India
has been a lot more than a country of slums, snake charmers, street magicians
doing rope tricks, men with turbans, women with pots on their head and hungry
children-no matter how hard the world tries to project or stereotype it to make
it fit into the limitations of their taste and mental capacity. India has
always been and will be a land filled with wonders and surprises: The founding
father of surgery may be traced to Sushruta-a man who taught and practiced
surgery on the banks of the river Ganga, who also authored the Sushruta Samhita
which had volumes consisting of procedures to perform complicated surgeries
2600 years ago; our contribution to the
field of math is mentionable too-from giving zero its value to calculating the
value of pi and by introducing the concepts of trigonometry, algebra and
calculus, place value, the decimal system and quadratic equations, we have
counted ourselves in; Spices, herbs, ayurveda and yoga have helped in the prevention
and curing of illnesses at its root cause for centuries in India; even most of
the religious customs followed in India are science-backed; like sitting
cross-legged with a straight back that helps in digestion or the early morning
ritual of drawing kolams (geometrical designs) at the entrance of the house
that helps aid hand-eye coordination; every character that has ever been
portrayed and will be in audio, visual or print, are said to be traced to fit
into a character that appears in the two great Indian epics-Ramayana and
Mahabharata. India was home to the Indus valley civilization, a group of
settlers over 5000 years ago when most of the rest of the world were still
nomads. The world’s first university flourished in Takshila in India in 600 B.C
with over 10, 500 students learning over 68 subjects that included Vedas,
languages, philosophy, politics, astronomy and medicine besides other
interesting ones as well. The first residential university in the world with
over 10, 000 students, 200 teachers and 300 lecture halls is the Nalanda
University which was started in the fifth century in India. With its strong
value and belief system established on non-violence, India has never attempted
to invade any country so far and further provides safety to refugees escaping
religious and political prosecution from Sri Lanka, Tibet, Bhutan, Afghanistan
and Bangladesh. From Aryabhatta’s revelations about astronomy to Chanakya’s
revelations about state administration-from Vatsayana’s Kamasutra to Tagore’s
Gitanjali-from ideas of Dharm, Gnaya and Neethi to the concept of Ahimsa and
Nirvana (ideas that will lose its meaning and essence if attempted to be
translated)-from dance to drama-from methods of agriculture to methods of
irrigation-from logic to reasoning-from emphasis on the rationale to the
emphasis on the emotional-from management to administration-from ethics to
values-from philosophy to astronomy-from medicine to games and sports-from
music to martial arts-from art and literature to culinary taste-India has a
bounty of information hidden within the safe threshold of its vernacular
limitation. It is a land rich in diversity and a true Union of States with
every State having the capacity to serve its array of intelligence, knowledge
and wisdom in its own unique way.
Despite
all these, India still struggles to break free from the shadows of colonialism.
Even the first and world-renowned Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur
was set up in the Hijli Detention Camp where many patriots were imprisoned
during the British rule in India-which may be an ample metaphor for the
context. Indian’s obsession with cricket, a game left over by the colonial
masters, happens over the repudiation of its own games such as kabaddi and
hockey-which is analogous to the way western educational models have been taken
up, upheld and glorified while renouncing their own system of education. If
only and only if India like Finland chose to alter its course and set right its
path and return to the basics and took pride in its own design that would hold
its uniqueness and identity that may find contextual value and relevance and decides
not to submit to universal confirmation to authority...
Said
Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, Indian Philosopher and President-whose birthday
on September 5th is celebrated as Teacher’s Day, ‘Nations, like
individuals, are made, not only by what they acquire but by what they resign.’
If
only India realizes…
(Excerpts from A paper I am working on to be presented at an International Conference in Korea this month.)
