreater, no bler life, just the fact that theirwords have come up from the depths of man’s own na ture enables them to fur nish a chan nel,a frame work, in which ide al ism can be comeop er a tive for the wel fare of hu man ity. Hencethis at tempt to in ter pret var i ous as pects of ed -u ca tion based on the teach ings of the Vedas.

Educational Philosophy of the Vedas

A teacher should have faith in the in her -ent po ten ti al i ties of each and ev ery stu dent,for the At man (Self) is lodged in the heart ofev ery crea ture:

AaTma=Sy jNtaeinRihtae guhayam!,1

At the same time, he should be able to rec og -nize the dif fer ences in their ca pac ity of as sim i -la tion ow ing to di verse back grounds, as hasbeen aptly pointed out:

A]{vNt> k[RvNt> soayae mnaejve:vsma b-Uvu>,‘Though all men have the same eyes and

ears, yet they are un equal in their in tel lec tualca pac i ties.’2

Ac cord ingly, a teacher should be able toact as a re source per son for all stu dents by ca -ter ing to the stu dents’ di verse needs. This ispos si ble if the teacher has love for knowl edge.A teacher should read new books, ac quirenew di men sions of knowl edge, be come en -riched with new ideas. And this ca pac ity to ac -quire knowl edge must be com bined with theca pac ity to com mu ni cate knowledge to oth -ers. In the words of the Vedas:

SvaXyayàvcna_ya< n àmidtVym!,‘Do not for sake learn ing and teach ing.’3

An ideal teacher is sup posed to be afriend, phi los o pher and guide. His in tel lec tual ego tism does not lead him to re ject or dis cour -age stu dents’ opin ions al to gether. Rather, hislov ing at ti tude to wards stu dents mo ti vateshim to be in ter ac tive in the class room. Heques tions his stu dents and en cour ages themto ex press their opin ions. Ques tions serve anim por tant pur pose. They stim u late the stu -dents to think, and thus serve as an ef fec tiveway of an i mat ing their minds. In turn, theviewpoints of the stu dents can stim u late newlines of thought in the teacher and of fer himnew in sights. To teach is to learn. Hence, theideal teach ing-learn ing pro cess is not a one- way traf fic. It is in tended for the wel fare ofboth teacher and stu dent. The fol low ing Ve dic in vo ca tion is aimed at mak ing the teach ing- learn ing pro cess fruit ful, by be ing an ef fec tivemeans to nur ture the in tel lect of both theteacher and the stu dent, so that they may suc -ceed in their joint ven ture to ex plore the sub -lime and wider ho ri zons of their men tal andspir i tual fac ul ties:

` sh navvtu, sh naE -unÿu, sh vIy¡ krvavhE,tejiSv navxItmStu ma iviÖ;avhE,` zaiNt> zaiNt> zaiNt> .

‘Om. May [He] pro tect us both. May[Brah man] be stow upon us both the fruit ofknowl edge. May we both ob tain en ergy to ac -quire knowl edge. May what we both study re -veal the Truth. May we cher ish no evil feel ingto wards each other. Om Peace! Peace! Peace!’4

In an ideal ed u ca tional pro cess, a teacheris sup posed to be a fa ther fig ure, a role model.In the Ve dic times, the teacher was usu ally aguru, who was no or di nary per son, but a rishi,a seer. Knowl edge flour ished in him morethrough his in ner vi sion than through outer


ex pe ri ence, though the lat ter pro cess was con -sid ered in no way in fe rior to the for mer. Astudent was sup posed to live in the com panyof those heroes who sub li mated life and con -quered death, be cause it is life that kin dles life. There is a Ve dic in junc tion:

Aayu;ayu>k«ta< jIvayu:man! jIv ma m&wa>,àa[enaTmNvta< jIv ma m&Tyaeédga vzm!.

‘Live with the en light ened sages who en -no ble life. Live the life of an en light ened man,die not. Live with the spirit of el e vated souls;come not into the clutches of death.’5

Leth argy and com pla cency are the great -est hin drances in the pro cess of learn ing.There is no end to learn ing. As Sri Ramakri-shna used to say, ‘As long as I live, so long do Ilearn.’ He who seeks new knowl edge ex altshim self. It is the duty of man to move ahead inquest of knowl edge:

Aaraeh[ma³ m[< jIvtaejIvtae=ynm!,‘To as cend and march ahead is the path

of prog ress’ (5.30.7).

-UTyE jagr[m-UTyE Svpnm! ,‘Awak en ing is life, slum ber ing is death.’6

Be ing not con tented with the ex ist ing po -si tion, a per son should put forth ef forts to lifthim self higher and higher. Hence the Vedasin spire us:

%t! ³ amat> pué; mav pTwa>,‘O man, rise from the pres ent po si tion; do

not fall down.’7

Again, in the pro cess of con tin u ous learn -ing, reg u lar study is of great im por tance.How ever, one must be cau tious about thechoice of books. Only those books which pu -rify the senses and mind, en hance in tel lec tualand spir i tual power, and in spire a per son todo no ble deeds can be con sid ered good.Hence the Vedas pre scribe this:

y> pavmanIrXyeTy&i;i-> sM-&t< rsm!,sv¡ s pUtmî ait Svidt< matirñ na.

‘He who stud ies books of di vine knowl -edge— books that pu rify all be ings, books thathave been pre served by the en light ened sagesand seers— en joys ce les tial bliss, at tains pu rity and pi ety.’8

Vedic Code of EthicsChar ac ter build ing is the main ob jec tive

of ed u ca tion. Here again lies the re spon si bil ity of an ideal teacher. Ac cord ing to the Vedas,the best teach ers are those who not only teachbut also make their pu pils wor thy cit i zenspos sess ing no ble vir tues.

Ve dic stu dents were taught to re specttheir el ders, namely, fa ther, mother, teach ersand guests. But to re spect el ders did not meanto im i tate them or fol low them blindly. Theywere to re spect their el ders, but at the sametime they were to dis crim i nate the en no blingfea tures of their el ders’ char ac ter from thosethat were un so phis ti cated. The gu rus or teach -ers of Ve dic tra di tion used to in struct their stu -dents at the time of con vo ca tion:

mat&devae -v, ipt&devae -v, AacayRdevae -v, Aitiwdeevae -v. yaNynv* ain kmaRi[ , tain seivtVyain,nae #trai[.yaNySmak< sucirtain, tain TvyaepaSyain , nae #trai[.

‘Let your mother be a god dess unto you.Let your fa ther be a god unto you. Let yourteacher be a god unto you. The works that arenot blame wor thy are to be re sorted to, not theoth ers. Those ac tions of ours that are com -mend able are to be fol lowed by you, not theoth ers.’9

All our day-to-day deal ings are basedupon faith in oth ers. If in di vid u als turn out tobe un truth ful, the en tire so cial sys tem will col -lapse. Hence truth ful ness is the foun da tion ofhu man life. In the words of the Vedas:

sTyenaeÄ i-ta -Uim>,‘The earth is sus tained through Truth.’10

Thus, one of the vi tal as pects of ed u ca tion is to train the young to be truth ful. As per theVe dic dic tum:

\tSy pwa àet,‘Tread on the path of truth.’11

\tSy pNwamnu pZy saXvi¼rs> suk«tae yenyiNt,

‘Ob serve mi nutely the path of truthwhich has been trod den by the en light ened



sages.’12

The Vedas fur ther as sert that:

\tSy gaepa n d-ay su³ tu>,‘The no ble soul who pur sues the path of

truth is never de feated.’13

Truth ful ness, in or der to be a vir tue, must not hurt or in jure oth ers. The pur pose of truth -ful ness is wel fare of oth ers. W hen such a pur -pose is not served, it is wise to re main si lent.W hat is true must be good and what is goodmust be true. Hence, ac cord ing to the Vedas,one should as pire for sweet ness of speech,which en sures peace and pros per ity:

ijþaya A¢ e mxu me ijþamUl e mxUl km!,‘May there be sweet ness in front of my

tongue; may the root of my tongue be re pletewith honey.’14

vaca vdaim mxumd!,‘May I use sweet words in my speech’

(1.34.3).A stu dent should not en gage him self in

crit i ciz ing oth ers, giv ing lit tle im por tance towhat he him self is do ing. Crit i cizing oth ers ul -ti mately in jures the crit i cizer, for it is the crit i -cizer whose mind gets con tam i nated by per -ceiv ing evil in oth ers. Hence the Vedas warnus:

iniNdtarae inN* asae -vNtu,‘Those who de fame oth ers are them -

selves de famed.’15

True ed u ca tion should train in di vid u alsto be hon est in their deal ings. Like truth ful -ness, hon esty is also a vi tal fac tor which en -sures so cial sta bil ity. To be pre cise, hon esty isalso a form of truth ful ness. Hence the Vedasen join on hu man be ings to earn wealth by dintof hon est la bour:

ya ma l úmI> ptyal Urju:qa=£i-cSkNd vNdnev v&]m!,

ANyÇaSmt! sivtStaimtae xaihr{yhStae vsu nae rra[>.

‘O God, keep away from me that wealthwhich de grades me, which en tan gles me fromall di rec tions and with ers me like a par a siticplant that with ers away the tree. O su premeLord of wealth, thy hands are golden. Bless me

with that wealth which gives me peace andjoy.’16

The Vedas in struct man to endeavour toac quire the wealth which le git i mately be longsto him and not covet oth ers’ prop erty.

ma g &x> kSy iSvÏnm!,‘Do not covet the wealth of oth ers.’17

Ed u ca tion should equip one with a ra tio -nal and sci en tific at ti tude. The Vedic PashuYaga mantras, though ad dressed to the sac ri fi -cial an i mal, could well in spire us to ex plorenew ho ri zons in quest of knowl edge.

smuÔ< gCD Svaha=Ntir]< gCD Svaha,‘Ex plore the ocean, ex plore the sky and

be blessed’ (6.21).Ad ver sity brings the op por tu nity to test

our strength and dis cover for our selves thestuff of which we are made. The Vedas teachus that our res o lu tions should be firm enoughto en coun ter all our ad ver si ties bravely. Themore we try to run away from ad ver si ties, themore they will fol low us. The only so lu tion isto stop and face the brutes, boldly. Brav eryalone can lead us to suc cess.

Ø uviSt:Qaivcacil >,‘Be firm and un shaken.’18

sbl ae AnpCyut>,‘(May our speech be) strong and in vin ci -

ble.’19

Educational Sociology of the Vedas

Be ing cit i zens of a free na tion, stu dentsshould be made aware of the fact that we shallhave to solve na tional prob lems and re shapethe des tiny of In dia ac cord ing to our na tionalideas, ide als and needs. Mere free dom fromthe shack les of for eign rule is not enough. Thepro cess of ed u ca tion should stim u late stu -dents to get firmly con vinced that in dig e nousprob lems can never be solved with im portedide ol o gies, es pe cially for a na tion which hasits own en riched and highly evolved cul turaland spir i tual her i tage. The Vedas urge us toendeavour for self-rule:

ytemih SvraJye,‘May we endeavour for self-rule.’20


Vedic Concept of Education 455

Stu dents need to de velop a sense of na -tional loy alty and re spon si bil ity. This sense ofna tional loy alty can be cul ti vated by fol low ing the Ve dic at ti tude to wards one’s moth er land:

mata -Uim> puÇae Ah< p&iwVya>,‘Earth is my mother, I am a son of the

soil.’21

The Vedas re mind us that our sense ofna tional re spon si bil ity should in stil in us anurge to serve our moth er land and to be will ing to sac ri fice all for her se cu rity and wel fare.

%p spR matr< -Uimm!,‘Serve thy moth er land.’22

vy< tu_y< bil ùt> Syam,‘(O Moth er land,) may we sac ri fice all for

thee.’23

Stu dents must be ed u cated to rec og nizeunity in di ver sity, for that is a dis tinc tive fea -ture of our moth er land which has en abled herto re main in te grated in terms of the so cial, cul -tural and spir i tual as pects of evo lu tion, cen tu -ries af ter cen tu ries, ul ti mately to get meta mor -phosed into a sym phony of di verse tra di tions.Even the Vedas echo this en no bling as pect ofour moth er land:

As<vax< mXytae manvana<ySya %Öt> àvt> sm< bhu,

nanavIyaR Aae;xIyaR ib-itR p&iwvI n> àwta< raXyta< n>.

‘May the Earth, which has many heights,slopes and plains, bear ing on her bosom herbsthat pos sess heal ing pow ers, bind to getherscat tered men of di verse natures’ (12.1.2).

Rec og nizing unity in di ver sity, the Vedas ad vise all to live in peace ful co ex is tence.

jIva Sw jIVyasm!,‘You may live and let me also live’

(19.69.1).Stu dents should be made aware of the

fact that the ba sic hin drance in the path of na -tional prog ress is peo ple’s ex ces sive stress onin di vid ual free dom and also on the rights re -sult ing from it, with out car ing to stress the im -por tance of so cial re spon si bil ity and the du -ties en su ing there from. If the stu dents re al ized their re spon si bil ity to their na tion, they would

work more ef fi ciently and with greater ded i -ca tion, thereby pro mot ing the de vel op ment of their own na tion. Rights and du ties should gohand in hand, like the shield and sword of theVe dic Maruts:

hSte;u oaidí k&ití s< dxe,‘They [the Maruts] wielded the shield

and sword in their hands.’24

True ed u ca tion should aim at im part inga hu man is tic at ti tude and the spirit of ser vice.The Vedas cen sure the self-cen tred manwhose ac com plish ments are aimed ex clu -sively at self ish ends:

mae"mÚ < ivNdte Aàceta>sTy< ävIim vx #Ts tSy,

nayRm[< pu:yit nae soay<kevl a"ae -vit kevl adI.

‘The small-hearted man pro cures food invain. I speak the truth— this ver ily is his death.He cher ishes nei ther god nor friend; he whoeats alone, eats sin alone’ (10.117.6).

In turn, the Vedas in spire one to be char i -ta ble. The sole pur pose of earn ing should be to spend money on char i ta ble acts.

zthSt smahr shö hSt s< ikr,‘Earn with a hun dred hands and dis trib -

ute with a thou sand.’25

krae yÇ virvae baixtay,‘Blessed are the hands that sup port the

des ti tute.’26

Ed u ca tion should en able an in di vid ual to tran scend his in di vid u al ity in con scious so cial par tic i pa tion.

ma æ ata æ atr< iÖ]t!,‘May not brother de spise brother.’27

In stead of be ing jeal ous of each other, clash ingwith each other and pull ing each other down,true ed u ca tion should en able a per son to de -velop the ca pac ity to co op er ate, to live andwork as a team. The Vedas urge upon men toas sem ble on a com mon plat form, to think to -gether, and to work to gether for achiev ing acom mon goal.

s< gCDXv< s< vdXv< s< vae mna<is jantam!,deva -ag < ywa pUveR sÁjanana %paste. smanae mNÇ> simit> smanI



sman< mn> sh icÄ me;am!,sman< mNÇmi- mNÇye v>

smanen vae hiv;a juhaeim.smanI v AakUit> smana ùdyain v>, smanmStu vae mnae ywa v> sushasit.

‘March to gether; let your words beunited; let your minds be united; ac cept yourshare of for tune just as the gods, concurring,ac cepted their por tion of the sac ri fice in an -cient times. May your prayers be com mon;com mon be your fra ter nity; may your mindsmove with one ac cord; may your hearts workin har mony for one goal; may you be in spiredby a com mon ideal; I of fer for you a com monob la tion. May you re solve with one ac cord,may your hearts beat in uni son; may yourthoughts be har mo ni ous, so that you may liveto gether in hap pi ness.’28

In a de moc racy, it is the re spon si bil ity ofthe cit i zens to elect their rep re sen ta tives, whoon be half of the peo ple will look af ter the se cu -rity and wel fare of the na tion. Hence ed u ca -tion has a vi tal role to play in a de moc racy. The gen eral masses should be suf fi ciently ed u -cated to be aware of the re spon si bil i ties oftheir rep re sen ta tives in the pro cess of run ningthe ad min is tra tion of the na tion. The mantrasof the Purushamedha and Vajapeya Yagasmen tion the re spon si bil i ties of a ruler and sug -gest that the ruler is in vested with power forthe wel fare of the peo ple:

]Çay rajNym!,‘The ruler is for pro tec tion.’29

k«:yE Tva ]emay Tva rYyE Tva pae;ay Tva,‘For growth of ag ri cul ture, for pro tec tion

of prop erty, for prog ress and pros per ity, forsup port and sus te nance (are you ap pointed asour ruler)’ (9.22).

Free dom is our birth right. Educationshould make one aware of the var i ous formsof ex ploi ta tion, so that one can fight for lib ertyand for the right to live with dig nity. It is nat u -ral that so cial life will have var i ous gra da tionsde pend ing on the di ver sity of peo ple’s cul -tural back ground, eco nomic sta tus, learn ing,pro fes sion and ac com plish ments. But that

does not im ply that a cer tain sec tion of so ci etyshould have the privilege to ex ploit other sec -tions. So ci ety should en sure lib erty to eachand ev ery person to lead a life free from allsorts of ex ploi ta tion, as has been voiced in theVedas:

AdIna> Syam zrd> ztm!,‘May we live a hun dred years with out

be ing slaves to others’ (36.24).Ed u ca tion alone is the pan a cea for all so -

cial evils. Hence the Vedas call upon the schol -ars to aryanize the whole world. Arya meansre fined, cul tured and civ i lized, and toaryanize means to en no ble. Peace and pros -per ity will pre vail on earth when most of thepeo ple are aryanized. The Vedas or dain:

k«{vNtae ivñ mayRm!,‘Making all our acts noble.’30

%t deva Aviht< deva %Úywa pun>,‘You gods have de graded us; you must

raise us up again’ (10.137.1).The Vedas adore the en light ened per sons

who ded i cate their lives for lead ing oth ers to -wards prog ress by an ni hi lat ing the dark nessof su per sti tion, ig no rance, il lit er acy and nar -row out look pre vail ing among the com monmasses:

te ih puÇasae Aidte> àjIvse mTyaRy,JyaeityRCDNTyjö m!.

‘They are wor thy sons of the soil who im -part ev er last ing light for the good of hu manlife.’31

Educational Psychology of the Vedas

All deeds orig i nate from thoughts. Purethoughts re sult in con struc tive deeds, whileim pure thoughts re sult in de struc tive acts.Man is made by what he thinks. Hence trueed u ca tion, as per the Vedas, is to de velop apure mind, to cul ti vate vir tues and to en ter -tain good wishes for all be ings of the world, asis ev i dent from the fol low ing mantras:

y¾ a¢tae dUrmudEit dEv<tdu suÝSy tw EvEit,

dUr¼m< Jyaeit;a< Jyaeitrek< tNme mn> izvs»LpmStu.



‘This mind of mine, which trav els afar,the light of lights, which wan ders to far-offplaces whether I am asleep or awake— may itre solve to do what is good and pure’ (34.1).

-Ô< nae Aip vaty mn>,‘(O Agni,) lead our minds on vir tu ous

paths.’32

Aa nae -Ôa> ³ tvae yNtu ivñ t>,‘Let no ble thoughts come to us from all

sides’ (1.89.1).The very es sence of ed u ca tion is con cen -

tra tion of the mind. It is the na ture of the mindto fluc tu ate at each and ev ery mo ment. W henone tries to ac quire knowl edge about an ob -ject, the mind, be ing con stantly fluctuant, can -not fo cus on it fully. Thus the knowl edge ac -quired is su per fi cial. But if a man can betrained to con cen trate his mind, thereby en -abling him to fo cus un in ter rupt edly on the ob -ject of knowl edge, then the knowl edge ac -quired by him will be all-com pre hen sive. Thedis trac tions of the mind are re lated ei ther toone’s past ac tion or fu ture an tic i pa tion. Ifthese two types of men tal gy ra tions can bestopped, and the mind can be trained to re -main fo cused on its pres ent as sign ment, thenalone can the knowl edge ac quired by themind be all-com pre hen sive and fruit ful.Hence the Vedas say:

yÄ e -Ut< c -Vy< c mnae jgam dUrkm!,tÄ Aa vtRyamsIh ]yay jIvse.

‘The mind has gone far away to all thatoc curred in the past and will occur in the fu -ture. W e call it back to thy self so that it may re -main long un der thy control’ (10.58.12).

How ever, ac cord ing to the Vedas, pu ri fi -ca tion and con cen tra tion of the mind are notmerely in tended for ac quir ing ob jec tiveknowl edge, but for cul ti vat ing sub jec tiveknowl edge too, which leads man to evolvecon sciously be yond his psychophysical ex is -tence so that he may ul ti mately re al ize his im -mor tal spir i tual na ture. Ed u ca tion, love forthe coun try and truth ful ness are all high -lighted in the Vedas. But their cen tral theme isthe re moval of ig no rance and suf fer ing.

Though the Vedas teach ev ery thing else, as we saw above, they al ways un der score the needto re al ize one’s im mor tal spir i tual na ture,which alone leads to su preme peace. In thedepths of such re al iza tion is true wis domborn, which has lit tle re la tion to the sur face ac -tiv i ties of the en quir ing in tel lect. True ed u ca -tion, ac cord ing to the Vedas, should mo ti vateus to com pre hend that life is a great and deepper sonal ad ven ture, of fer ing us con tin uedand un lim ited op por tu ni ties to open our -selves more and more fully to that in fi nite im -mor tal Re al ity of which we form an in te gralpart:

iv* ya=m&tmî ute,‘Knowl edge leads us to im mor tal ity.’33

Closing our minds and hearts to life,truth, beauty and love cuts off the ef ful genceof our be ing. Hence the Vedas urge us to prayfor il lu mi na tion so that, in stead of grop ing indark ness, we may pro ceed to wards light:

g Uhta g uý < tmae iv yat ivñ miÇ[m!, Jyaeit:ktaR yduZmis.

‘Dis pel hor rid dark ness from within; re -move all vi cious thoughts and en kin dle thelight we long for.’34

Astae ma sÌmy,tmsae ma Jyaeitg Rmy,m&TyaemaR=m&t< gmy.

‘Lead us from un truth to truth, fromdark ness to light; from death to im mor tal -ity.’35

Conclusion

Though the ed u ca tional pro cess, as dis -cussed in the light of the Vedas, lays stress onself-dis ci pline, it does not deal with life pes si -mis ti cally. The main ob jec tive of self-dis ci -pline is to over haul hu man per son al ity andini ti ate us in the art of liv ing so that we can livethe full span of our lives in quest of knowl -edge, peace and pros per ity:

pZyem zrd> ztm!, jIvem zrd> ztm!,buXyem zrd> ztm!, raehem zrd> ztm!,pU;em zrd> ztm!, -vem zrd> ztm!,-Uyem zrd> ztm!, -UyasI> zrd> ztat!.



‘May we see for a hun dred au tumns.May we live for a hun dred au tumns. May weknow for a hun dred au tumns. May we rise fora hun dred au tumns. May we pros per for ahun dred au tumns. May we live for a hun dredau tumns. May we grow for a hun dred au -tumns— even more than a hun dred au -tumns.’36

�

References

1. Katha Upanishad, 1.2.20.

2. Rig Veda, 10.71.7.

3. Taittiriya Upanishad, 1.11.1.

4. Taittiriya Aranyaka, 8.1.1.

5. Atharva Veda, 19.27.8.

6. Yajur Veda, 30.17.


8. Rig Veda, 9.67.31.

9. Taittiriya Upanishad, 1.11.2.




13. Rig Veda, 9.73.8.


15. Rig Veda, 5.2.6.



18. Rig Veda, 10.173.1.


20. Rig Veda, 5.66.6.


22. Rig Veda, 10.18.10.


24. Rig Veda, 1.168.3.


26. Rig Veda, 6.18.14.


28. Rig Veda, 10.191.2-4.


30. Rig Veda, 9.63.5.


32. Rig Veda, 10.20.1.


34. Rig Veda, 1.86.10.

35. Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, 1.3.28.

36. Atharva Veda, 19.67.



Power of Understanding

\cae A]re prme Vyaemn! yiSmn! deva Aix ivñ e in;edu>,yStÚ ved ikm&ca kir:yit y #t! td! ivduSt #me smaste.

He who does not re al ize the ul ti mate Truth be hind the Rik and Akshara (word and let ter) in which

rest all gods—what will he do by merely re cit ing and re peat ing the Riks? (Rig Veda, 1.164.39)

%t Tv> pZyn! n ddzR vacmut Tv> z&{vn! n z&[aeTyenam!, %tae TvSmE tNv< iv sö e jayev pTy %ztI suvasa>.One (stu dent) merely sees the word but not its mean ing; an other hears it but not fully. But to an -

other (wor thy pu pil) it un folds it self like the de voted wife ap pear ing in her best dress be fore her hus -

band. (Rig Veda, 10.71.4)

%t Tv< sOye iSwrpItmahunERn< ihNvNTyip vaijne;u, AxeNva crit mayyE; vac< zuï uva~ A)l ampu:pam!.He who is es tab lished and has drunk in su preme knowl edge is counted as in dis pens able in the as -

sem blies of the learned. An other wan ders with an il lu sion that is but a bar ren cow—the mere sym bol of

speech, bear ing no fruit or flower. (Rig Veda, 10.71.5)

yd!g &hItmiv} at< ingdenEv zB* te, An¶aivv zu:kExae n tJJvl it kihRict!.Learning with out un der stand ing is called cram ming; like dry wood on ashes it can never blaze forth.

(Nirukta, 1.18)

Education: Cognitive Objectives and Vedanta

SW AM I TADANANDA

The Challenges Before Us in Education

In this age of in for ma tion ex plo sion, ac com -mo dat ing the hu mon gous amounts of in -for ma tion and knowl edge in ev ery field is

putt ing se vere strain on all in volved with ed u -ca tion— stu dents, teach ers and par ents. Alook at the syl la bus at any level of ed u ca tion inIn dia re veals that stu dents now a days are ex -posed to far more in for ma tion than their fa -thers or grand fa thers were. This is re sult ing inpar ents in vest ing in the ed u ca tion of their chil -dren right from the nurs ery level. To se cure aplace in a good col lege, stu dents have to takead di tional coach ing and out per form oth ers incom pet i tive ex am i na tions. Even while in col -lege, a stu dent must learn other sub jects suchas com put ing or an ad di tional lan guage. Gone are the days when a sin gle ed u ca tional qual i fi -ca tion could se cure you a life time of com fort -able em ploy ment. There is con tin u ous pres -sure to spe cial ize and con stantly stay up datedand up graded in one’s spe cial ized field. W ithgreater con nec tiv ity at all lev els of our so ci etyand in creas ing com plex ity in our life style, thesit u a tion has only wors ened.

The sim plis tic idea of ed u ca tion char ac -ter is tic of our sys tem, pri mar ily based on feed -ing in chunks of in for ma tion, does not suf fi -ciently pre pare our youn ger gen er a tions tobrace them selves for the chal lenges that lieahead of them. Firstly, we must ad mit thatthere is very lit tle we can do to re duce or evencon trol the quan tity of in for ma tion andknowl edge that our stu dents have to han dle.Fur ther more, we must re al ize that an ed u ca -tion sys tem re strict ing it self to im part ing onlyfac tual knowl edge is out dated. Man is dis tin -guished from an i mals by vir tue of his ra tio nal -ity. It is this think ing do main of his per son al ity that calls for care ful for ma tion. The in tel lect is

to be trained to dis tin guish truth from er ror,facts from opin ions, and re al ity from ap pear -ance. The com mon idea of ed u ca tion and itsmeth od ol ogy need to be re viewed.

A Paradigm Shift

A par a digm shift is nec es sary in the ob -jec tives and meth od ol ogy of our cur rent ed u -ca tion— a ma jor shift from ‘quan tity of in for -ma tion’ to ‘qual ity of train ing of the mind andin tel lect’, which will make them ef fi cient in -stru ments for not only pro cess ing and as sim i -lat ing vast amounts of in for ma tion but alsofac ing sit u a tions of in creas ing com plex ity inev ery day life.

True ed u ca tion en com passes many ar eas re lated to the har mo ni ous de vel op ment of thethree H’s— head, heart and hands. This ar ti cleis re stricted to the de vel op ment of the cog ni -tive or think ing do main of learn ers.

About a cen tury ago, Swami Viveka -nanda had pre dicted this cri sis in ed u ca tionand had cat e gor i cally pointed out that real ed -u ca tion is not the amount of in for ma tion thatis put into one’s brain and runs riot there, un -di gested, all one’s life. The hu man mind is nota bot tom less dry well which has to be filled inwith buck ets of in for ma tion by the teacher. Acrit i cal eval u a tion of the ob jec tives of our cur -rent ed u ca tional sys tem shows that in re al itythey are ex actly what Swami Vivekanandadid not want. He had also said that ed u ca tionhas more to do with as sim i la tion of ideas andde vel op ing ‘a mind of the same ma te rial asthat of which the thun der bolt is made’. He had en vi sioned an ed u ca tion that in creased thestrength of the mind, ex panded the in tel lectand en abled one to stand on one’s own feet;and this, he sug gested, was to be done with the help of ‘W est ern sci ence cou pled with


Vedanta … and faith in one’s own Self’.Taking this as the start ing point, we shall

first ex plore how the sci en tific ap proach to ed -u ca tion adopted in the W est can help usachieve the goal of up grad ing the cog ni tivefac ulty of learn ers. Then we will see how theap pli ca tion of the won der ful Vedantic idea ofreal ed u ca tion be ing ‘the man i fes ta tion of theper fec tion al ready in man’ can en hance ed u ca -tion by bring ing out a novel trans for ma tion inour faith in our selves and in our ap proach toteach ing and learn ing.

W hat Is Assimilation of Ideas?

The Ox ford Ad vanced Learner’s Dic tio naryde fines the verb as sim i late as ‘to fully un der -stand an idea or some in for ma tion so that youare able to use it your self’. Since ideas may belik ened to ‘food for the mind’, let us un der -stand this in tel lec tual pro cess of as sim i la tionof ideas by draw ing a par al lel with the phys i o -log i cal pro cess of as sim i lat ing food.

Food is pro cessed in the di ges tive tract ina very or ga nized man ner. The mouth is re -spon si ble for moist en ing and ini tial phys i calbreak down of the food. Then in the stom achand du o de num strong ac ids and en zymesbreak down the car bo hy drates, pro teins, andfats into sug ars, amino ac ids, and fatty ac ids.The pro cess of as sim i la tion or ab sorp tiontakes place in the small in tes tine. Here the es -sen tial di gested nu tri ents in the form of sug -ars, amino ac ids, fatty ac ids and some re-syn -the sized fats are ab sorbed into the blood -stream and trans ported to var i ous or gans ofthe body. The nu tri ents are then burnt throughthe com plex pro cess of cel lu lar res pi ra tion tore lease en ergy, or used for the syn the sis ofvar i ous tis sues such as mus cle, skin, hair andthe like, or stored as fat for fu ture use. Thewhole pro cess in volves the suc ces sive stagesof in ges tion, di ges tion, and as sim i la tion, cul -mi nat ing in cel lu lar res pi ra tion and growth ofcells and tis sues. Un di gested waste trav els tothe large in tes tine on its way out to make space for newer, more ef fec tive nu tri ents.

A strong and healthy di ges tive sys tem isnec es sary to fully pro cess the food we eat.Like wise, a well-de vel oped cog ni tive sys temis nec es sary to ef fi ciently pro cess in for ma tion,ideas and con cepts. Ir rel e vant ideas and in for -ma tion have to be dis carded.

Our ed u ca tion sys tem can ben e fit greatlyfrom the well es tab lished and ap plied W est -ern con cept known as Bloom’s Tax on omy ofEd u ca tional Ob jec tives for the cog ni tive do -main which was for mu lated by Dr BenjaminBloom in 1956. It is the most re nowned de -scrip tion of the lev els of cog ni tive per for -mance or in tel lec tual growth and de vel op -ment. This tax on omy, or sci en tific pro cess ofclas si fy ing the stages of learn ing, can bethought of as ‘goals of the train ing pro cess ored u ca tional ob jec tives’. That is, af ter hav ingim bibed some ed u ca tion or at the end of atrain ing ses sion, the learner should have ac -quired certain new cog ni tive skills.

Ac cord ing to this clas si fi ca tion, the cog -ni tive do main in volves knowl edge and thede vel op ment of in tel lec tual skills. This in -cludes the rec og ni tion of facts and con ceptsthat con trib ute to the de vel op ment of in tel lec -tual abil i ties. There are six ma jor cat e go ries inBloom’s tax on omy out lined in the fol low ingor der: knowl edge, understanding, ap pli ca -tion, analysis, synthesis and eval u a tion, start -ing from the sim plest to the most com plex.These cat e go ries or lev els are con sid ered to behi er ar chi cal, char ac ter ized by pro gres sive de -grees of dif fi culty. That is, learn ers must mas -ter lower-level ob jec tives first be fore they canbuild on them to reach higher-level goals.

Let us now ex am ine the tax on omy inmore de tail. The reader may well com pare this with the type of ed u ca tion he or she has re -ceived right from the pri mary school days upto the uni ver sity level or with the ob jec tives ofour cur rent ed u ca tional sys tem.

Educational Objectivesfor the Cognitive Domain

Bloom’s tax on omy pro vides an ex cel lent

Education: Cognitive Objectives and Vedanta 461


struc ture for plan ning, de sign ing, as sess ingand eval u at ing train ing and learn ing ef fec -tive ness.

The first level is knowl edge. It in volves re -call ing in for ma tion or data. The learner isasked to de fine, de scribe, iden tify, list, name,out line, re call, rec og nize, re pro duce, se lect,state, etc. Ex am ples in clude rec i ta tion of a San -skrit verse from the Gita or re call ing the phone num ber or name of a per son. Knowl edge rep -re sents the low est level in Bloom’s tax on omy.It is ‘low’ only in the sense that it co mesfirst— it pro vides the ba sis for all ‘higher’ cog -ni tive ac tiv ity.

Only af ter a learner is able to re call in for -ma tion is it pos si ble to move on to the sec ondlevel of com pre hen sion, which is giv ing mean -ing to in for ma tion. It in volves un der stand ingthe mean ing, trans la tion, in ter po la tion, andin ter pre ta tion of in struc tions and prob lems orstat ing a prob lem in one’s own words. Theteacher prompts a re sponse from the stu dentsus ing words like dis tin guish, es ti mate, ex -plain, gen er al ize, give ex am ples, in ter pret,pre dict, re write, sum ma rize, trans late, and soon. Ex plaining the mean ing of the San skritverse in one’s own words in Eng lish would bea typ i cal ex am ple.

The third level is ap pli ca tion, which re fersto us ing knowl edge or prin ci ples in new orreal-life sit u a tions. The learner at this levelsolves prac ti cal prob lems by ap ply ing in for -ma tion com pre hended at the pre vi ous lev els.The learn ing leader, as the teacher or in struc -tor is pref er a bly called, stim u lates and guidesthe learn ers with words such as ap ply, com -pute, con struct, dem on strate, op er ate, pre dict, pre pare, re late, show, solve, etc. For ex am ple,ap ply ing New ton’s law of grav i ta tion to com -pute the dis tance a cricket ball will go when hit with a par tic u lar amount of force.

The fourth level is anal y sis— break ingdown com plex in for ma tion into sim pler parts. The sim pler parts, of course, were learned atear lier lev els of the tax on omy. The pro cess ofanal y sis sep a rates con cepts into com po nent

parts so that its or ga ni za tional struc ture maybe un der stood. It dis tin guishes be tween factsand in fer ences. The teacher asks the learner toana lyse, break down, com pare, con trast, dif -fer en ti ate, dis crim i nate, dis tin guish, iden tify,il lus trate, out line, re late, se lect, sep a rate andso on. For ex am ple, sep a rately iden ti fy ing dif -fer ent po lit i cal view points.

The fifth level, syn the sis, con sists in cre at -ing some thing that did not ex ist be fore by in te -grat ing in for ma tion that had been learned atlower lev els of the hi er ar chy. It builds a struc -ture or pat tern from di verse el e ments. It putsto gether parts to form a whole, with em pha sison cre at ing a new mean ing or struc ture. In thepro cess of syn the sis the learner cat e go rizes,com bines, com piles, com poses, cre ates, de -vises, de signs, ex plains, gen er ates, mod i fies,or ga nizes, plans, re ar ranges, re vises, re con -structs, re lates, re or ga nizes, re writes or sum -ma rizes. For in stance, the learner may de signa ma chine or write a soft ware ap pli ca tion toper form a spe cific task.

Eval u a tion is the high est level in the hi er -ar chy. It con sists in mak ing judg ements aboutthe value of ideas or ma te ri als based on pre vi -ous lev els of learn ing to com pare a prod uct ofsome kind against a des ig nated stan dard.Here the learner ap praises, con cludes, con -trasts, crit i cizes, de fends, de scribes, eval u ates, ex plains, in ter prets, jus ti fies, re lates, sum ma -rizes, sup ports, etc. Ex am ples would in cludese lect ing the most ef fec tive so lu tion, hir ing the most qual i fied can di date, or ex plain ing andjus ti fy ing a new bud get.

If any con cept is to be interiorized indepth through the ex pe ri ence of learn ing it, itmust pass sys tem at i cally through ev ery stageiden ti fied by Dr Bloom. Now we see that realtrain ing of the mind and in tel lect in volvesmuch more than merely mug ging up in for ma -tion for com pet i tive ex am i na tions or su per fi -cially touch ing upon con cepts, or solv ingequa tions by plug ging in vari ables into them.The real task of the teacher is to sys tem at i callystim u late and de velop the higher-level skills



of anal y sis, syn the sis and eval u a tion. A thor -ough in tel lec tual for ma tion can only be the re -sult of a per sis tent step-by-step climb ing to at -tain greater heights.

The mere im part ing of knowl edge leavesthe stu dent at the first stage and first stagealone. Most teach ers are sat is fied with theachieve ment of this step and pro ceed no fur -ther. Oth ers— and these are in the mi nor -ity— take the stu dents to the ap pli ca tion leveland leave them fix ated there, of fer ing no in -cen tive to pro ceed fur ther. The pri mary rea -son for this is that the ma jor ity of our teach ersare not trained in the art and sci ence of teach -ing. They lack aware ness, thor ough knowl -edge and prac ti cal train ing in the ap pli ca tionof the vast dis cov er ies made in the fields of ed -u ca tional psy chol ogy, phi los o phy and so ci ol -ogy. One needs more than the knowl edge ofthe sub ject mat ter to dis charge the sa cred re -spon si bil ity of a teacher.

Teaching in the Light ofBloom’s Taxonomy

W hile de vel op ing the in struc tional ob jec -tives of a course, pro vid ing in struc tions, andeval u at ing stu dent per for mance, it is im por -tant to keep in mind that there are dif fer entlev els or out comes of learn ing. Dis tin guishingamong these is very crit i cal. Skills at dif fer entlev els must be taught and tested in dif fer entways.

If teach ers are un aware of the dif fer entlev els of learn ing, they are likely to fo cus onone level to the det ri ment of oth ers. For ex am -ple, a teacher may teach higher-level think ingskills with out re al iz ing that these skills re -quire the prior learn ing of ba sic skills thatmust be in te grated into these higher-or derskills. Or a teacher may teach a vast amount offac tual in for ma tion but never get around toteach ing stu dents to ap ply and syn the size thisin for ma tion.

In ad di tion, it is not un usual to see ateacher who wants her stu dents to learnhigher-or der think ing skills con duct ex am i na -

tions that test only lower-level skills. Un dersuch cir cum stances, the stu dents are likely toput their ef forts in the wrong di rec tion.

Teachers of ten use the term ap pli ca tion in -ac cu rately. They as sume that us ing the in for -ma tion in any way what so ever rep re sents theap pli ca tion level of Bloom’s tax on omy. This,how ever, is not cor rect. For ex am ple, a childwho ‘uses’ his mem o ri za tion of the mul ti pli -ca tion ta bles to write down ‘30’ next to ‘5 times 6 equals’ is work ing at the knowl edge level,not the ap pli ca tion level. A child who stud iesSpan ish and then con verses with a na tiveMex i can is al most cer tainly at the syn the sislevel, and not at the ap pli ca tion level. If thechild made a de lib er ate at tempt to get his pasttense right, this would be an ex am ple of ap pli -ca tion. How ever, in con vers ing he would cer -tainly be cre at ing some thing new that did notex ist be fore by in te grat ing knowl edge thathad been learned at lower lev els of the hi er ar -chy, and that would be syn the sis.

The Value of Bloom’s Taxonomy

Bloom pro posed that the main value ofthe tax on omy is two fold: (1) it can stim u lateteach ers to sci en tif i cally, con sciously and sys -tem at i cally help stu dents ac quire skills at all of these var i ous lev els, lay ing the proper foun da -tion for higher lev els by first as sur ing mas teryof lower-level ob jec tives; and (2) it pro vides aba sis for de vel op ing mea sure ment strat e giesto as sess stu dent per for mance at all these lev -els of learn ing.

How ever, we con tend that an even moreim por tant third goal, which is the fo cus of thisar ti cle, is achieved by the ap pli ca tion of thetax on omy. It is a pow er ful and sci en tificmech a nism for train ing the mind and in tel lect. Just as a well-qual i fied and ex pe ri enced in -struc tor in a gym na sium sys tem at i cally takesthe ath letes through a se ries of well-cho sen ex -er cises and drills to de velop their mus cles andstam ina, sim i larly, a well-trained teacher‘stim u lates, ex er cises, de vel ops, sharp ens,strength ens and trains’ the higher an a lyt i cal



and crit i cal think ing fac ul ties of the learn ersthrough what ever sub ject mat ter is at hand.The ‘ex er cises’ that we come across at the endof chap ters in text books are meant to ex er cisethe mind. To fully ben e fit from them, stu dentsmust do the ex er cises them selves with no ormin i mum help from the teacher. They mustnot run to a tu tor each time they find some -thing dif fi cult, but must con tinue to strug gleand wres tle with the ex er cises un til knowl -edge co mes from within the mind. No teachermust fully solve the prob lems for the stu dent.The ap proach of the teacher should be to clearthe ob sta cles and guide the stu dents throughthe pro cess. The stu dent must him self dis -cover the value of the strug gle which leads tothe joy of knowl edge. It is in this way that theteacher helps in the de vel op ment of the in tel -lec tual strength and stam ina of learn ers, thusequip ping them with pow er ful tools ca pa bleof an a lyt i cal, crit i cal and discriminative think -ing which can be used for ‘di gest ing and as -sim i lat ing ideas’ as en vi sioned by SwamiVivekananda.

The last three stages, con sist ing of anal y -sis, syn the sis and eval u a tion, lead to the peaksof in tel lec tual for ma tion and stim u late the stu -dent to ra tio nal ize, judge and make choices ina log i cal man ner. A very small mi nor ity everscales these peaks. Un for tu nately, few teach -ers help the stu dents reach the fi nale. W henthe dis crim i na tory and crit i cal abil i ties are notwell ex er cised, per sons lack depth of thoughtand clar ity of un der stand ing. It be comes ev i -dent from the at ti tudes and sweep ing judge -ments passed on ma jor is sues, that think ing issu per fi cial and lacks equi lib rium, clar ity andcon vic tion.

Stu dents must be brought to un der standthe work ings of the mind and in tel lect to en -able them to travel on the higher paths of theirrea son ing, judge ments, and de duc tions. Suchskills would help them re form false judge -ments! The his tory of the world has re peat edly cor rob o rated the fact that the mob men tal ityhas led peo ple, in clud ing the youth, to ac cept

false and fa nat i cal doc trines and ide ol o gies,which they would have re jected had they been given proper train ing and made ca pa ble ofcon sid ered re flec tion.

The Teacher and the Learnerin the Light of Vedanta

One of the foun da tions of Vedanta phi -los o phy is the won der ful truth of the di vin ityof the soul. This di vin ity means that the soul in ev ery one is of the na ture of in fi nite Ex is tence,in fi nite Knowl edge and in fi nite Bliss. The in fi -nite li brary of knowl edge is in her ent in man.This per fect knowl edge is cov ered by ig no -rance and ed u ca tion is the grad ual pro cess ofman i fes ta tion of this per fec tion within by re -mov ing the cov er ings. If knowl edge is like firein her ent in a piece of wood, then the pro cess of ed u ca tion is like the fric tion that brings theflames out of the wood, and the teacher is thefa cil i ta tor of that pro cess. Just as na ture it selfpro vides the nec es sary wa ter, air and soilneeded for the growth and de vel op ment of aseed into a strong and sturdy fruit-bear ingtree— the func tion of an ex pe ri enced gar dener amount ing to help ing in this nat u ral pro cessby pur vey ing wa ter and ma nure— like wise,the teacher too helps in the growth and de vel -op ment of the in tel lect of the learner. Books,lec tures and lab o ra to ries are only sec ond aryaids in the pro cess of dis cov ery of knowl edge.

W hat is the sig nif i cance and im pli ca tionof this Vedantic prin ci ple in ed u ca tion? In thelight of the Vedantic out look, both the teacherand the learner are ac tive par tic i pants in theteach ing-learn ing pro cess, and ed u ca tion isthe evolv ing of the in tel lect by bring ing the in -fi nite power of the soul to act upon thought.The teacher looks upon the learner not as amere phys i cal be ing but as a liv ing and dy -namic mind strug gling to man i fest the light ofthe in fi nite soul, the re pos i tory of all knowl -edge. He rec og nizes that just as the same elec -tric ity flow ing through bulbs of dif fer entwatt age gives out dif fer ent amounts of light,like wise the same soul pres ent in all be ings



man i fests it self in vary ing de grees de pend ingon the dif fer ence in pu rity of the mind. Hedoes not try to fill the mind with in for ma tionand knowl edge. In stead he at tempts to un foldthe cre ativ ity within by stim u lat ing andstrength en ing the mind. The trainer care fullynur tures the con vic tion and faith in the mindof the learn ers that knowl edge is within themby re peat edly dem on strat ing to the stu dentsthat they are in deed bring ing out knowl edgeaided by books, ex per i ments, and the teacherher self. The tu tor thus fa cil i tates this pro cessof self-dis cov ery. Need less to say, she re quires faith, pa tience, per se ver ance and firm con vic -tion in this Vedantic prin ci ple of the in nate di -vin ity of hu mans and should try to arouse andawaken the same in the learner. This ideal offaith in one self, or atmashraddha, is the great estgift of a teacher to the stu dent.

Sim i larly, if the learner pos sesses thisfirm con vic tion of hav ing all knowl edge

within and the un der stand ing that ed u ca tionis the man i fes ta tion of this per fec tion, thenthere is less de pend ence on ex ter nal aids in the form of books, tu tors, classes and the like, anda greater strug gle to man i fest knowl edge from within. No more does the stu dent run to theteacher with a prob lem as soon as he en coun -ters a small dif fi culty. He strug gles with theprob lem him self, seek ing the teacher’s guid -ance only as a last re sort. The teacher also doesnot spoonfeed the stu dent and only fa cil i tateshis learn ing.

In this age of glob al iza tion, the fu ture issure to con front us with in nu mer a ble and un -fore see able op por tu ni ties and chal lenges. Ifany so ci ety or na tion can com bine the best ofwhat the East and the W est have to of fer andsuc cess fully im ple ment them in its ed u ca tionsys tem, in what ever de gree, it will be betterpre pared for those chal lenges and op por tu ni -ties. �



Teaching in Ancient India

‘These teach ers ex plain the gen eral mean ing and teach them the mi nu tiae; they rouse

them to ac tiv ity and skil fully win them to prog ress; they in struct the in ert and sharpen the

dull. W hen dis ci ples, in tel li gent and acute, are ad dicted to idle shirk ing, the teach ers dog gedly

per se vere, re peat ing in struc tion un til their train ing is fin ished.

‘There are men who, far seen in an tique lore and fond of the re fine ments of learn ing, are

con tent in se clu sion, lead ing lives of con ti nence. They come and go (lit. sink and float) out side

of the world, and prom e nade through life away from hu man af fairs. Though they are not moved

by hon ours or re proach, their fame is far spread. The rul ers treat ing them with cer e mony and

re spect can not make them come to court. Now as the State holds men of learn ing and ge nius in

es teem, and the peo ple re spect those who have high in tel li gence, the hon ours and praises of

such men are con spic u ously abun dant, and the at ten tions pri vate and of fi cial paid to them are

very con sid er able. Hence men can force them selves to a thor ough ac qui si tion of knowl edge.

For getting fa tigue, they ex pa ti ate on the arts and sci ences; seek ing for wis dom while re ly ing on

per fect vir tue they count not 1,000 li [200 miles] a long jour ney. Though their fam ily be in af flu -

ent cir cum stances, such men make up their minds to be like va grants, and get their food by beg -

ging as they go about. W ith them there is hon our in know ing truth (in hav ing wis dom), and there

is no dis grace in be ing des ti tute.’

— Yuan Chw ang

Learning: A Lifelong Process

DR N V C SW AM Y

‘Javat banchi tavat shikhi; As long as I live, solong do I learn.’ — Sri Ramakrishna

Education as Learning

It is usual con ven tion to clas sify the sub -ject of ed u ca tion un der two cat e go ries— sec u -lar and spir i tual. This is a W est ern con cept. Sofar as the East is con cerned, there is no dis tinc -tion be tween the two. They are in ex tri ca blylinked with each other and any di vi sion is only ar ti fi cial. Nev er the less, this di vi sion has takendeep roots in our psy che. Hence we will ap -proach the sub ject mat ter of this ar ti cle fromthis point of view.

The quo ta tion cited above is from a saint,who con sid ered spir i tual ex pe ri ences far su -pe rior to mere knowl edge of the world. How -ever, we will ex am ine how it ap plies to bothtypes of ed u ca tion, sec u lar and spir i tual. W ecom mence with sec u lar ed u ca tion, by whichwe mean the kind of ed u ca tion im parted inschools and col leges, lead ing to de grees anddi plo mas.

The fol low ing in ci dent oc curred sev eralde cades ago, in the late 1950s, when I was astu dent at the In dian In sti tute of Sci ence,Bangalore. The de tails were nar rated to me bya fel low stu dent who was at that time do ingher doc tor ate in phar ma col ogy at the In sti tute. One day when she was sit ting in her of fice do -ing some work, there was a knock on the door.W hen she asked the caller to en ter, in came anel derly gen tle man in his six ties, wear ing white pants, shirt and coat, a tie askew, a pair ofchappals and a white tur ban. He took a seatand said, ‘I say, I am told you have stud iedsome thing of mi cro bi ol ogy. W ould you mindteach ing the sub ject to me?’ My friend told methat she was taken aback when the gen tle man

in tro duced him self. Ev ery day, for a month,the gen tle man would come to the In sti tute tosit with my friend for a cou ple of hours tolearn mi cro bi ol ogy. He later went on to ap plyhis learn ing to the study of the phys i ol ogy ofvi sion and wrote a book about it. The name ofthe gen tle man? C V Raman.

W hat is it that mo ti vates a per son likeRaman to de cide to learn an en tirely new sub -ject at such an ad vanced age? He had al readydone his best re search work by that time andhad al ready won the much cov eted No belPrize. But there was that urge in him to learn,an urge that was not too par tic u lar aboutwhere or from whom he could learn some -thing new. He was an ex am ple for what SriRamakrishna meant when he said: ‘As long asI live, so long do I learn.’

Learning v Schooling

W e usu ally as so ci ate learn ing with ed u -ca tional es tab lish ments. W e con sider a per soned u cated, if he or she has gone through theschool ing sys tem, en tered col lege and grad u -ated from a uni ver sity. That is sup posed tomark the end of the learn ing pro cess. This isthe com mon un der stand ing of what ed u ca -tion means. It re minds me of a story I heardlong ago. A noted pro fes sor of as tron omyfrom a highly re puted uni ver sity was once in -vited to a for mal din ner. He was seated next toa young lady in her late twen ties. Dur ing thecourse of the din ner, the young lady asked thepro fes sor about him self. The pro fes sor re -plied, ‘I am a stu dent of as tron omy.’ Theyoung lady looked at him up and down, at hisgrey hair and el derly face, and ex claimed,‘You mean you are still study ing as tron omy? Ifin ished it long ago in my col lege!’ It is ob vi ous


that the word learn ing meant dif fer ent thingsto them. For the young lady, learn ing was over with grad u a tion from the col lege. For the pro -fes sor, who had a broader per spec tive ofknowl edge, learn ing was a life long pro cess.

It is an un for tu nate fact that the sys tem ofed u ca tion we fol low in In dia is not geared tothe learn ing pro cess. It is ori ented more to -wards pro vid ing in for ma tion in the form offacts and fig ures, which should be re pro duced faith fully in tests and ex am i na tions. The morethe facts that can be re pro duced, the brighterand more in tel li gent the stu dent is rated to be.But ask any stu dent a few days af ter his ex am i -na tions how much he re mem bers of what hehad learnt dur ing the pre vi ous year; very fewof them would con fi dently re ply that they re -mem ber ev ery thing. This is be cause they havebeen trained like race horses, which run a fastpace and are to tally spent by the end of therace. I of ten won der how many stu dentswould be able to an swer their ex am i na tion pa -pers once again if they are given the same onemonth af ter the ex am i na tions are over!

I re mem ber a nice story I had been toldwhen I was young, which is a re flec tion on thekind of for mal ed u ca tion we re ceive. A fa therand son went for a walk one eve ning. It started driz zling and they took shel ter be low a tree.The fa ther thought that he would use this state of en forced in ac tiv ity to ed u cate his son aboutthe car di nal di rec tions. He ex plained to theboy where east, west, north and south were.The boy learnt it fast and the rain also stopped. The fa ther took his son home and proudly told the boy’s mother about what their child hadlearnt. The mother was im mensely pleasedand asked the boy, ‘Tell me, my pet, which iseast?’ The boy re plied promptly, ‘Let’s goback to the tree.’

W hat is the moral of the story? It is a com -men tary on our sys tem of sec u lar ed u ca tion.Hav ing gone through this sys tem of ed u ca tion and hav ing been in volved in us ing this sys tem in teach ing for al most half a cen tury, I can con -fi dently say that our ed u ca tion sys tem di -

vorces us com pletely from the world aroundus. All the sub jects taught in schools and col -leges— be they sci ence, his tory, ge og ra phy,so ci ol ogy or psy chol ogy— im pinge on ourdaily life. But we are hardly aware of it, be -cause the sys tem of ed u ca tion is such thatknowl edge gets con fined within the cov ers oftext books.

I was made aware of this facet of our ed u -ca tional sys tem by a great man, Prof. SatishDhawan. I was teach ing aero dy nam ics at thattime to stu dents at the In dian In sti tute of Tech -nol ogy, Ma dras. I had in vited Prof. Dhawan to our In sti tute. He was at that time the di rec torof the In dian In sti tute of Sci ence at Bangaloreand was shortly to take over as chair man ofthe Space Com mis sion. W e were go ing byelec tric train to Chromepet, since he had a lec -ture at the Ma dras In sti tute of Tech nol ogy, ofwhich our cur rent Pres i dent, Dr Ab dulKalam, is an old stu dent. On the way, he sud -denly asked me, ‘W ould you like to seeBenard cells?’ I was taken aback, since this is alab o ra tory ex per i ment to dem on strate con -vec tion rings in wa ter or air. I was won der ingwhat he was talk ing about, when he pointed to the sky and said, ‘There are your Benard cells.’I saw the beau ti ful pat tern in the sky which Ihad never ob served be fore. It was then thatProf. Dhawan told me, ‘See, your aero dy nam -ics is all around you, not nec es sar ily only inthe text books.’ Did not Sri Ramakrishna alsodis play the same ca pa bil ity of keen ob ser va -tion, which is so well borne out by his won der -ful par a bles? Maybe he had this ca pac ity be -cause he was not spoilt by book-learn ing!

Literacy v Education

There are two words in the Eng lish lan -guage which are in com mon use and some -times used syn on y mously. They are lit er acyand ed u ca tion. They ap pear to have al most thesame mean ing, but there is a sub tle and im por -tant dif fer ence be tween them. Lit er acy im -plies a gen eral ac quain tance about a sub ject. Alit er ate per son is one who knows how to read

Learning: A Lifelong Process 467


and write, and use this knowl edge in daily life. Ed u ca tion, on the other hand, stands for morethan a nod ding ac quain tance of any sub ject. Itin volves a deeper study lead ing to knowl edgein depth. An ed u cated per son is one who has abroad knowl edge of any sub ject and is ca pa ble of dis cuss ing it in tel li gently.

As an ex am ple, let us con sider one of thehot test top ics to day, namely, en vi ron ment.One can gain a lot of in for ma tion about thissub ject by read ing a few gen eral books ornews pa per ar ti cles, or even see ing tele vi sionprogrammes. This is en vi ron men tal lit er acy,which tells us what is meant by en vi ron ment,what its im por tance for the planet is, how it isbe ing mis han dled, what are the grave dan gers fac ing hu man ity, what needs to be done at theshort-term or long-term level, and so on.There are lots of lit er ate peo ple who can readand write hav ing this kind of lit er acy. But thatdoes not make them ed u cated.

There is an other group of lit er ate peo ple,who have made a deep study of the tech ni calas pects of en vi ron ment. They are peo ple whohave spe cial ized in cer tain ar eas of en vi ron -ment, who teach the sub ject at ad vanced lev -els, who are in vited to con trib ute re search pa -pers or ar ti cles to mag a zines or jour nals, andwhose voice is heard with re spect. They arethe ed u cated ex perts in that field.

A state ment of Sri Ramakrishna co mes tomind at this stage. He used to say, ‘There aresome who have heard of milk, some who haveseen it and some who have drunk it.’ Only thelast know what milk re ally is. The lit er ate arethose who have heard of milk or maybe evenseen it. But the ed u cated are those who haveac tu ally drunk milk and are in a po si tion tosay what milk tastes like.

The Beginning of Education

The ed u ca tion im parted in schools andcol leges makes us lit er ate, but does not re allyed u cate us. One may ar gue that even if schools and col leges can only make us lit er ate, thereare al ways ad vanced courses where one can

get one self re ally ed u cated. One can al waysjoin a post grad u ate programme and feel sat is -fied that one has re ally learnt some thing. Ifthat also is not con sid ered ad e quate, there areal ways doc toral programmes. Maybe that isthe end of one’s ed u ca tional ca reer as a doc tor -ate re ally makes one a fully ed u cated ex pert.This was the im pres sion I also had. But as soon as I com pleted my doc tor ate, I was in for arude shock. My pro fes sor con grat u lated meand told me that my real ed u ca tion startedthen! He ex plained to me that what ever I hadun der gone up till then was only a prep a ra tionto wards real ed u ca tion. Even a doc tor ate isonly a train ing programme, like the ear lierprogrammes we go through in schools andcol leges. That is as far as the for mal ed u ca -tional programme can carry us. It teaches usthe meth od ol ogy of learn ing. Real ed u ca tionstarts only from that point.

The best way of ap pre ci at ing and un der -stand ing this is to be come a teacher. There aretwo types of teach ers. The first type con sists ofthose who are con tent with what they havebeen taught in for mal ed u ca tional in sti tu tionsand go on teach ing it to stu dents year af teryear with out any change or up dat ing. Theseare teach ers who make use of their own stu -dent notes for teach ing oth ers. One could even pre dict what the teacher is go ing to teach ifone had a peek into the lec ture notes of one’sse niors!

I once had an op por tu nity to serve on acom mit tee for se lec tion of teach ers. The chair -per son of the com mit tee was a highly dis tin -guished edu ca tion ist. All mem bers of thecom mit tee were very much im pressed by acan di date, who had a teach ing ex pe ri ence offif teen years. Only the chair per son was not.W hen we asked him for the rea son, he made avery pithy re mark: ‘Don’t you see? He does n’thave an ex pe ri ence of fif teen years. He has one year’s ex pe ri ence fif teen times over!’ It is peo -ple of this type who have never cul ti vated theart of learn ing.



The Real LearnersOn the other hand, there are also teach ers

who are con stantly alert and try to keep them -selves up-to-date with the lat est de vel op -ments. They are the real learn ers. I had ateacher in my col lege days who was in his latefif ties and on the verge of re tire ment. One dayhe burst into the class and ex claimed, ‘Youknow, boys, I have just heard that a new in -stru ment has come into the mar ket. I haveplaced an or der for it and as soon as it is re -ceived, we will all learn how to use it for betterac cu racy.’ He was a learner in the tru est senseof the term. Ev ery one of us would have en -coun tered some one or other in our lives whoex hib ited that zest for learn ing, for re fresh ingor im prov ing one’s knowl edge for the sheerplea sure of it.

Sri Ramakrishna was a learner of thattype. When ever he heard that there was aGod- lover in Cal cutta, he would ask hisnephew Hriday to take him to that per son. Hewould ap proach that per son with all hu mil ityand ask him, ‘I am told that you love God andthat you have had some ex pe ri ences. Couldyou please tell me about them?’ His sin cer ityand the charm ing way he would make his re -quest would lit er ally bowl over that per son,who would con sider him self blessed byThakur.

On Becoming a Learner

How does one ac quire this skill? It ismostly by keep ing one’s eyes and ears open. A per son who al ways swims in pools may en -coun ter prob lems when he is asked to swim inthe sea. The wa ter in the sea is not calm as inthe pool, nor is it shal low. The only method isto plunge into the sea and prac tise in stages.This re quires two qual i ties: in tense de sire andhard work. Only those who have these qual i -ties have the chance to be come real learn ers.

It is a well-known fact that all chil drenlearn from im i ta tion. They pick up words,phrases and even sen tences from the talk ofadults. In this sense, they ed u cate them selves.

But some thing hap pens the mo ment they start at tend ing school. Self-ed u ca tion stops andforced learn ing be gins. The for mer needs a lotof time and is a slow pro cess. A pre-schoolchild has plenty of time at its dis posal and time is of no con se quence to it. Hence self- learn ingbe comes pos si ble. In schools the learn ing pro -cess gets ac cel er ated and be comes tighter.Learning slowly trans forms into cram ming ofin for ma tion and the child is no lon ger ca pa bleof self-learn ing. How ever, this ca pac ity liesdor mant and when ex er cised co mes to thesur face again. In a way, the for mal ed u ca tionsys tem hardly gives any time to the child to ex -er cise its ca pac ity to learn by it self. Af ter theend of the pe riod of for mal ed u ca tion, there isone more chance given to us to go back toself-learn ing. Those who are able to uti lize this chance are the eter nal learn ers and cre ativepeo ple. Those who are not, re main con tentwith what they have learnt for mally. But eventhey are some times forced into self-learn ing bythe ex i gen cies of cir cum stances . These are com -mon ex pe ri ences in all hu man so ci et ies.

Learning in the Spiritual Realm

What ever has been dis cussed above isfrom the point of view of what is usu allycalled sec u lar knowl edge. Are these facts ap pli -ca ble to spir i tual knowl edge also? Much moreso. As a mat ter of fact, self-learn ing is the onlyway that one can ac quire Self-knowl edge. This was the dis cov ery of the an cient sages of In dia, who have left be hind the re cords of their ex -per i ments in the Upanishadic texts. This istrue not only of the Upanishads, but also ofprac ti cal sci ences, like raja yoga. We will nowcon sider briefly how self-study plays an im -por tant role in this field.

The meth od ol ogy of learn ing rec om -mended by the Upanishads is the tri unemethod of shravana, ma nana and nididhyasana.Shravana re fers ba si cally to hear ing, but alsoin cludes read ing, dis cus sions and the like. Ma-nana is con tem pla tion of what has been stud -ied or heard. Nididhyasana is con cen tra tion on

Learning: A Lifelong Process 469


the sub ject to the ex clu sion of ev ery thing else.Usually, the ini tial knowl edge about any thinghas to be ac quired through a guru, be cause heis the de pend able au thor ity on the sub ject.Ma nana and nididhyasana de pend on one’sown ef fort, with some guid ance from theguru. The role of the teacher is only as a guide -post. The jour ney has to be un der taken by uswith our own ef forts. The fol low ing ex am plefrom the Taittiriya Upanishad is a good il lus tra -tion:

Bhrigu ap proaches his fa ther Varunawith a de sire to know Brah man. The fa thersays that ‘food, vi tal force, eye, ear, mind andspeech’ are the aids to the knowl edge of Brah -man, and af ter hav ing given him a few hints,tells the son to ‘find out for your self’. Hav ingheard this in struc tion from the fa ther, the sonhas to think for him self and con tem plate onwhat he has heard. He dis cov ers that the bodyis Brah man. When he ap proaches his fa ther tover ify this dis cov ery, the fa ther does not giveany dis course. He sim ply tells his son, ‘Thinksome more and find out for your self.’ Af tersuc ces sive steps, the son fi nally re al izes thatananda, or Bliss, is Brah man. This re al iza tiondoes not need any fur ther ver i fi ca tion fromthe fa ther, be cause it is the son’s per sonal ex -pe ri ence.

What we no tice in this ex am ple is the pro -cess of self-ed u ca tion. Based on a few hintsgiven by the fa ther, the son has to dis cover thean swer by a grad ual pro cess of con tem pla tionand med i ta tion. There is no spoonfeeding in -volved. This was the way dis ci ples weretrained by teach ers in the an cient Ve dic cul -ture who en cour aged self-anal y sis. It is thecon stant thread run ning through the Upani-shadic lit er a ture. No won der the an cientgurukulas were able to pro duce such spir i tualgi ants who dot the pages of the Upanishads.

The same meth od ol ogy is to be seen inthe Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. The very first aph -

o rism tells us that what fol low are a set of in -struc tions, not for dis cus sion but for prac tice.Ed u ca tion in yoga does not stop with thelearn ing of the the ory of the sutras, a fewasanas and pranayamas. It is a life long prac -tice and a learn ing pro cess at the same time.Only those who are ca pa ble of learn ing con tin -u ously through out their life can be come suc -cess ful yoga prac ti tio ners.

Genius as a Learner

Learning is in deed a life long ex pe ri enceand there is no doubt about it. We con tin u -ously learn through our ex pe ri ences, bothgood and bad, mostly through the lat ter. Butthis is more like a knee-jerk re ac tion. We re -spond to the sit u a tion in which we find our -selves placed. The kind of learn ing great peo -ple like Sri Ramakrishna re fer to is of a dif fer -ent type al to gether. They draw les sons fromtheir ex pe ri ences, which en rich their lives andserve the needs of oth ers also in the pro cess. Ape rusal of the Gos pel of Sri Ramakrishna willam ply bear this point out. It is full of par a blesand sto ries about Vedantic prin ci ples, butbased on mun dane ex pe ri ences. We too haveun der gone such ex pe ri ences; we too haveseen what ever he ob served. For us they aremere oc cur rences, for him they were in di ca -tors of pro found truths. To be able to ob serveor di nary events and draw pro found con clu -sions from them is the hall mark of ge nius.That is real learn ing. The seers, the proph ets,the trail blaz ers are such learn ers; they are theide als to be fol lowed. The phi los o phy theypur sue is aptly summed up by Sri Rama kri -shna when he says, ‘Javat banchi tavat shikhi.’ �

(The au thor wishes to thank Kum. HeisnamJina Devi, Lec turer, Swami Vivekananda YogaAnusandhana Samsthana, Bangalore, for her helpin the prep a ra tion of this ar ti cle.)



Learning an ni hi lates it self, and the most per fect is the first sub merged; for the next age

scales with ease the height which cost the pre ced ing the full vig our of life. —Bun sen


Inclusive Education

DR M N G M ANI

Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan: A M ech a nism to Reach Out

The Ed u ca tion Com mis sion (1964-66),which pro vided for some ba sic changesin the ed u ca tional sys tem at large,

covered a lot of ideas en vi sioned by SwamiViveka nanda. The need to erad i cate il lit er acyin In dia was very much em pha sized in its re -port. This was fur ther ech oed in the Na tionalPol icy on Ed u ca tion (1986). It is dis heart en ingthat we have not even achieved 70% lit er acyaf ter fifty-seven years of in de pend ence. TheCom mis sion wanted that all ed u cated menand women avail able be mo bi lized for rais inga force to com bat il lit er acy. The stu dents andstaff of ed u ca tional in sti tu tions at all lev elsshould be ac tively in volved. Ev ery ed u ca -tional in sti tu tion should as sume re spon si bil -ity for liq ui dat ing il lit er acy in its spe cific area.

Ed u ca tion for All (EFA) is still an un fin -ished agenda in In dia and this needs to beshaped ac cord ing to Swamiji’s vison. Thank -fully, the meth od ol ogy adopted by the SarvaShiksha Abhiyan (SSA) re flects Swamiji’s ideas on mass lit er acy and life long ed u ca tion.

SSA— W hat It Is

Ed u ca tion is afun da men tal hu manright of the child.Gov ern ments acrossthe globe are de lib er -at ing on work ablepol i cies and prac -tices to make ed u ca -tion for all a re al itywithin 2015. For itspart, the Gov ern -ment of In dia has ini -ti ated the SSA. SSA is a

mis sion, an ef fort to uni ver sal ize el e men taryed u ca tion by com mu nity own er ship of theschool sys tem. It is also an at tempt to pro videan op por tu nity for im prov ing hu man ca pa bil -i ties of all chil dren. The programme is a part -ner ship ac tiv ity be tween the cen tral, state andlo cal gov ern ments and it also pro vides an op -por tu nity for the states to de velop their ownvi sion of el e men tary ed u ca tion.

The scheme has an ex cel lent frame workand al lows a lot of flex i bil ity at the dis trictlevel in adopt ing cost-ef fec tive and in no va tive strat e gies to in clude all chil dren. It cov ers allfac ets of com pre hen sive ed u ca tion: com mu -nity par tic i pa tion, im prov ing teacher skills,pro vi sion of learn ing ma te ri als, spe cial em -pha sis on dis ad van taged groups, and so on.

Aims and Objectives of SSA

SSA’s main aim is to pro vide use ful andrel e vant el e men tary ed u ca tion for all chil drenin the 6-14 age group by 2010. Its an other goalis to bridge so cial, re gional and gen der gapswith the ac tive par tic i pa tion of the com mu -

nity in the man age -ment of schools. Itsspe cific ob jec tivesare the fol low ing: 1)All el i gi ble chil drenmust com plete fiveyears of pri maryschool ing by 2007,and eight years of el -e men tary school ingby 2010; 2) Fo cus on sat is fac tory qual ityand ed u ca tion forlife; 3) Bridging all‘I am learning’



gen der and so cial cat e gory gaps; and 4) Uni -ver sal re ten tion by 2010.

SSA in CoimbatoreThe Coimbatore dis trict of Tamil Nadu

stands out in ad dress ing all fac ets of theprogramme. One es pe cially note wor thy fea -ture is the dis trict ad min is tra tion’s col lab o ra -tion with the In ter na tional Hu man Re sourceDe vel op ment Cen tre (IHRDC) for the dis abledof Ramakrishna Mis sion Vidyalaya to achieveed u ca tion for all chil dren with dis abil i tiesmuch ahead of dead line. It is a gen eral con vic -tion in the dis trict that once this most dif fi cultgroup is brought un der the um brella of ed u ca -tional ser vices, the over all tar get could bereached ef fec tively.

In clu sive Ed u ca tion: Be yond Dis abil ities

The In ter na tional Dis abil ity Al li ance, acon sor tium of in ter na tional or ga ni za -tions work ing for per sons with dis abil i -

ties, has been un der lin ing the im por tance ofcre at ing a rights-based, bar rier-free, and in clu -sive so ci ety. The in te grated fam ily sys tem andcom mu nity liv ing make in clu sion a nat u ralphe nom e non in the In dian soil.

Inclusion of Persons with Unique Needs

In clu sive ed u ca tion has all along been anac cepted ap proach in gen eral ed u ca tion in In -dia, though the con cept may sound re cent.Gen eral class room teach ers han dle slow, av er -age and ad vanced learners— all in one class.This is ‘in clu sive ed u ca tion’ based on cog ni -tive abil i ties though usu ally not la belled so. Inthe case of chil dren with vi sual and hear ingim pairments, the main sim i lar ity be tweenthem and normal chil dren is their cog ni tiveability. This sim i lar ity sup ports the ed u ca tionof dis abled chil dren along with normal chil -dren in the gen eral sys tem. With the learn ingof ‘plus cur ric u lum’ to cope with their par tic u -lar dis abil ity, these chil dren can also com petewith normal chil dren.

Then why is there such a big cam paignthat we should switch over to in clu sive ed u ca -tion?

Special Schools Leading to SegregationThe in tro duc tion of sep a rate cur ric ula

changed the qual ity and ex tent of ser vices fordis abled per sons world wide. Braille and lipread ing were mir a cles in the eyes of non-dis -abled peo ple, and as a re sult the com mu nitystarted treat ing blind and deaf chil dren as‘spe cial’.

The growth of the spe cial school con ceptand the institutionalization of dis abled chil -dren con trib uted to their ‘seg re ga tion’ fromso ci ety at large. Spe cial schools be came res i -den tial homes, and the com ing to gether of dis -abled per sons in creased their sense of se cu -rity. How ever, notions that dis abled peo pleare spe cial or that they have a sixth sense con -

Learning ‘plus-curricular’ skills

Learning together— the objective of inclusive education

Inclusive Education 473


trib uted to stereotyped ex clu siv ist re sponses.In spe cial schools sub jects like math e mat icsand sci ence were of ten ne glected due to thepre sump tion that blind chil dren would findthem dif fi cult. This fo cus ing on the ‘dif fer -ence’ between dis abled and nor mal chil drencreated a sym pa thy to wards the former thatdid not take into ac count their hu man right togeneral ed u ca tion. As a re sult, ed u ca tion ofdis abled chil dren re mained a wel fare ac tiv ityfor de cades.

With spe cial schools be com ing costly, in -clu sive ed u ca tion is again gain ing ac cep tance. In the past ‘in clu sion’ was in ev i ta ble due tolack of fa cil i ties, but to day it is be ing seen as achild’s hu man right to have ed u ca tion in thevi cin ity of his/her home. There fore, re vi tal iz -ing the gen eral ed u ca tion sys tem andstrength en ing the ca pac i ties of gen eral class -room teach ers to train dis abled chil dren arevi tal con cerns cur rently. They have to be ad -dressed be fore gen eral ed u ca tion be comestruly in clu sive.

Disability Services in India: Some M odels

Ser vices for the dis abled in In dia aremore than a cen tury old. Four sig nif i cantmod els are in vogue here: 1) Res i den tial Schoolfor the Dis abled: Mostly ur ban, with spe cial cur -ric u lum in clud ing vo ca tional train ing. In diahas nearly 3,000 such schools serv ing 1.5 lakhchil dren. 2) In te grated Ed u ca tion— Re sourceRoom Model: One spe cial ist re source teacher

ca ter ing to 8-10 dis abled chil dren study ingwith and eval u ated on a par with nor mal chil -dren. Plus-cur ric u lar skills are taught. This isthe most prom i nent model in In dia now. 3) In-te grated Ed u ca tion— Itin er ant Model: Spe cial istitin er ant teacher with re source kit vis its a clus -ter of schools 2-3 times a week to as sist the dis -abled. Not very pop u lar. 4) In clu sive Ed u ca -tion: All chil dren with dis abil i ties, ir re spec tiveof se ver ity, en rolled in gen eral schools. Allteach ers ori ented to their needs. Block-levelre source cen tre for a clus ter of schools. Cur -rently pre ferred un der EFA.

Cost con sid er ations fa vour in clu sion.The cost of in clu sive ed u ca tion per child isabout Rs 1,500 to Rs 2,000 per an num asagainst Rs 7,000 to Rs 20,000 in the othermodels.

SoundPolicy Perspectives and Practices

In clu sive ed u ca tion re volves round three main fac tors— pol i cies, prac tices, and cul tures.The Per sons with Dis abil ities Act 1995 maylook triv ial at first sight but it is cer tainly aland mark law aim ing at the in clu sion of dis -abled per sons in the main stream. The Re ha bil -i ta tion Coun cil of India Act 1992 is an other im -pres sive con cept in main tain ing qual ity inspe cial ed u ca tion man power de vel op ment.Many coun tries have evinced in ter est in theseland mark acts.

In terms of prac tice also, In dia’s achieve -ments are re mark able. It is true that the cov er -

Play therapy

Day care for mentally retarded children



age of dis abled chil dren in its ed u ca tionalprogrammes is not more than 10%. But a fig -ure of roughly 2,00,000 dis abled chil dren inover 20,000 schools in In dia is in it self mind- bog gling. In ad di tion, all in clu sive prac ticesare in vogue here and we have the ex per tise tohelp other de vel op ing na tions to de velop pol i -cies and prac tices. In dia’s prob lem was neverpol i cies or mod els but ex pan sion. Now withthe SSA, that too is be ing fully ad dressed.

Pressing Issues for FacilitatingInclusive Education

In or der to fa cil i tate ef fec tive in clu siveed u ca tion, the fol low ing three ar eas need ut -most at ten tion: 1) Pre paring gen eral class -room teach ers through in-ser vice programmes,spe cial ca pac ity build ing programmes; 2) Prep a -ra tion and dis sem i na tion of sup port ma te ri alsby set ting up con text-spe cific re source cen tres;and 3) Develop ing plus-cur ric u lar skills indis abled chil dren through de ploy ment of spe cialteach ers, ar rang ing sum mer programmes, andteach ing these skills to teach ers, peer-groups andpar ents.

Parameters of Successful Inclusion

Ac cep tance of in clu sion by the gen eralcom mu nity, school au thor i ties and par ents,en rol ment and re ten tion rates on a par withnor mal chil dren, ad mis sion of chil dren ir re -spec tive of the type and ex tent of dis abil ity,ba sic knowl edge and dis abil ity-man age mentskills of gen eral teach ers, avail abil ity of ap -pro pri ate teach ing aids, spe cial ist teacher and

peer group sup port, and com pa ra ble achieve -ments in cur ric u lar and co-cur ric u lar ac tiv i -ties— these con sti tute the pa ram e ters of suc -cess ful in clu sion.

Mere cre ation of an en vi ron ment for in -clu sion is not enough. Ef forts are needed topro vide real ed u ca tional sup port in the in clu -sive set ting. The con cept of in clu sion as an ide -ol ogy should be as sim i lated right from theclass room level, and in this con text gen eralteach ers are the key play ers in in clu sive ed u -ca tion.

Inclusive Schooling for EffectiveEducation: General Teachers Hold the Key

Good ed u ca tion re al izes the fact that ev -ery child is spe cial in some way or other andthe pur pose of learn ing is to op ti mize thechild’s po ten tial. Use of multi-sen sory in struc -tion in the class room makes the teacher betterand at the same time helps mentally chal -lenged chil dren and chil dren with vi sual andhear ing im pair ment. So the in clu sion of dis -abled chil dren de pends on how ef fec tivelyreg u lar class room teach ers can teach. That iswhy teach ers hold the key to cre at ing an in clu -sive en vi ron ment in the school.

Teachers must rec og nize the fact thattrue learn ing oc curs in a non-threat en ing en vi -ron ment and try to cre ate such an en vi ron -ment in the class room. Such an atmosphere fa -cil i tates in clu sion of chil dren who ex pe ri ence

Orientation for parents of disabled children

Concept development



learn ing dif fi cul ties. These children of ten suc -cumb un der pres sure but suc ceed in anon-threat en ing learn ing en vi ron ment.

The abil ity of the teacher to cre ate dif fer -ent learn ing tasks within the class room willsat isfy the ed u ca tional needs of all types of

chil dren on the ba sis of their cog ni tive andsen sory abil i ties and gen er ate interest inlearning.

Dr A P J Ab dul Kalam of ten says that par -ents and teach ers should al low chil dren todream and help them realize those dreams. Inan ef fec tive in clu sive set ting, ev ery child willbe able to dream his/her own vi sion of the fu -ture and de velop abil i ties to actualize it. Thein clu sive set ting not only in creases the in -volve ment of chil dren, but en riches theirlearn ing po ten tial. It em pha sizes that the child is a hu man re source in the learn ing pro cess.

The par a digm shift from ‘child as a stu -dent’ to ‘child as a hu man re source’ paves way for a com pre hen sive and truly in clu sive set -ting, where ev ery child is treated as spe cial and theteacher be comes a fa cil i ta tor of learn ing.

Early identification programmes

Ed u cating Children with Dis abil ities

through the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan: Coimbatore Ex pe ri ence

In Tamil Nadu, the SSA scheme in the case ofdis abled chil dren is be ing im ple mentedthrough NGOs al ready work ing in the area

of dis abil ity. In Coimbatore dis trict, Ramakri-shna Mis sion Vidyalaya’s IHRDC is the nodalagency for programme im ple men ta tion. Allac tiv i ties are ini ti ated and mon i tored by anad vi sory com mit tee com prised of of fi cials atthe dis trict level and rep re sen ta tives fromIHRDC.

SSA ac tiv i ties in clude early de tec tion andiden ti fi ca tion; func tional and for mal as sess -ment; ed u ca tional place ment; pro vi sion ofaids and ap pli ances; sup port ser vices; teachertrain ing; re source sup port; in di vid u al ized ed -u ca tion plan; pa ren tal train ing and com mu -nity mo bi li za tion; plan ning and man age ment; strength en ing of spe cial schools; and re movalof ar chi tec tural bar ri ers.

Im ple men ta tion of the SSA scheme re -quires cer tain pro ce dures to be car ried out se -quen tially. The dis trict ad min is tra tion and the Vidyalaya jointly con duct med i cal screen ing

camps with the sup port of block de vel op mentof fi cers and lo cal of fi cials.

The state gov ern ment al lots a grant foreach block for pur chase of assistive de vices for dis -abled chil dren and the re quire ments arejointly de cided by the dis trict ad min is tra tionand IHRDC.

In Tamil Nadu, more than 70,000 chil -dren with dis abil i ties have been iden ti fied, as -sessed and en rolled in schools un der SSA. InCoimbatore dis trict 5,528 chil dren have been

Medical camp to identify disability



iden ti fied and as sessed and 4,391 en rolled inschools. Of these, 1,137 are re ceiv ing pre pa ra -tory train ing and 3,645 have al ready bene -fited. The dis abil i ties of these chil dren rangefrom vi sual and hear ing im pair ment to men tal re tar da tion and ce re bral palsy.

De pending on their ed u ca tional needs,the chil dren are cat e go rized as fol lows: thosewith mild dis abil i ties who can be han dled bygen eral class room teach ers with min i mumtrain ing; those with mild/mod er ate dis abil i -ties who need coun sel ling ser vices; those re -quir ing oc ca sional as sis tance from spe cial ed -u ca tors; and those re quir ing fre quent as sis -tance from spe cial ed u ca tors. Children withmod er ate/se vere dis abil i ties who are in needof re source as sis tance, in clud ing cor rec tiveaids and pe ri od i cal help in ac a demic ar eas, are helped by the spe cial ed u ca tors of their block.

With the sup port of the dis trict ad min is -tra tion, block re source cen tres have been es tab -lished in all 22 blocks of Coimbatore dis trict.Their pur pose is to pro vide nec es sary train -ing, as sess ment, and ed u ca tional guid ance todis abled chil dren, their par ents and reg u larteach ers. Though all dis abled chil dren cov -ered un der the programme may not uti lize the block re source cen tres, those in need of con tin -u ous train ing and ther apy are at tend ing thesecen tres.

Ori en ta tion programmes are reg u larly or -ga nized for block re source su per vi sors, teach -ers, ICDS (In te grated Child De vel op ment Ser -vices), anganwadi and health work ers of thewhole dis trict. All reg u lar teach ers work ing in

pri mary and high schools are given sen si ti za -tion train ing on in clu sion of dis abled chil drenin reg u lar schools by spe cial ed u ca tors andtrained block re source teach ers. As the pro -gramme ne ces si tates the in volve ment of peo -ple from all sec tions of so ci ety, the electedpanchayat pres i dents are also given sen si ti za -tion train ing on dis abil ity man age ment.

There are chil dren who need spe cialschool as sis tance and ac com mo da tion for atleast six moths to pre pare them selves formainstreaming in reg u lar schools. Suit able or -ga ni za tions work ing in the field of dis abil ityhave been se lected to ini ti ate res i den tial train -ing cen tres to help them.

Many vil lage ed u ca tion com mit tees (VEC)have been formed which in clude se lectedcom mu nity lead ers, NGO rep re sen ta tives, lo -cal head mas ters and par ents of chil dren withspe cial needs. The ob jec tive of the VECs is tosup port SSA ac tiv i ties through com mu nityown er ship and par tic i pa tion.

Children with pro found men tal re tar da -tion ex pe ri ence dif fi culty in mainstreamingwith the gen eral ed u ca tion sys tem. So day carecen tres have been cre ated to pre pare them for a pe riod of one year be fore they are able toadapt.

Success Stories

The suc cess of any programme de pendson the sat is fac tion of its con sum ers, in our case

Braille course for SSA teachers

Individualized instruction for slow learners



the dis abled chil dren, teach ers, and par ents.The fol low ing state ments pro vide a glimpse of the ef fec tive ness of the programme be ing im -ple mented by Ramakrishna Mis sion Vid-yalaya, Coimbatore, and the dis trict ad min is -tra tion.

Sujitha was suf fer ing from lo co mo tordis abil ity. She was to tally de pend ent on oth -ers and could at tend school only with the as -sis tance of her fa ther. To fa cil i tate her mo bil -ity, she was pro vided with a tri cy cle in ad di -tion to train ing. Now she is at tend ing schoollike her other coun ter parts.

Harish is a five-year-old. His fa therbrought him to one of our screen ing camps forin abil ity to com mu ni cate, when he was foundto have pro found hear ing im pair ment. Withhear ing aids and ad e quate train ing, Harishcan now com mu ni cate sig nif i cantly with hisfam ily mem bers and peers at the reg u lar class.

Kalaiselvi (13) was find ing it dif fi cult toget through in many sub jects due to poor vi -sion. Spe cial school teach ers ad vised her tocon tinue her ed u ca tion in the gen eral sys tem.Af ter in ter ven tion by SSA, she was helped byher spe cial ed u ca tor to use a mag ni fier forread ing. She is at pres ent at tend ing a block re -source cen tre and im prov ing her vi sual ef fi -ciency skills.

Nagamani’s mod er ate cog ni tive dif fi culty (men tal re tar da tion) did not al low her to per -form well in class. She was al ways left alonedur ing day time when her par ents went out to

work. Af ter in clu sion in a reg u lar school,Nagamani made many friends and started ac -quir ing con sid er able learn ing skills. Her par -ents are happy that she is pick ing up some ba -sic skills and life ed u ca tion through reg u larand sup port teach ers.

W hat They Say

This is what a gen eral class room teacher hasto say: ‘Ed u ca tion of dis abled chil dren is nomore a prob lem since we have un der gone ba -sic train ing un der a spe cial ed u ca tor. Dis abled chil dren pay more at ten tion in the class room.They never fail to ap proach class teach ers andpeer groups when ever they are in doubt. Weare de lighted to see their achieve ments. SSA ishelp ing them gain con fi dence.’

The peer group has a tre men dous im pacton the per son al ity de vel op ment of dis abledchil dren. Some nor mal chil dren de scribe howthe SSA trans formed their at ti tudes to wardsdis abil ity is sues: ‘Ini tially we did not knowhow to help or com mu ni cate with our dis -abled friends. The train ing given by spe cialteach ers has been very use ful to us in es tab -lish ing a good rap port with them. In clu sion ofa dis abled boy or girl in our class is not at all aprob lem for us. It is our re spon si bil ity to helpthem. We usu ally help our dis abled friends intheir ac a demic stud ies dur ing in ter vals, lunchtime or af ter class hours. It helps us to re ca pit -u late what we learnt in the class room and alsostrength ens our friend ship.’

That par ents also are key play ers in the

Speech therapy

Peer group assistance



SSA programme needs no spe cial men tion.Their en cour ag ing words go a long way in re -in forc ing our con fi dence: ‘The spe cial ed u ca -tor ap pointed un der SSA helped a great deal inen abling my son to pick up nec es sary ba sicskills and get en rolled in a reg u lar school.Though he is vi su ally im paired, he is able toman age his day-to-day ac tiv i ties, in clud inghis ed u ca tion.’ ‘Be fore in clu sion my daugh ter, who is men tally re tarded, could not do any -thing in de pend ently. She was rest less andfriend less. Now she has de vel oped a good be -hav iour and can per form sim ple tasks by her -self.’ The par ents are happy that their chil dren are get ting ed u ca tion in lo cal schools alongwith their peers.

The heads of ed u ca tional in sti tu tions are themain cat a lysts in the whole ex per i ment. Theirstate ments re flect their sup port for theprogramme: ‘The train ing given by spe cial ed -u ca tors to reg u lar teach ers is very help ful ined u cat ing dis abled chil dren in main streamschools. We know a child who has speechprob lems but has learnt com mu ni ca tion skillsaf ter in clu sion. As a mat ter of fact, dis abledchil dren are per form ing very well in ac a demic stud ies. Also they have more friends than nor -mal chil dren. More over, wheelchairs pro -vided through SSA al low dis abled chil dreneasy ac cess to school.’

RecognitionIn 2003-04 the Tamil Nadu gov ern ment

rec og nized the con tri bu tion of RamakrishnaMis sion Vidyalaya, Coimbatore, by se lect ingit as the best nodal agency im ple ment ing theSSA programme for dis abled chil dren. The rec -og ni tion has only in creased the cen tre’s re -spon si bil ity to per form even better and bringev ery dis abled child in its purview un der theum brella of ed u ca tion.

Conclusion

A rose is still a rose when it loses a petal.A tree may lose some leaves, but it is still use -ful. Like wise, a hu man be ing can still be use ful de spite the loss of a phys i cal fac ulty. HelenKeller says that the most un for tu nate per sonin so ci ety is one who has sight but no vi sion. In or der to un der stand the abil i ties of per sonswith dis abil i ties, one needs to have a broad vi -sion of hu man is tic val ues. An in clu sive so ci -ety needs the sup port of par ents, teach ers,pro fes sion als and other com mu nity mem bers. The SSA is de ter mined to cre ate such an in clu -sive so ci ety in In dia. Though the per for manceof states vary, the cli mate in gen eral is con du -cive to the ex ten sion of ed u ca tional ser vices todis abled chil dren. By bring ing these chil dreninto the main stream, we will in fact be em -pow er ing them with their rights. �

Inclusive Love

One of my class mates, Abhoy Pado G hosh … had in jured his knee when he was a mere child, in

an ac ci dent and could never re cover. In those days per haps, mod ern sci en tific treat ment

was not avail able. It be came pain ful for him to climb up to the third floor but he had the for ti -

tude to put up with it with out ever com plain ing—he would go up or come down with a cheer ful

face. How ever, one day the Rec tor M ahashaya [M ] hap pened to see him. W hat a ten der and af -

fec tion ate heart he pos sessed one could see then. H e im me di ately or dered that our class should

in fu ture be held on the ground floor. Not even in class X did our class ever sit above the first

storey be cause of our hand i capped friend. I was just a small lad then but my heart was touched

by that or der of the Rec tor. I felt I was blessed in wit ness ing such ten der ness and such af fec tion

of the Rec tor M ahashaya.

—M ahim aranjan Bhattacharya on M ahendranath G upta (M )

The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna

according to Girish Chandra Sen

SW AM I CHETANANANDA

The Brahmo M ovement

In 1828 Raja Rammohan Roy (1777-1833)founded the Brahmo Samaj in Cal cutta. Atthe cen tre of this socio-re li gious move ment

is the be lief that there is one God, who is om ni -pres ent and om ni scient. The Brahmo Samajplayed a sig nif i cant role in the re nais sance ofIn dia, and the roots of some sig nif i cant mod -ern think ing in In dia can be traced back to theBrahmo move ment. The or ga ni za tion pro -moted a mono the is tic, re formed Hin du ismwith strong Is lamic and Chris tian over tones,sup port for the rights of women, and op po si -tion to such as pects of Hin du ism as idol a try,the caste sys tem, and an i mal sac ri fice. WhenRammohan Roy died in 1833, the Brahmomove ment de clined. It was re vived in 1843 byDevendranath Tagore, who founded the AdiBrahmo Samaj and be came its leader.Devendra was a class mate of Mathur MohanBiswas, a great dev o tee of Ramakrishna andson-in-law of Rani Rasmani, founder of theDakshineswar Kali tem ple. Ramakrishnawent with Mathur to see Devendra at Cal cuttaand also vis ited the Adi Brahmo Samaj.

Keshab Chandra Sen (1838-84), a char is -matic leader in Cal cutta, joined the BrahmoSamaj in 1859. In 1863 he be came a Brahmomin is ter and also the leader of the youth wing. In 1868 he had a per sonal con flict with Dev -endra, and the or ga ni za tion split. Keshabstarted the Brahmo Samaj of In dia along withShivanath Shastri and Vijaykrishna Goswami.He went to Eng land in 1870, where he preach -ed mono the ism. He wanted to abol ish thecaste sys tem, and he in tro duced inter-castemar riage. Queen Vic to ria praised his or a toryand lead er ship.

The Brahmo lead ers de cided that themin i mum mar riage age for girls should befour teen, and for boys, eigh teen. In 1878Keshab broke that rule when he mar ried hisown daugh ter, who was not yet four teen, tothe Maharaja of Coochbehar. This cre ated tre -men dous con tro versy and an other schismformed. Keshab’s fol low ers formed a newgroup, the Navavidhan (New Dis pen sa tion),while the dis si dents founded the SadharanBrahmo Samaj, which be came more pop u lar.

Ramakrishna and Keshab Chandra Sen

On 15 March 1875, Ramakrishna metKeshab at the Belgharia re treat of JaygopalSen, where Keshab was train ing his min is ters.As soon as the Mas ter ar rived with hisnephew Hriday, he went into sam adhi. Whenhe had re gained par tial con scious ness, he be -gan ex plain ing pro found spir i tual top ics insim ple lan guage il lus trated with such com -mon place ex am ples that all pres ent gazed athim, en thralled. They did not no tice when thetimes for bath ing and eat ing came and went.The time for the next prayer was nearly uponthem when Ramakrishna re marked: ‘If anyother kind of an i mal co mes to a herd of cat tle,they’ll turn on it and gore it with their horns.But if a cow joins the herd, they’ll lick its bodyand wel come it as one of them selves. That’swhat has hap pened to us here to day.’ Thenad dress ing Keshab, the Mas ter added, ‘Yourtail has dropped off.’ That odd re mark seemed to star tle and dis please Keshab’s dis ci ples. Re -al izing that they had not un der stood him, theMas ter went on to ex plain: ‘As long as a tad -pole has its tail, it can live only in the wa ter; itcan’t come on land. But when its tail drops off,


it can live on land or in the wa ter. Sim i larly, aslong as a man wears the tail of ig no rance, hecan only live in the world; but when the taildrops off, he can live ei ther in Satchidanandaor in the world, which ever he pleases. Yourmind, Keshab, has reached that state now. You can live in the world and still be aware of God.’ All were over whelmed. That day the Mas terdis cussed var i ous top ics, spent some de light -ful hours with them, and then re turned toDakshineswar.

Af ter this first meet ing, Keshab’s news -pa per, The In dian Mir ror, pub lished this newson 28 March 1875: ‘A Hindu Saint: We met one (a sin cere Hindu dev o tee) not long ago andwere charmed by the depth, pen e tra tion, andsim plic ity of his spirit. The never-ceas ing met -a phors and anal o gies, in which he in dulged,are most of them as apt as they are beau ti ful.Hin du ism must have in it a deep sense ofbeauty, truth, and good ness to in spire suchmen as these.’1

It is Keshab Chandra Sen who first in tro -duced Ramakrishna to the pub lic. Most of theMas ter’s dis ci ples came to know about himthrough this re li gious leader. In Dakshin-eswar one day, Keshab said to the Mas ter: ‘Sir,if you per mit, I want to make your mes sageknown to the pub lic. It will def i nitely do peo -ple good and bring peace to the world.’Ramakrishna re plied in an ec static mood: ‘It isnot the time to spread the mes sage of thisplace [that is, his mes sage] through lec turesand news pa pers. The power and ideas that are within this body will au to mat i cally spread allaround in the course of time. Hun dreds of Hi -ma la yas will not be able to sup press thatpower.’ As the Mas ter said this his eyes werewide open and his face ra di ated a won der fulglow. All were quiet. Then the Mas ter wentinto sam adhi.2

De spite the Mas ter’s dis cour age ment,Keshab con tin ued to spread news of the Mas -ter in his pa pers. The In dian Mir ror printed on20 Feb ru ary 1876: ‘Ramakrishna, a Hindudev o tee known as a Paramahamsa, now liv ing

at Dakshineswar, is a re mark able man and ap -pears to have at tained an ex traor di nary el e va -tion of moral char ac ter and spir i tu al ity. Sev -eral Brahmo mis sion ar ies who have vis itedhim from time to time speak highly of his de -vo tion and pu rity and his deep in sight into the re al i ties of the in ner world. Though a trueHindu he is said to sym pa thize heart ily withthe Brahmos of the ad vanced schools.’3

Keshab Introduces Ramakrishna’s M essage

On 24 Jan u ary 1878 Keshab col lected thesay ings of Ramakrishna and pub lished a ten- page pam phlet in Ben gali en ti tled Parama-hamser Ukti. The In dian Brahmo Samaj pub -lished it, and it sold for two pice (7, 53). When -ever Keshab met with Ramakrishna, his teach -ings were re corded and pub lished in theDharmatattwa mag a zine of the Brahmo Samaj.Keshab was a char is matic or a tor and a pow er -ful writer. He was be hind sev eral news pa persand jour nals that prop a gated his ideas, in -clud ing The In dian Mir ror, The Sunday Mir ror,Lib eral, The is tic An nual, and New Dis pen sa tionin Eng lish, and Dharmatattwa, Sulabh Sama-char, Mahima, Paricharika, Balak Bandhu,Dharmaprakash, Bangabandhu, Deshahitaishini,Bishavairi, and Bamabodhini Patrika in Ben gali.These Brahmo pub li ca tions con tin ued tospread the teach ings of Ramakrishna. Thusthe Brahmo ver sion of the Gos pel of SriRamakrishna be gan to take shape dur ing hislife time.

The The is tic Quar terly Re view pub lishedthe fol low ing re port in Oc to ber 1879:

If all his [Ramakrishna’s] ut ter ances could bere corded, they would form a vol ume of strangeand won der ful wis dom. If all his ob ser va tionson men and things could be re pro duced, peo ple might think that the days of proph ecy, of pri -me val un learned wis dom had re turned. But it is most dif fi cult to ren der his say ings into Eng lish. We here try to give some stray bits:

1. So long as the bee is out side the pet als ofthe lily, it buzzes and emits sounds. But when itis in side the flower, the sweet ness hath si lencedthe bee. It drinks the nec tar, for gets the sounds,



and for gets it self. So the man of de vo tion.2. Put the ghará (earthen pot) in side the

brook of clear wa ter. There is bub bling, there isnoise, as long as the ves sel is empty. When it isfull, the bub bling ceases, the dis tur bance ceases. In si lence and full ness the ves sel lies in thedepth of the el e ment. So the heart of de vo tion.

3. Boil your sugar well in a liv ing and ac tivefire. As long as there is earth and im pu rity in it,the sweet in fu sion will smoke and sim mer. Butwhen all im pu rity is cast out, there is nei thersmoke nor sound, but the de li cious crys tal linefluid heaves it self in its un mixed worth, and,whether liq uid or solid, is the de light of menand gods. Such is the char ac ter of the man offaith.

4. Through the stream of the trou blousworld I float a frail half-sunk log of wood. Ifmen come to hold onto me to save their lives,the re sult will be this: they will drown me with -out be ing able to save them selves. Be ware of[false] gu rus.

5. Un shod and with bare feet who will ven -ture to walk upon thorns and sharp stones?Shod with faith in Hari, what thorn or sharpstone can harm you?

6. Hold the post well-driven into the ground with your hand, and then you can quickly re -volve round and round with out fall ing. Havefaith in a fixed and strong prin ci ple, and then,though your move ments may be many andrapid, no harm will ever be fall you. With outprin ci ple, ev ery move ment is a step to wards afall.

7. Churn your pure milk be fore the sunrises, and the but ter that is thrown up, gather,and put in clear wa ter. There is an other kind ofbut ter that is ob tained by churn ing whey af tersun rise, and that is al lowed to float in the wheyout of which it is churned. The lat ter kind of but -ter rep re sents the re li gion of the Brahmo Samaj,while the for mer is pure Hin du ism.

8. Woman and wealth have drowned thewhole world in sin. Woman is dis armed whenyou view her as the man i fes ta tion of the di vineVidya Shakti, the power of pure wis dom, as themother of the hu man race.

9. O Mother Di vine, I want no hon our frommen, I want no plea sure of the flesh, only let mysoul flow into Thee as the per ma nent con flu -ence of the Gan ges and Yamuna. Mother, I am

with out bhakti, with out yoga, I am poor andfriend less. I want no one’s praise, only let mymind al ways dwell in the lo tus of Thy feet.

10. God alone is true, all else is false (84-5).

Keshab and Ramakrishna had a won der -ful re la tion ship. The Mas ter was very fond ofKeshab. When Keshab was sick, the Mas terwent to see him and made a spe cial of fer ing tothe Di vine Mother for his well-be ing. Keshabhad tre men dous love and re spect for the Mas -ter as well. Some times the Mas ter teasedKeshab and his fol low ers. Once he said:

I went to Keshab’s place and watched theirprayer ser vice. Af ter speak ing at length aboutthe glo ries of God, Keshab an nounced, ‘Let usnow med i tate on God.’ I won dered how longthey would med i tate. But, oh dear, they’dscarcely shut their eyes for two min utes be foreit was all over! How can one know God by med -i tat ing like that? While they were med i tat ing, Iwas watch ing their faces. Af ter wards I said toKeshab: ‘I’ve seen a lot of you med i tate, and doyou know what it re minded me of? Troops ofmon keys some times sit qui etly un der the pinetrees at Dakshineswar, just as if they were per -fect gen tle men, quite in no cent. But they aren’t.As they sit there, they’re think ing about all thegourds and pump kins that house hold ers trainto grow over their roofs, and about all the gar -dens full of plan tains and egg plants. Af ter a lit -tle while, they’ll jump up with a yell and rushaway to the gar dens to stuff their stom achs. Isaw many of you med i tat ing like that.’ Whenthe Brahmos heard that, they laughed.

4

Be fore he died in 1884, Keshab trained his Navavidhan fol low ers to re spect oth ers’faiths. Each min is ter be came ad ept in a par tic -u lar faith; for ex am ple, Pratap ChandraMajumdar spe cial ized in Chris tian ity,Aghore nath Gupta in Bud dhism, Trailokya -nath Sanyal in Vaishnavism, and GirishChandra Sen in Is lam.

Girish Chandra Sen and the Adi Kathamrita

Girish Chandra Sen (1835-1910) was born in Dhaka. He was a lin guist and knew Ben gali, San skrit, Per sian, Arabic, Urdu, and Eng lish.


The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna according to Girish Chandra Sen 481

When he joined the Brahmo Samaj in 1872,Keshab en trusted him with teach ing theQuran. He spent thirty years trans lat ing theQuran from Arabic into Ben gali, earn ing theti tle of Moulvi. He trans lated the lives of theSufi saints from Per sian into Ben gali and ed -ited them in six vol umes un der the ti tleTapasamala. A won der ful jour nal ist, he reg u -larly con trib uted to Brahmo news pa pers andmag a zines. In 1875 he came in con tact withRamakrishna, and he as so ci ated with him forthe next eleven years. When Ramakrishnapassed away on 16 Au gust 1886, Girish tookpart in the fu neral pro ces sion.

Af ter Ramakrishna’s pass ing awayGirish Sen wrote a short bi og ra phy in Ben galithat was pub lished in the Dharmatattwa in1886. It has been trans lated into Eng lish andpub lished in Ramakrishna as W e Saw Him(Vedanta So ci ety of St Louis, 1990; AdvaitaAshrama, Cal cutta, 1992).

While Ramakrishna was still alive, Girishbe gan re cord ing the Mas ter’s wis dom. He col -lected say ings from 1875 to 1878, and thenpub lished them in Ben gali as Srimat Rama -krishna Paramahamser Ukti (Say ings of Rama -krishna Paramahamsa).

In 1983 Shyamal Basu ed ited this col lec -tion and pub lished it in Ben gali un der the ti tleAdi Kathamrita (Orig i nal Gos pel). This book,which con tains 184 teach ings of Ramakrishna,has not been trans lated into any other lan -guage. Ramakrishna’s col lo quial Ben gali wasa blend of for mal lan guage and ru ral di a lect.In the Adi Kathamrita, Girish set Ramakri-shna’s di a logues in a ques tion-and-an swerform, and changed his vil lage pa tois into themore for mal, el e gant Ben gali that was com -monly spo ken in the 1870s.

The lan guage of the Adi Kathamrita is dif -fer ent from that of Sri Sri Ramakrishna Katha-mrita (The Gos pel of Sri Ramakrishna) re cordedby M. The lat ter tried to pre serve Rama -krishna’s words in tact, whereas Girish Sentook Ramakrishna’s ideas and put them in hisown lan guage. We don’t find the sim plic ity,

orig i nal ity, fresh ness, beauty, and sweet nessof Ramakrishna’s words and ex pres sions inhis book that we find in M’s Gos pel. More over,Ramakrishna’s teach ings are packed withsim i les, met a phors, and day-to-day ex am plesthat are un der stand able even to com mon folk.Girish heard the con ver sa tion, sto ries, andpar a bles of Ramakrishna and then re cast them in his own lan guage. But in this book one finds some teach ings that do not ap pear in M’s Gos-pel or in any other col lec tion of Ramakrishna’ssay ings.

It should be men tioned that not allBrahmos were de voted to Ramakrishna. Some were his friends and ad mir ers, but oth ers were very crit i cal of his teach ings and scepticalabout his life. Some even con sid eredRamakrishna’s ep i sodes of sam adhi to be ep i -lep tic fits. Keshab and his fol low ers, how ever,were greatly in flu enced by Ramakrishna. Forex am ple, they learned to sing and dance in thename of God. Be fore they met Ramakrishna,they would not show any emo tion in theirsadhana; they fol lowed the Vedas and re -peated their prayers, quot ing texts from thescrip tures. Af ter com ing in con tact withRamakrishna, the Brahmos in tro duced thecon cept of the Moth er hood of God into theirtra di tion. Ramakrishna vis ited both Keshab’sNavavidhan and the Sadharan Brahmo Samajguided by Shivanath Shastri and VijaykrishnaGoswami.

Ramakrishna’s au di ence was com posedof In di ans who had been in flu enced by West -ern ed u ca tion and cul ture, re li gion and phi -los o phy. Ramakrishna pre sented an cient In -dia’s spir i tual tra di tion to his West ern ized au -di ence. Some of the mo nas tic dis ci ples ofRamakrishna, in clud ing Swami Vivekanan da,were mem bers of the Brahmo Samaj. TheseEng lish-ed u cated dis ci ples used logic and rea -son to chal lenge the Mas ter’s views, andRamakrishna eas ily and joy fully faced theirchal lenges and used his own ex pe ri ence tocon vince them of the truth of what he said.One can coun ter act a par tic u lar scrip tural text



with an other and a lower rea son ing by ahigher rea son ing; but one can not nul lify ex pe -ri ence. For ex am ple, one who has tasted sugarand knows it to be sweet will laugh if sci en tists and phi los o phers say that sugar tastes sour orbit ter. Sim i larly, Ramakrishna’s ex pe ri ence ofGod and his sam adhi over whelmed the athe -ists, ag nos tics, and scep tics whom he en coun -tered, and all their ar gu ments were re futed.

Excerpts from the Adi KathamritaSome of the fol low ing teach ings are not

found in any Eng lish trans la tion of Rama -krishna’s say ings:

Ques tion: ‘Do the great spir i tual soulssome times face de pres sion and doubt?’

Ramakrishna: ‘The tre men dous cur rent ofthe Padma River some times turns into whirl -pools on its course, but shortly it again be gins to flow in a straight way. Sim i larly, de pres sionand doubt arise mo men tarily in the minds ofthe great souls; but they do not last, they dis ap -pear quickly.’5

Ques tion: ‘The Mus lims loudly pray“Allahu Akbar”. Does it mean that they haveseen God?’

Ramakrishna: ‘He who has re al ized Al lahbe comes over whelmed and is si lent. He whohas not seen Al lah shouts, say ing “Al lah, Al -lah”’ (8).

Ques tion: ‘If the body is im per ma nent, whythen is a dev o tee care ful about it?’

Ramakrishna: ‘No body cares for an emptyiron safe. But peo ple take spe cial care of it if it isfull of gold coins and pre cious gems. Sim i larly,if God man i fests in the heart of a holy per son,peo ple can not help but serve and care for thatper son’s body’ (63).

Ques tion: ‘Why do tears trickle from theeyes dur ing upasana?’

Ramakrishna: ‘When one side of a log startsto burn, its mois ture co mes out as drops of wa -ter from the other side of the log. Sim i larly dur -ing med i ta tion, the spir i tual fire en ters the heart and causes tears’ (64).

Ques tion: ‘We are men tally and phys i callyweak. Is it pos si ble for us to do any great thing?’

Ramakrishna: ‘As the strong wind car ries afallen dry leaf a long dis tance, so weak and in ca -

pa ble peo ple re ceive tre men dous power by thegrace of Brah man and ac com plish great works’(64-5).

Ques tion: ‘How can one make one’s de vo -tion steady and per ma nent?’

Ramakrishna: ‘If you hang a jar of wa terwith a sling in your room, the wa ter will dry upaf ter a few days. But if you keep your jar un derthe sur face of the Gan ges, it will never dry up.Sim i larly, if one’s mind is im mersed in theall-lov ing God, one’s love and de vo tion neverdries up. One should not feel se cure af ter hav -ing love and de vo tion only for a day; it will soon dry up like the wa ter in the hang ing jar’ (66-7).

Ques tion: ‘What is your opin ion aboutmod ern preach ers?’

Ramakrishna: ‘They have food for two hun -dred peo ple, but they in vite thou sands. Theyprac tise very lit tle sadhana, but they de clarethem selves to be gu rus and start preach ing re li -gion’ (69).

Ques tion: ‘Why can we not see the Di vineMother?’

Ramakrishna: ‘She is the aris to cratic daugh -ter of a very rich per son and lives be hind ascreen. Those who are dev o tees of the Mothergo be hind the screen and see Her’ (79).

Ques tion: ‘Je sus’ en e mies cru ci fied him, buthe prayed for their wel fare. How could this be?’

Ramakrishna: ‘If one drives a nail into an or -di nary un ripe co co nut, it pen e trates throughthe fi bre, shell, and ker nel; but when the co co -nut be comes ripe and wa ter evap o rates fromthe in side, the ker nel is sep a rated from the shell. At that time the nail can not pierce the dry ker -nel. Je sus Christ was like that dry co co nut. HisAt man was sep a rated from the body. His en e -mies nailed his body but not his Soul. That iswhy his body en dured the pain of that pierc ingnail, but his Soul prayed for the good of his en e -mies’ (83-4).

Ques tion: ‘What is the strength of the spir i -tual as pi rant?’

Ramakrishna: ‘As a child cries for themother, so cry ing for God is the strength of anas pi rant’ (85).

Ques tion: ‘How does God dwell in the hu -man body?’

Ramakrishna: ‘He lives in the body like theplunger in a sy ringe’ (87).

Ques tion: ‘Will all peo ple see God?’


The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna according to Girish Chandra Sen 483

Ramakrishna: ‘No body can live in thisworld with out food; some eat at 2:00 p.m., some in the eve ning. Sim i larly, all will see God some -time or other’ (90).

Ramakrishna’s sim i les and met a phorsglit ter like gems. They cre ate won der ful im -ages in read ers’ minds, help ing them to vi su -al ize the truths of which he spoke. Rama -krishna ex plained lofty spir i tual con cepts us -ing such sim ple lan guage and home spun ex -am ples that left hardly any room for one todoubt him.

The Adi Kathamrita of Girish Chandra Sen has a his tor i cal value. It was pub lishedtwenty- five years be fore M’s pop u lar Gos pel ofSri Ramakrishna, while Ramakrishna was stillalive. Some dev o tees might have read it tohim.

Ramakrishna did not care for pub lic ity;he was happy to lead his own life. His at ti tudewas: When flow ers bloom, bees come of their

own ac cord. He also felt that one should notquar rel or fight about re li gion. He sim ply de -clared: First be spir i tual, and then love andserve hu man be ings as God. The goal of hu -man life is to re al ize God. �

References

1. Brajendranath Bandyopadhyay and Sajani -

kanta Das, Samasamayik Drishtite SriRamakrishna Paramahamsa (Cal cutta: Gen eral

Printers & Pub lishers, 1968), 3.

2. Swami Chetanananda, Ramakrishna as W e SawHim (Cal cutta: Advaita Ashrama, 1992), 287.

3. Samasamayik Drishtite, 6-7.

4. Swami Saradananda, Sri Ramakrishna and HisDi vine Play, trans. Swami Chetanananda (St

Louis: Vedanta So ci ety of St Louis, 2003),

723-4.

5. Adi Kathamrita, ed. and comp. Shyamal Basu

(Cal cutta: Ananya Prakashan, 1983), 23.



In the Com pany of Sri Ram akrishna

In 1881, Keshab Chandra Sen, ac com pa nied by a fairly large party, went on board a steam

yacht be long ing to his son-in-law, Maharaja Nripendra Narayan Bhup of Coochbehar, to

Dakshineswar, to meet Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. I had the good for tune to be in cluded in

that party. We did not land, but the Paramahamsa, ac com pa nied by his nephew, Hriday,

boarded the steamer. …

Af ter he had sat down, the Paramahamsa glanced round him and ex pressed his ap proval of

the com pany sit ting around by say ing, ‘Good, good! They have all good large eyes.’ … The next

mo ment he lost all in ter est in the peo ple pres ent and be gan to speak of the var i ous ways in

which he used to per form his sadhana. ‘Some times I would fancy my self the Brahminy duck call -

ing for its mate.’ There is a po etic tra di tion in San skrit that the male and fe male of a brace of

Brahminy ducks spend the nights on op po site shores of a river and keep call ing to each other.

Again: ‘I would be the kit ten call ing for the mother cat, and there would be the re sponse of the

mother.’ Af ter speak ing in this strain for some time, he sud denly pulled him self up and said with

the smile of a child: ‘Ev ery thing about se cret sadhana should not be told.’ He ex plained that it

was im pos si ble to ex plain in lan guage the ec stasy of di vine com mu nion when the hu man soul

loses it self in con tem pla tion of the de ity. … And so the mar vel lous mono logue went on un til the

Paramahamsa be gan to talk of the Nirakara (form less) Brah man. He re peated the word

Nirakara two or three times, and then qui etly passed into sam adhi, even as the diver slips into

the fath om less deep.

—Nagendranath Gupta

History, Religion and Humanity

SWAMI SANDARSHANANANDA

(Continued from the previous issue)

Synthetic Vision of Vivekananda

Swami Vivekananda con sid ered so cial ism a ‘half loaf’—which was better than noloaf. His crit i cal think ing helped him

make in sight ful pre dic tions of im pend ing so -cial ist rev o lu tions: ‘The next great up heavalwhich is to bring about a new ep och will comefrom Rus sia or China.’10 He was proved cor -rect when the first so cial ist rev o lu tion tookplace in Rus sia and not in Brit ain, as Marxwrongly con ceived in view of the lat ter’s be -ing in dus tri al ized and cap i tal ist. Marx wasagain proved wrong when the USSR dis in te -grated and its con stit u ent states took to cap i -tal ist forms of gov ern ment. And now China,by adopt ing a lib eral ap proach, has broughtabout a boom in its econ omy with cap i tal in -vest ments in the open mar ket, de fy ing the ba -sic ten ets of so cial ism. Given a lit tle spir i tualtwist, its way is likely to emerge as a pop u larbrand of so cial ism in the near fu ture.

On the other hand, af flu ence alone is nota pan a cea for so cial ills, for the ar ro gance itbreeds gives rise to a kind of so phis ti catedsav agery. Swamiji ‘had a clearer view of theun der ly ing self ish ness of cap i tal ism and strug -gle for priv i lege’. Cap i tal ism, with out moraland spir i tual re straints, in creases man’s pas -sion for pos ses sion. Wealth then be comes abane. And as this is true for an in di vid ual, so isit true for a na tion. This is ob serv able in the cir -cum stances pre vail ing in Iraq. If Saddam Hus -sain as an in di vid ual re flects how harm fulcon cen tra tion of power and prop erty in a sin -gle per son can be, the he ge monic de signs ofthe US have evoked wide spread crit i cism. Ifso cial ism pushes so ci ety back to a co vert prim i -tive bar gain ing cul ture where man be comes a

com mod ity by vir tue of his la bour, cap i tal ismtakes so ci ety for ward to an overt mar ket placewhere man gets ine bri ated with com mer cial -ism. Ex clu sively, nei ther is de sir able. His toryhas proved that ‘har mony’ is the theme of themod ern age; we need it for our ma te rial aswell as spir i tual well-be ing. In or der toachieve that, how ever, we must re nounce allter ror ism, state-spon sored or oth er wise.

Buddha’s Synthesis

Par a dox i cally, al though Bud dha was nota so cial re former in the gen eral sense of theterm, he did some thing of im mea sur able so -cial value. The re li gious and socio-eco nomicop pres sion he had to reckon with de manded a rev o lu tion, for which the be nign ‘re bel’ in himpro vided lead er ship. He in tently stud ied thebook of hu man na ture and urged man to wage war against his own evil in cli na tions. SwamiVivekananda rightly says: ‘Bud dha was theWash ing ton of the re li gious world; he con -quered a throne only to give it to the world, asWash ing ton did to the Amer i can peo ple. Hesought noth ing for him self.’11 Bud dha res -cued peo ple from the clutches of priest craftand feu dal ism and thus re stored de moc racy.

As Swamiji said, ‘the his tory of the worldis the his tory of a few men who had faith inthem selves’ (8.228). It is their love and hu mansym pa thy that holds civ i li za tion to gether de -spite the count less forces work ing to dis ruptit. They are in deed the salt of the earth whomman kind can ill-af ford to dis pense with. Swa-miji says: ‘His tory of civili sa tion is the pro -gres sive read ing of spirit into mat ter. The ig -no rant see the per son in the non-per son. Thesage sees the non-per son in the per son.


Through pain and plea sure, joy and sor row,this is the one les son we are learn ing’ (8.429).

Sri Krishna and the Mahabharata

In or der to un der stand In dia one has toac quire a clear idea re gard ing her spir i tualher i tage that com poses her true his tory, thestrain of which is still pal pa ble in ev ery pulsebeat of her na tional life. Re li gion has givenshape to her civ i li za tion through mil len nia.For eign in vad ers could never touch her nervecen tre, even while they were un leash ing theworst kind of per se cu tion.

Much of an cient In dian his tory is thestory of a pro tracted strug gle be tween thepriestly and the kingly classes. When thisstrug gle be came fierce it gave rise to Bud -dhism. In a sim i lar sit u a tion in the more re -mote past, there had ap peared Krishna, thegreat harmonizer. He gave the Gita, rec on cil -ing the phi los o phies of the work and knowl -edge por tions of the Vedas, over which thepriests and the kings were sharply di vided.Not only that, he left be hind a per sonal leg acythat is vi brant even to day. Showing his deepsense of rev er ence for Krishna, Swamiji says:

He is the most rounded man I know of, won der -fully de vel oped equally in brain and heart andhand. Ev ery mo ment [of his] is alive with ac tiv -ity, ei ther as a gen tle man, war rior, min is ter, orsome thing else. Great as a gen tle man, as ascholar, as a poet. This all-rounded and won -der ful ac tiv ity and com bi na tion of brain andheart you see in the Gita and other books. Mostwon der ful heart, ex qui site lan guage, and noth -ing can ap proach it any where. This tre men dous ac tiv ity of the man-the im pres sion is still there.Five thou sand years have passed, and he has in -flu enced mil lions and mil lions. (1.457)

The fun da men tal les son Krishna taught is thatthe in con sis tency be tween our thought andac tion lies at the root of all trou bles. That re -sults in our com plex and ir ra tio nal be hav iour.Liv ing the life, Krishna shows us how to findthe great est calm ness in the midst of in tenseac tiv ity, and amidst the great est peace, in tense ac tion. It does not mat ter if we do not know for

sure whether he is a his tor i cal per son al ity. Butit speaks am ply of a peo ple who could imag -ine such a char ac ter, pos it ing in him all thester ling qual i ties that one should as pire for.Swamiji says again: ‘My re gard for him is forhis per fect san ity. No cob webs in that brain, no su per sti tion. He knows the use of ev ery thing,and when it is nec es sary to as sign a place toeach, he is there’ (ibid.).

A tree is known by its best fruits. Sim i -larly, re li gion should be judged by the saintsand seers it has been pro duc ing since thedawn of civ i li za tion, and not by the priestswho use it as a tool for self ish ends. If spir i tualper son al i ties are not taken into ac count whileana lys ing hu man his tory, the as sess ment isbound to be faulty. The sense of his tory worksat the deep est lev els of a na tion’s col lec tivepsy che; the more a na tion is con scious of itsreal his tory, the more the num ber of spir i tualpeo ple it can find in its chron i cles. And thechief con cern of such peo ple is the cor rectanal y sis of hu man na ture and con duct.

The Mahabharata is an apt ex am ple. Butfor the ex is tence in In dia of so many gen u inespir i tual char ac ters, a mon u men tal work likethat—con tain ing as it does a com pre hen sivecode of his tory, pol i tics, re li gion, phi los o phy,mo ral ity, eth ics, aes thet ics and so ci ol ogy cen -tred upon hu man be hav iour—could not havebeen pro duced. The epic rightly says about it -self that what is not found therein is not foundany where. So such an ac com plish ment is avalid in di ca tor of the vi brant thought and re -mark able abil ity of the peo ple of its time. Andthe study of those in tu itive souls who cre atesuch works is per ti nent, for they pro vide in -sights that or di nary schol ars can not.

Swam iji’s Vision of History

Hence it did not es cape Swamiji that thehis tory of the world can be read as a march ofevents with the rul ing power chang ing handsfrom one class to an other. This goes on in cy -clic or der, and now it is for the la bour ers to ap -pro pri ate the priv i leges that the priests, kings



and mer chants had ear lier en joyed in suc ces -sion. But the prophet that he is, Swamiji warnsthat the work ing class must not en joy itspower at the cost of hu man cul ture, for thatwould make a trav esty of civ i li za tion. Un for -tu nately, we in In dia did not use Swamiji’s for -mula for so cial re gen er a tion: Take man wherehe stands and from there give him a lift.Therefore, much to our hu mil i a tion, we aresuf fer ing the con se quences in ev ery im por tant sphere of our life, be it ed u ca tion, health or in -dus try. Thus we have sown the seeds of ourfolly in the fields of his tory only to reap its bit -ter re sults.

Nev er the less, it is heart en ing to see thatsome of our his to ri ans are, af ter all, ‘stress ingthe need to look at, or take stock of the past,with a view to un der standing pro cesses rather than events—pro cesses that have shaped ourat ti tude and struc tured the ever chang ing so -ci ety of man kind.’12 They are stress ing theneed to ex plore the lives of proph ets and sages who have moved the world by the strength oftheir spirit: ‘The world has never searched,never found so much peace as he (Siddhartha)was im mersed in. Here, the as cent was drivenby a quest more en grossed with man’s in nerpos si bil i ties than what the out side world canpro vide’ (ibid.).

Sri Ramakrishna and the ‘Indian Way’

One need not go too far into the past seek -ing ex em plars: the ‘phe nom e non’ ofRamakrishna is very much alive in our minds.In the lat ter half of the nine teenth cen tury hefreely in ter acted with many who are con sid -ered pi o neers of the In dian Re nais sance. Ar -nold Toynbee, one of the great est his to ri ans ofthe twen ti eth cen tury, ac knowl edges withdeep ad mi ra tion his unique ness and his con -tri bu tions to hu man kind. He thought thatRamakrishna’s life would of fer so lu tions tothe prob lems of the fu ture, and hence Rama-krishna is more mod ern than the most mod ern man to day. Vivekananda says, ‘Ramakri shnahas no peer; no where else in the world ex ists

that un prec e dented per fec tion, that won der -ful kind ness that does not stop to jus tify it self,that in tense sym pa thy for man in bond age.’13

His tory must judge why this poor mandraws such enor mous re spect. How could hebe so happy, even to the ex tent of mak ing hishap pi ness con ta gious, al though he was ut -terly poor? Why do some schol ars and in tel -lec tu als be lieve that he is a path finder? Per -haps one an swer to these ques tions is that hewas a liv ing em bodi ment of that part of ourcol lec tive be ing that shapes his tory and in -spires us to forge ahead in spite of the ad ver si -ties we are con stantly con fronted with in thisworld. This as sump tion finds an echo in thewords of Vivekananda: ‘He had lived in onelife the whole cy cle of na tional re li gious ex is -tence in In dia’ (7.483). Cor re spond ingly,Toynbee is also seen point ing to the ‘In dianway’ of har mony and non-vi o lence—of which Ashoka, Ramakrishna, and Ma hatma Gan dhiwere per fect ex am ples—as the only al ter na -tive to de stroy ing our selves.

Sis ter Nivedita saw in her guru the veryqual i ties that Toynbee and Vivekananda seein Ramakrishna. She says: ‘I see in him the heirto the spir i tual dis cov er ies and re li giousstrug gles of in nu mer a ble teach ers and saintsin the past of In dia and the world, and at thesame time the pi o neer and prophet of a newand fu ture or der of de vel op ment.’14 She iscon vinced ‘that each trace of those higher andun com mon modes of thought and con scious -ness to which he held the key, has its sig nif i -cance for the mod ern age’ (97).

Swamiji’s mind was largely oc cu pied bythe thought of his tory. He was in search of thereal hu man be ing amidst the vi cis si tudes ofcivilizational de vel op ment. His keen ob ser va -tion led him to for mu late this pro found mes -sage: ‘Truth does not pay hom age to any so ci -ety, an cient or mod ern. So ci ety has to payhom age to Truth or die. So ci eties should bemoulded upon truth, and truth has not to ad -just it self to so ci ety. If such a no ble truth as un -self ish ness can not be prac tised in so ci ety, it is

History, Religion and Humanity 487


better for man to give up so ci ety and go intothe for est.’15

A great deal of in tro spec tion is re quiredon the part of the pow er ful na tions if they areto re deem them selves of the sin of de stroy ingcount less lives to achieve their self ish ends. Aquick and me chan i cal phil an thropic gen u flec -tion does not make a seem ing act of ser vicewor thy of the name ‘hu man i tar ian aid’; mancer tainly does not live by bread alone. Rich na -tions must shed po lit i cal gim mickry to be gen -u inely re spected by the de vel op ing world.The strength of the purse can hardly standcom par i son with the power of the Spirit; andno ma te rial power can re sist the Spirit’s re sur -gence. In re act ing to the im pe ri al ist ex cesses of Brit ish rule in In dia Swamiji had an nounced in a pro phetic vein: ‘If man can not be lieve in theVen geance of God, he cer tainly can not denythe Ven geance of His tory. And it will comeupon the Eng lish; they have their heels on ournecks, they have sucked the last drop of ourblood for their own plea sures, they have car -ried away with them mil lions of our money,while our peo ple have starved by vil lages andprov inces’ (7.280). Within a few de cades of hispass ing away the na tion which was proud ofan em pire over which the sun never set was re -duced to its own is land home. But Swamijiwas think ing in terms of much broader timespans and we are yet to wit ness the full out -come of his pre dic tion.

Conclusion

Ironically, peo ple never take les sonsfrom his tory. For the at tain ment of peace andhap pi ness, peo ple of all na tions have to ‘lookupon them selves as pil grims to the sameShrine of Truth’. They have to en thu si as ti callyre spond to an in spir ing call given by Swamiji:

That so ci ety is the great est, where the high esttruths be come prac ti cal. That is my opin ion;and if so ci ety is not fit for the high est truths,make it so; and the sooner, the better. Stand up,men and women, in this spirit, dare to be lieve in the Truth, dare to prac tise the Truth! The world

re quires a few hun dred bold men and women.Prac tise that bold ness which dares know theTruth, which dares show the Truth in life,which does not quake be fore death, nay, wel -comes death, makes a man know that he is theSpirit, that, in the whole uni verse noth ing cankill him. Then you will be free. Then you willknow your real Soul. (2.85)

His tory is cur rently be ing re de fined. Thepres ent de mand is for a more egal i tar ian as -sess ment of hu mans as mak ers of his tory.What is re quired is a sin cere probe into the en -deav ours of mil lions of or di nary peo ple si -lently dis charg ing their du ties to shape the cit -a del of peace, for the real ‘his tory of the worldis in the lit tle acts of sac ri fice per formed in ev -ery house hold’ (8.240). If his tory does notelicit in ter est in the study of the ‘real man’ be -hind the ve neer of the ‘ap par ent man’ and fails to pro vide an in ci sive look into the depths ofhu man ex is tence, its mean ing and pur pose, itis then sim ply an aim less ac a demic pur suit.Since his tory’s chief con cern is to un raveltruth, in deal ing with his tory we must first tryto un der stand what con sti tutes the ‘real’ inman be fore we seek to ex plain the world out -side, bear ing in mind the deep truth con tainedin the fol low ing words of Swamiji’s: ‘Phi los o -phers might fret and sneer, and priests plytheir trade even at the point of the sword, buttruth co mes to those alone who wor ship at hershrine for her sake only, with out fear andwith out shopkeeping’ (4.258). �

References

10. His East ern and West ern Ad mirers, Rem i nis -cences of Swami Vivekananda (Calcutta: Advai-

ta Ashrama, 1983), 187-8.

11. CW , 7.59.

12. See Amitabha Chowdhury’s fore word in Timeand Tide, ed. P K Sen and T Bhattacharya, (Cal -

cutta: Cre ative Printers, 2000).

13. CW , 6.231.

14. Sis ter Nivedita, The M as ter as I Saw Him (Cal -

cutta: Udbodhan Of fice, 1972), 96-7.

15. CW , 2.84.



Reviews

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& Reviews &

Eter nal Mother. Sri Sarada Math, Dak shin-eswar, Kolkata 700 076. E-mail: [email protected]. 2004. viii + 304 pp. Rs 80.

It is to mark the twin events of Holy Mother’s150th birth an ni ver sary and the golden ju bi lee of

the Sarada Math that this an thol ogy of thirty ar ti -cles by monks, nuns and er u dite lay dev o tees of theRamakrishna-Sarada move ment has been broughtout. The ar ti cles have been grouped into four sec -tions— Al tars of Shakti: The Di vine Fem i nine Prin -ci ple; Reified Di vin ity: Life and Teach ings of SriSarada Devi; In un da tion of the In fi nite: Sri SaradaDevi’s Rel e vance To day; and Evo lu tion of a Rev o -lu tion: Sri Sarada Math and Sarada Move ment. Sofar as could be gath ered from the Ref er ences at theend, twenty-one of the ar ti cles are con tri bu tions ap -pear ing for the first time in the pres ent vol ume,while the re main ing nine are orig i nal/trans latedre pro duc tions of ar ti cles pub lished in jour nals ored ited se lected por tions com piled from one ormore books.

Ir re spec tive of the sec tion-wise group ing of thear ti cles, the re viewer finds it eas ier to dis cuss themun der three broad heads rep re sent ing three as pects of the ‘phe nom e non’ called Sri Sarada Devi: 1. Holy Mother’s rel e vance in the lives of in di vid u als; 2.Holy Mother’s role as sanghajanani; 3. Holy Motheras a dis tinc tive power for the re gen er a tion of hu -man ity.

Holy Mother in flu enced those who came incon tact with her dur ing her life time through the im -men sity of her love, which in vari ably gave an up -ward turn to the course of their lives. PravrajikaBharatiprana’s mem oir, the story of ‘Mata Devi’s’in flu ence on Sis ter Nivedita as told by PravrajikaBhavaprana, V Narayanan’s brief ac count of hismeet ing with Holy Mother, the in ci dents in thelives of some dev o tees nar rated by PravrajikaAjayaprana, and the var i ous hap pen ings in thelives of con tem po rary dev o tees men tioned in someof the other ar ti cles tes tify to this. What is more, thisis a con tin u ing pro cess. Sri Ramakrishna had the at -ti tude of a mother (matribhava) to wards ev ery body

and Holy Mother re mains the em bodi ment of thatcom pas sion ate at ti tude even to this day, for ev ery -body all over the world. This is stressed in the open -ing ar ti cle by Pravrajika Shraddhaprana and fac tu -ally borne out by Am ri ta Salm in her in ter est ing re -port of the find ings of a ques tion naire sur vey of 336dev o tees liv ing in Amer ica and Eu rope. But apartfrom be ing an em bodi ment of di vine Moth er hood,Holy Mother was an ex em plar—a liv ing model—of Vedanta in ev ery day life. She lived her life, es tab -lished in One ness and Bliss, and dem on strated tohouse hold ers and mo nas tics alike that the Vedanticideal can be ac tu al ized amid the thou sand and onedis trac tions of life in the world. This as pect of HolyMother’s life is also well de picted in some other ar -ti cles, no ta bly in those by Pravrajika Mokshapranaand Pravrajika Bhavaniprana, and the em i nentlyread able one by Swaraj Majumdar, who dwells onher sense of hu mour. Shel ley Brown in her ar ti cleex am ines the ex tent to which the teach ings of HolyMother’s life can be found re flected in SwamiVivekananda’s writ ings.

Holy Mother’s role as sanghajanani started quite early, right af ter Swami Vivekananda es tab lishedthe Ramakrishna Mis sion. She was the in ter preterof Sri Ramakrishna’s ideal, ‘the high court of ap -peal’ for the res o lu tion of doubts re gard ing pol i ciesand courses of ac tion, and gen er ally the su premedi rec trix guid ing the Mis sion’s line of de vel op -ment. She sowed the seed of what later be came theSarada Math by in au gu rat ing Sis ter Nivedita’sschool and grac ing its res i den tial an nexe (Matri-mandir) by her month-long stay there. Even af terher pass ing away, it was her in spi ra tion whichworked re lent lessly for more than three de cadesand led to the ger mi na tion, sprout ing and growthof that seed into the women’s math. SwamiPrabhananda has ably de scribed all these de vel op -ments in ‘The Early Years of the Ramakrishna Or -der’. (The ti tle con ceals the theme of the ar ti cle,which re ally is about Holy Mother’s role in thesede vel op ments.) Pravrajika Prabuddhaprana andHiltrud Rustau give fur ther de tails of the prep a ra -tions and de vel op ments cul mi nat ing in the found -



ing of the women’s math, the for mer with par tic u -lar em pha sis on the con tri bu tions of West ernwomen to it.

Of the three as pects men tioned above, the thirdis the most im por tant. Swamiji said that the ad ventof Sri Ramakrishna marks the be gin ning of a newera. Holy Mother’s life has a dom i nant role to playin the un fold ing of this era. This is firstly be causethe re gen er a tion of hu man ity can only be throughthe re gen er a tion of women. Holy Mother’s lifepres ents be fore women the blaz ing ideal of a com -bi na tion of all-em brac ing love, de tach ment anddig ni fied in de pend ence. From a broader per spec -tive, she, as the em bodi ment of di vine En ergy,holds out for man kind the prom ise of knowl edge,both sec u lar and spir i tual. Hu man ity badly needssuch knowl edge in or der to scale new heights in itspath of prog ress. Swami Ranganathananda el o -quently brings out these points in his short butbeau ti ful piece of writ ing. Among oth ers, KamalaRao’s ex cel lent ar ti cle ex am ines the rel e vance ofHoly Mother’s life vis-à-vis con tem po rarywomen’s is sues. The ‘mid dle course’ be tween tra -di tion al ism and fem i nism charted out by Motherfor women of the new era, her bridg ing the an cientand the mod ern, her quiet way of ne gat ing use lessso cial bar ri ers, the in ci sive ness of her in sight intothe af fairs of the world and the breadth of her ho lis -tic vi sion of life in gen eral—all very much in tunewith the emerg ing thought pat terns—are dis -cussed in a num ber of ar ti cles.

There are some other ex cel lent ar ti cles that donot strictly come un der any of the three heads listed above. These deal with top ics like the scrip turalback ground of wor ship of God as Mother, scrip -tural sup port be hind women’s right to mo nas ti -cism, women seers and nuns of In dia in Ve dic andlater times, how Sarada Devi blos somed into HolyMother, and the lives of the lead ing torch- bear ers of the Sarada Math. The re viewer would re gard theseas pre am bles to or fol low-ups of the above maintop ics.

Since the vol ume marks the golden ju bi lee ofthe Sarada Math, one would nat u rally like to knowabout its growth and ex pan sion (and about its as so -ci ate, the Ramakrishna Sarada Mis sion) dur ing thelast fifty years. This cu ri os ity is only par tially sat is -fied through glean ings from some of the ar ti cles. Afull-scale treat ment of this as pect of the move mentwould have been most wel come.

The stan dard of ed it ing is gen er ally high. Only

in the case of a few re pro duced ar ti cles there issome dif fi culty in iden ti fy ing the sources. (For in -stance, in Asha Devi’s ar ti cle the source cited hasthe year 2004 against it; but the ac tual source is aBen gali ar ti cle that ap peared in 1946, of which thecited source is only a trans la tion. This be came clearonly af ter read ing Hiltrud Rustau’s con tri bu tion.Since the con text of the ar ti cle is of great im por tance for un der stand ing its sig nif i cance, it is al waysbetter to cite the orig i nal source.) But these are mi -nor blem ishes. Readers in ter ested in Holy Mother,and the Ramakrishna-Sarada move ment, and eventhose con cerned only with the women’s move mentwill find much food for thought in this very mod er -ately priced vol ume.

Prof.Shoutir Kishore ChatterjeeFormer Professor of StatisticsCalcutta University, Kolkata

The Daily Eve ning and Morn ing Of fer -ing. H W Bodewitz. Motilal Banarsidass, 41U A Bun ga low Road, Jawahar Nagar,New Delhi 110 007. Email: [email protected]. xii + 211 pp. Rs 195.

The ear li est re li gious ac tiv ity of the Ve dic streamwas the ùrauta agnihotra. The light ing of the

mys tic fire with araîi wood and of fer ing ob la tionsto it was el e vated into a keen es o teric rit ual, thanksto the Agni Suktas, which lead the Rig Ve dichymns. It is a rit ual that has en dured to this day and there has been a good deal of in ter est in this an cienttra di tion even in the West. In dia has al ways had afew brah min house hold ers in vil lages per form ingthis rit ual who are known as Nitya Agnihotrins and Shrautikas. The rit ual is said to cleanse the ex ter naland in ner spaces of our life on earth. But mere rit u -al ism is not enough. One must un der stand the sig -nif i cance of the rit u als. When H W Bodewitz pub -lished this vol ume in 1976, it re ceived in stant ad mi -ra tion. An im por tant work for Ve dic stud ies, it ismost wel come to have the pres ent pa per back edi -tion for a wider dis sem i na tion of its con tents.

Eigh teen chap ters bring us well-cho sen ex -cerpts from the Brahmanas and the au thor in sin u -ates the rit ual as an inter-link age of the saurágni cre -ated by Aditya in the be yond with the agni lit byman on earth. The twi light lan guage of the an cientsages is not eas ily de ci pher able for the mod ernmind, but Prof. Bodewitz makes a brave at temptand suc ceeds most of the time, for he has also pa -tiently pre pared ex ten sive notes. It is in ter est ing to


Reviews 491

note that milk was the usual ob la tion in such sac ri -fices, for ‘milk is the es sence of all plants’.

Though one has to be a close scholar of the sub -ject of Ve dic rit u al ism to un der stand this work, a lit -tle pa tience can be highly re ward ing and help us re -late the men tal pro cesses of the an cients with theur gent socio-eco nomic life of our so ci ety. Thus theShatapatha Brahmana says one should of fer in creas -ing amounts as li ba tion to gods, hu man be ings andcat tle to in di cate the na ture of his as pi ra tion. As theper cent age stands, gods are fewer than hu man be -ings and hu man be ings are fewer than cat tle. Thispro por tion should con tinue for the pros per ity ofthe so ci ety. Hence the scrip ture says: ‘He whoknow ing thus of fers the agnihotra will have morecat tle than (hu man be ings) to be sup ported by him.For if some one has more cat tle than (hu man be ings) to be sup ported, this means pros per ity.’ Our min is -ters of fi nance and ag ri cul ture should take note!

There is then the prob lem of death. The an cients gave much thought to it. The Daily Eve ning andM orn ing Of fer ing takes a quick look at the way theagnihotra is used in a va ri ety of rit u als in the ev ery -day life of the In dian to day, cul mi nat ing in the con -sign ing of the phys i cal re mains of a per son to theflames. The re sil ience of this rite, which has lin -gered so long in the In dian clime and which is nowgo ing be yond In dia too, shows how much as pi ra -tion had gone into its cre ation by the Ve dic rishis ofold sym bol ized by agni rush ing up wards from thehead of Prajapati. Prof. Bodewitz has placed plentyof pri mary sources on a plat ter for the re searcher. Itis a spir i tual leg acy which we must not ig nore.

Dr PremaNandakumarLiterary Critic

Srirangam

Gar land of Advaitic Wis dom. Ajati. SagePress, Daya Dharmam, ROA Nagar, Tiru -vannamalai 606 603. E-mail: sagepressindia@ya hoo.com. 2002. 315 pp. Rs 350.

For more than 4,000 years the Upanishads havedi rectly and in di rectly in flu enced much of the

philo soph i cal thought of the world. Swami Vive -kananda says of them: ‘Therein lies a mine ofstrength to in vig o rate the whole world.’ With thepro lif er a tion of trans la tions of an cient San skrittexts in the last one hun dred years, there has been aleap in in ter est in East ern spir i tu al ity, es pe ciallyVe danta and Yoga, in the West. This in ter est, cou -

pled with the lack lustre life that tech nol ogy isprom is ing and de liv er ing, is draw ing more andmore peo ple to the deeper di men sions of the At man.

Advaita Vedanta—call it phi los o phy, re li gion,psy chol ogy, meta phys ics or spir i tu al ity—is thehigh est pos si ble ex pe ri ence a hu man be ing canhave. A lot of peo ple are cu ri ous to un der standAdvaita phi los o phy; some sin cerely strive for itshigher ex pe ri ences. But Advaita de mands yearsand years of rig or ous dis ci pline to pre pare one selffor it. It starts with psy cho log i cal ori en ta tion andmould ing of the in ner world of thought, and it ishere that books like this, be sides dis cus sions onAdvaita, be come nec es sary.

Gar land of Advaitic W is dom does not say any -thing new, does not give fresh doc trinal in sights, isnot meant to be ac a demic or po lemic, nor is it astep-by-step man ual of sadhana. It is just as the ti tlesug gests: a string ing to gether of the wis dom con -nected with Advaitic teach ings, while giv ing a brief out line of the phi los o phy. Let none hast ily con -clude that this book has lim ited use. Advaita has atre men dous charm, es pe cially for the thought ful.And as the gen eral level of in tel li gence all over theworld is ris ing, such books will lead many per sonsto the real por tals of this su preme phi los o phy.

The first sec tion of the book de votes it self tobriefly enun ci at ing the evo lu tion of Vedanta and its dif fer ent schools—rang ing from Advaita to the dif -fer ent dualistic schools, its prin ci pal doc trines,teach ers and the or der of Advaita sannyasins. Sec -tion Two con sists of quo ta tions culled from dif fer -ent scrip tures—from the Upanishads to the Pancha-dashi, and in clud ing the prakaranagranthas (mono-graphs) and stotras (hymns). Sec tion Three quotesse lec tively from Ramana Maharshi, the seer whoex pe ri enced Advaitic truths and taught them insim ple lan guage and el o quent si lence. Sec tionsFour and Five give Zen and Tao teach ings. Thoughthese phi los o phies are dif fer ent from Advaita, yetthey are very prac ti cal and hence some of the teach -ings have a spe cial ap peal. With a book like this that abounds in tech ni cal i ties, the Glos sary, Sourcesand Ap pen dices at the end are in dis pens able. Theshort In tro duc tion by Swami Shantananda, Ajati’sguru, is very lu cid. The book is com posed in pleas -ing type face and printed on good pa per. The pub -lisher has spared nei ther ex penses nor pains in pro -duc ing the book.

Swami SatyamayanandaAdvaita Ashrama



The Ìgveda: A Brief Study. Swami Harsh -ananda. Ramakrishna Math, Bull Tem pleRoad, Bangalore 560 019. E-mail: [email protected]. 38 pp. Rs 12.

The strong and im preg na ble foun da tions of In -dian cul ture were laid when the rishis who

lived long ago (any time be tween 2,500 to 1,200years BCE) in dited the hymns of the Rig Veda. To-day we speak with fac ile ease about our Ve dic tra -di tions. But what is this body of Rig Veda, whichopens with pow er ful suktas to Agni, raises highVishwamitra’s man tra—the Gayatri, and con -cludes with the tre men dous hymn call ing for uni -ver sal broth er hood: ‘As sem ble for a com mon pur -pose. Con fer to gether with open minds and hearts.Pool your thoughts for in te grated wis dom; for be -hold, the great gods them selves have come to en joytheir high em i nence be cause of their unity!’?

The Ìgvedais of course a brief study, but doesnot leave out any im por tant in for ma tion re gard ingthe scrip ture. The date, the man ner of di vid ing thehymns (10,552 mantras in all), the branches (twenty-one, of which only five have sur vived), the sec tions(Brahmanas, Aranyakas, Upanishads), the sageswho re ceived the mantras (in clud ing some thirtywomen rishis) and the Ve dic gods have all beenenu mer ated by Swami Harshananda. He has alsotouched upon the lit er ary graces found in the RigVeda. Ac cord ing to him, though var i ous de i ties aremen tioned, in truth they are all ad dressed to theOne Su preme. Tem ple wor ship was non-ex is tent.Life on earth was tuned to ìta, the cos mic law andor der. The Ve dic so ci ety did not even dream ofmoral tur pi tude: ‘An im por tant as pect of life in thisworld is earn ing wealth by right means and shar ing the good things in life with oth ers, es pe cially theless for tu nate ones, through dána or giv ing gifts’(35).

The chap ter ti tled ‘Com men taries’ is in com -plete. Swami Harshananda rightly be gins withSkandaswami and re fers to Venkatamadhava,Madhvacharya and Sayana, though one missesRaghavendra’s M antrartha-manjari. Whereas hehas men tioned the con tri bu tion of Eu ro pean schol -ars like Grassman, Max Mul ler and Keith to Ve dicstud ies, there is no ref er ence to lat ter-day In diancom men ta tors on Ve dic hymns. Apart from BalGangadhar Tilak and Paramasiva Iyer, who haveex plored some of the ìks de part ing from the tra di -tional rit u al is tic in ter pre ta tion, Sri Aurobindo’s

com men tar ies, Hymns to the M ys tic Fire (on theAgni Suktas of the Rig Veda) and On the Veda (on ase lec tion of hymns from all the Vedas) are wellknown for their in tu itive in ter pre ta tion. There isthen the re mark able San skrit com men tary Siddh-anjana on one hun dred and twenty-one hymns ofthe Rig Veda (the com plete first Ashtaka) byBrahmasri T V Kapali Shastri.

Swami Harshananda has shown the green sig -nal. It is for us to take up Ve dic stud ies!

Dr PremaNandakumar

Trea sury of Spir i tual Wis dom. AndyZubko. Motilal Banarsidass. 2004. x + 506pp. Rs 395.

Trea sury of Spir i tual W is dom is a huge col lec tion of in spir ing say ings. It is a unique com pi la tion. It

con tains quotes of great men from dif fer ent walksof life—sci en tists, psy chol o gists, phi los o phers, anda wide ar ray of spir i tual mas ters from var i ous re li -gious tra di tions and cul tures. Ein stein, Heisenberg, Freud, Fromm, Epicurus, Py thag o ras, Plato,Thoreau, Rus sell, Kant, and Tagore speak throughits pages as do sages like Bud dha, Con fu cius, Je sus,Mu ham mad, Shankaracharya, Au gus tine, Thomasa Kempis, Swami Vivekananda and RamanaMaharshi. The in ter est ing trans-religio-cul turalchar ac ter of this com pi la tion makes not only for awhole some ap pre ci a tion of all the great tra di tionsand thought sys tems, but also helps the reader dis -cover a sub lime unity far above the religio-cul turaland vo ca tional dif fer ences that dis tin guish thesegreat men. More than any thing else, these say ingsare il lu mi nat ing.

In ter est ingly, they con cern the prac ti cal normsof our day-to-day life as much as high spir i tualtruths re flect ing the deep in sights of saints. Num -bering 10,000, these in spir ing say ings are or ga nized un der 142 cat e go ries (Ad ver sity, Be lief, Char ac ter,Death, Prayer and the like) mak ing for easy ref er -ence. Hu man per son al ity ma tures with the ma tu -rity of thought. Any se ri ous reader bring ing deepthought to bear upon these say ings can feel theirtrans form ing power. It can cer tainly help the truede vel op ment of per son al ity.

This beau ti ful, mas sive com pi la tion by AndyZubko is a trib ute to seek ers all over. It would be avalu able ad di tion to ev ery col lec tion ev ery where.

Swami ShuddhidanandaAdvaita Ashrama

Reports

New Mission CentreOn 4 July 2005, Srimat Swami Gahana -

nandaji Maharaj, Pres i dent, RamakrishnaMath and Ramakrishna Mis sion, in au gu ratedthe newly formed deemed-to-be-uni ver sity,Ramakrishna Mis sion Vivekananda Ed u ca -tional and Re search In sti tute (RKMVERI), un -der the aegis of the Ramakrishna Mis sion, andgave a benedictory ad dress at a meet ing or ga -nized on this oc ca sion. Srimat Swami Atma -sthanandaji Maharaj and Swami Smarana -nandaji, Vice Pres i dent and Gen eral Sec re taryre spec tively of the Ramakrishna Math andRamakrishna Mis sion, also spoke.

Sri Arjun Singh, Un ion Min is ter for Hu -man Re source De vel op ment, vis ited BelurMath on 20 July and spoke at a meet ing at theVivekananda Sabhagriha about the newly cre -ated uni ver sity. He also vis ited Rama krishnaMis sion Swami Vivekananda’s An ces tralHouse and Cul tural Cen tre, Kolkata.

The Gov erning Body of the RamakrishnaMis sion has de cided that the in sti tu tion, adeemed uni ver sity un der the UGC Act, will be treated as one of its branch cen tres. Its ad dressis: Ramakrishna Mis sion Vivekananda Ed u ca -tional and Re search In sti tute, PO Belur Math,

Dis trict How rah, West Ben gal 711 202 (Tele -fax: 26549999; E-mail: [email protected]).Swami Atmapriyanandaji has been ap pointed head of the cen tre.

News from Branch Centres

Sri Arjun Singh and Sri L K Advani, for -mer Dep uty Prime Min is ter of In dia, vis itedViveka nanda Cul tural Cen tre (QuintonHall), Shil long, on 2 June and 4 July re spec -tively and spoke at meet ings held in con nec -tion with their vis its.

Srimat Swami Gahananandaji Maharajin au gu rated the newly built ex ten sion to theschool run by Ramakri shna Advaita Ash -rama, Kalady, on 22 June.

Srimat Swami Gitanandaji Maharaj, VicePres i dent, Ramakrishna Math and Rama -krishna Mis sion, in au gu rated the Viveka -nanda Re search Cen tre at Swami Viveka -nanda’s An ces tral House on 4 July.

Ramakrishna Math, Puri, con ducted amed i cal camp from 8 to 16 July dur ing RathaYatra in which 3,249 pa tients were treated.The cen tre also served sher bet to about 11,200pil grims. Dur ing the fes ti val, RamakrishnaMis sion Ashrama, Puri, served lem on ade toabout 14,000 pil grims and treated 29 pa tients.

Foreign News

Sri Bijoy Krishna Handique, Min is ter ofState for Par lia men tary Af fairs and De fence,Gov ern ment of In dia, along with four MPs ofthe In dian Par lia ment, vis ited RamakrishnaMis sion, Dhaka, on 9 July.

Gujarat Flood Relief

In the wake of the re cent dev as tat ingfloods in Gujarat, our cen tres in Limbdi,Rajkot and Vadodara im me di ately launchedex ten sive re lief op er a tions in Ahmedabad,Amreli, Anand, Junagadh, Kheda, Rajkot,

PB - SEPTEMBER 2005

Reports 493

Most Revered President Maharaj releasing

the RKMVERI concept paper

Surendra nagar and Vadodara dis tricts.Ramakrishna Mis sion, Lim bdi, dis trib -

uted 300 kg wheat flour, 1,206 kg rice, 906 kgdal, 2,412 kg po ta toes and on ions, and 300 kged ible oil to 532 fam i lies at more than 10 lo ca -tions in Surendranagar dis trict.

Ramakrishna Ashrama, Rajkot, dis trib -uted 95,401 food pack ets (each con tain ing150 g gathia, 150 g sweets and 100 g bis cuits),7,462 re lief pack ets (each con tain ing 2 kgkhichri, 5 kg wheat flour, 5 kg po ta toes, 500 ged ible oil, 1 kg salt, 100 g chilli pow der, 100 gspices, 100 g tea pow der, 500 g sugar, 1 sari, 1blan ket, 6 can dles and 1 match box) and 11,150wa ter pouches to 95,401 per sons at 121 vil -lages in Ahmedabad, Amreli, Anand, Juna -gadh, Kheda and Rajkot dis tricts. Apart fromthis, the cen tre gave 7,020 food pack ets to theRajkot dis trict col lec tor for dis tri bu tion in in -ac ces si ble ar eas by he li cop ter. It also dis trib -uted 2 trol leys of dry fod der and 12 met rictons of green fod der for cat tle.

Ramakrishna Mis sion VivekanandaMe mo rial, Vadodara, dis trib uted 38,020 foodpack ets (each con tain ing gathia, bundi, bis -cuits, and po tato and ba nana chips), 1,000 gro -cery pack ets, (each con tain ing 10 kg wheatflour, 5 kg rice, 2 kg dal, 1 kg oil, 1 kg salt, 50 gtur meric pow der, 50 g tea pow der and 1 kgsugar), 68 uten sil sets (each set in clud ing 4cook ing ves sels, 4 dishes, 4 bowls, 2 tum blers,1 spoon, 1 fry ing pan and 1 spat ula), 14,500wa ter pouches, 300 chlo rine tab lets, 1,625blan kets and 125 tar pau lin sheets to 97,873

per sons at 12 places in Vadodara city and 9 vil -lages in Vadodara and Anand dis tricts. Be -sides, 1,763 per sons were given med i cal re lief.

The Ramakrishna M is sion ap peals to one and all to con trib ute gen er ously to the Gujarat flood re -lief fund. All do na tions made in cash or by cheque/de mand draft drawn in fa vour of ‘RamakrishnaM is sion’ pay able in Kolkata are ex empt from in -come tax un der Sec tion 80G of the In come Tax Act.

Relief and Rehabilitation

Ramakrishna Math, Chennai, dis trib -uted 7,500 kg rice and 17,692 shirts to tsu -nami-af fected peo ple in Kanchipuram andKanyakumari dis tricts in June 2005.

In June and July, Ramakrishna Mis sion,Port Blair, dis trib uted 1,414 sa ris, 180women’s gar ments, 1,050 dho tis, 4,429 shirts,225 chil dren’s gar ments, 175 vests and 325 bed sheets to tsu nami vic tims at dif fer ent places inand around Port Blair.

Ramakrishna Mis sion Ashrama, Mal -da, dis trib uted 100 kg chira, 63 dho tis, 24 kgbis cuits, 11 kg nu tri tional food sup ple ments,27 kg gur, 88 sa ris, 94 chil dren’s gar ments and294 cor ru gated iron sheets to 39 fam i lies inBhutni whose houses were de stroyed by fire,in June.

Ramakrishna Advaita Ashrama, Kal -ady, gave 33 cat a ma rans ben e fit ing 65 fam i lies of Edamanakkad vil lage in Erna kulam dis trict in June.

In June, the Batticaloa sub-cen tre ofRamakri shna Mis sion, Co lombo, do nated a15-seat er pas sen ger ves sel to tsu nami-af fected peo ple in Batticaloa.

In June and July, Ramakrishna Mis sionCal cutta Stu dents’ Home, Belgharia, pro -vided build ing ma te ri als for 48 more housesto peo ple ren dered home less by the storm that hit Nadia and North 24-Parganas in May.

Ramakrishna Math, Pune, dis trib uted400 kg chanachur, 200 kg bread and but ter,9,600 ba nanas and 1,000 l drink ing wa ter to500 fam i lies of 2 vil lages of Raigad dis trict thatwere badly af fected by floods, in July. �

PB - SEPTEMBER 2005


Distribution of relief kits by the Vadodara centre

Documents

C Traditional Wisdom - Advaita AshramaHe examines the utility of Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives in guiding heuristic processes as well as in assessing learning, and also