LITERATURE-LIGHT AND DELIGHT. 56.EDUCATION AND EXPANSION OF CONSCIOUSNESS

LITERATURE- LIGHT AND DELIGHT

56. EDUCATION AND EXPANSION OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Education has traditionally meant not only acquisition of knowledge and skills, but a gradual expansion of our very consciousness, so that  a truly educated person felt a oneness with everything. Subramanya Bharati, the great Tamil poet of the 20th century sang of 'the crow and the sparrow being of  our caste, and the great oceans and mountains  belonging to our clan'. Scholars were welcome everywhere. We see how educated people appreciated each other, across the national and language boundaries, even when political rivalries were raging across Europe.

Contrast this with what is happening today, even within India. With the linguistic division of Independent India, literary appreciation is now almost exclusively an expression of local chauvinistic jingoism. No poet or writer of one language has a ready audience in another state. Recently we witnessed how Kannada writers of Karnataka protested and prevented the state govt from raising a memorial to R.K.Narayan, because he was not a Kannadiga and did not write in Kannada, though he had made Mysore his home and created the fabulous fictional Malgudi with its unmistakably local flavour, and made it known wherever English is read. Earlier, the local political elements had prevented the local Tamils from raising a statue to Tiruvalluvar for more than 10 years; finally, the statue was unveiled, with police protection,  on a reciprocal basis, when a statue was raised to a Kannada poet in Tamil Nadu! But no one thought of the poor Purandaradasa, who is considered the Pitamaha of Carnatic music, and whose compositions had been popular in the bhajan and music concert traditions of Tamil Nad for over 2 centuries, without any official patronage or backing.

Carnatic music concerts have been a platform for the practice and display of our cultural oneness across linguistic differences, incorporating in them compositions from almost every corner of the country, all in a spontaneous, unselfconcious manner. No one felt anything odd if the song was of a Narsi Mehta in Gujarati, or a Tuka in Marathi, Mirabai or Kabir or Tulsi in Hindi, along with the Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam compositions of the other great composers. Today, there is an increasing trend of emphasising the linguistic differences and  with it the imagined cultural exclusitivities, and both the organisers and performers are increasingly bowing to local chauvinism for the sake of patronage and profit.

It now looks almost like a dream that in the 60s, the country did celebrate the centenary of Gurudev Tagore with memorials raised for him in several states, other than his native Bengal. Who ever indeed thought of Tagore except as an Indian, even though he wrote in Bengali? ( But he was indeed a Universal man!) Can we think of a Munshi Premchand except as essentially Indian, even though he wrote in a Hindi or Urdu dialect? Today, where is such an Indian writer, except perhaps writing in English?

This is a sad reflection on our state of education, for all its tom-tomed growth since Independence. But this is perhaps only a reflection of a more universal  trend in the academic world. Education has become narrow in the name of specialisation- narrow, not only in the scope of the subject matter pursued for intensive study and research, but also in the sense of the mental horizons of the academics. See how the scope of words like God, Religion, Spirituality, Philosophy, Science, Art, Nature, etc have become limited and narrow in the name of advancement of education. Even the very concept of 'Man' has lost its original significance and now only means a number, not more- a mere piece of statistic.

Some time ago I came across a poem by Robert Frost, about the meaning of the concept of Nature. This in turn was caused by the use of the word Nature in an epitaph which the 19th century poet Walter Savage Landor had written for himself. I had read Landor's poem Iphigenia and Agamemnon in 1958 and had liked it. But it was long before I could get to read more of his poems and by chance came across this epitaph which he had intended for himself: ( He was 74 then; he lived for 15 years more!).

I strove with none, for none was worth my strife.

Nature I loved, and next to Nature, Art.

I warm'd both hands before the fire of life;

It sinks, and I am ready to depart.

What is the meaning of 'Nature' here? We normal people know that Nature is a very vast, if also necessarily vague, idea- not at all a concept which can be defined with precision in any dictionary. In fact, the more one studies and reflects, the harder it becomes to define or confine the idea of Nature. Our understanding grows and deepens with age and experience, so that many people would treat Nature and God as substitutes! But the academic-scientific establishment has tried to limit the concept of Nature, and may be now it only means to most people the strip of green patch outside one's window, if one is fortunate enough to still find it! In the poem, Frost engages in an argument with an academic about what Landor meant when he said he loved Nature. Frost writes:

Dean, adult education may seem silly.

What of it, though? I got some willy-nilly

The other evening at your college deanery.

And grateful for it (let us not be facetious!)

For I thought Epicurus and Lucretius

By Nature meant the Whole Goddam Machinery

But you say that in college nomenclature

The only meaning possible for Nature

In Landor's quatrain would be Pretty Scenery.

This is how in the name of higher education, we have lowered the value and meaning of important words and concepts. 

Incidentally, Frost the poet here emerges as a philosopher too! Friends, make no mistake. Philosophy and Poetry are the two eyes of true education. Philosophers and Poets are our true educators.