Masterplan for Value education Concld.:Wide spectrum of human belief. History of Man

It all means that we, as world-citizens should have a great pride in the universal heritage of religion and spirituality. This has to be passed on to our youngsters not just because it is great history and tradition but because there is a danger of humanity destroying itself by gradual erosion of these ancient roots. Our religions are our best heritage and safest saviour. To say, however, that only the macroprinciples of these religions are important is to ignore in the context of a tree the sun and soil from which it draws its sustenance. At the same time any emphasis on the micro-setting should not lead one to nurture an aggressive pride in one's culture and nationality. Pride in one's culture and nationality should only be like pride in one's own mother. This pride, to quote Huston Smith (Religions of Man, New American Library, 1958, p.17), should be

'an affirmative pride born of a gratitude for the values he has gained and not a defensive pride whose only device for achieving the sense of superiority it pathetically needs is by grinding down others through invidious comparison. His roots in his family, his community, his civilization will be deep, but in that very depth he will strike the water table of man's common humanity and thus noursihed will reach out in more active curiosity, more open vision, to discover and understand what others have seen'.

In most human cultures religion and culture are highly interwoven; more so in India where religion has been the dominant feeling for centuries. If we build our educational system on the premise that religion is a personal matter students will be left out without the means of understanding any culture beyond a limited subset of their own. Already we see the effect of this error in the educational set-up of the developed countries. The freedom to present a wide spectrum of human belief within a common scholastic context is a major advantage. The fact that in the Indian milieu this wide spectrum is already in the atmosphere should be considered as a great asset rather than a handicap.

9. History should be studied not as history of the different countries but as history of man and as the history of wars against poverty, disease and wickedness. History should bring out the perspective that peace is not absence of war but peace is a mutual understanding of each other's aspirations and rights. Every period of history should be studied as part of a world history from this point of view and not as part of a nation's struggle for domination or ascent to power. The individual histories of each nation in all its details should not have to be studied until the student reaches adult age.

This is the suggestion of a Master Plan for embedding the spiritual and human values in the educational system. If this can be implemented we would be turning out world-citizens who would also be a citizen of the world of Spirituality. It would not then be difficult to mould such a citizen into a rounded personality whose every work in the world would be a yajna in the spirit of the Bhagavad-Gita. For such a person, in the words of Sri Aurobindo, (The Synthesis of Yoga by Shri Aurobindo, Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, Third Impression, 1984, pp.132-133),

For such a person the mental and physical sciences which examine into the laws and forms and processes of things, those which concern the life of men and animals, the social, political and linguistic and historical and those which seek to know and control the labours and activities by which man subdues and utilises his world and environment, and the noble and the beautiful Arts which are at once work and knowledge, -- for every well-made and significant poem, picture,statue or building is an act of creative knowledge, a living discovery of the consciousness, a figure of Truth, a dynamic form of mental and vital self-expression, -- all that seeks, all that finds, all that voices or figures is a realisation of something of the play of the Infinite and to that extent can be made a means of God-realisation or of divine formation.

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February 20, 1999