A FULLY LITERATE INDIA WE WANT

The literacy level in India is abysmally low (74%) for a country that aspires to be a leader in world affairs and needs to be upgraded with immediate effect for the country’s overall good. All the developed countries of Europe and U.S.A. have a literacy level of 99% and the result is but apparent, their enviable economic development. Even China has a 95% literacy level which has careered it on to becoming the second largest economy in the world. India most urgently needs to address this issue and with rapid strides arrive at 100% literacy level if she is to overcome her manifold problems of socio-economic development.

More than a century ago, Swami Vivekananda realized the importance of education as the effective tool for India’s development and even before him the significance of education was understood in its full sweep by Raja Rammohan Roy. Thereafter, Vidyasagar, the Brahmo leaders such as Keshab Chandra Sen, the Arya Samaj founder Swami Dayananda Saraswati, Sister Nivedita, Rabindranath Tagore, Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee, Ramakrishna Mission, Tata Sons’ Trust and a host of other foundations and, of course, the Government of India and the States have all made significant contributions to spread education in India and thanks to their untiring efforts today we have a solid base of academic institutions all over India which is the nucleus of India’s wonderful developmental programme. But we may not rest on laurels while other nations go past us in many a field on the basis of a higher literacy rate. Time it is therefore to set our records straight and go full-swing to educate each and every child of India, nay, even more, each and every living Indian. Come, join the movement for 100% literacy for our Motherland.   

QUAKE IN PERSPECTIVE, NEPAL, 2O15

As the ground under Nepal and Northern India shakes with catastrophic consequences, one cannot help reflecting tragically on the lines composed by Swami Vivekananda in 1898 in Kashmir in his now famous poem ‘Kali The Mother’:

Come, Mother, come!

For Terror is Thy name,

Death is in Thy breath,

And every shaking step

Destroys a world for e’er.

As a bereaved mother recounts the death under rubble of her two year-old daughter, as a father anxiously awaits the recovery of the live or dead bodies of his four children lost to human hope under the debris of his collapsed home while his wife inconsolably weeps on, one cannot but question the rudimentary principles of life and living on a planet which itself is getting hijacked through unknown terrain by unknown forces. What after all is the stability of life when a slight shift in subterranean tectonic plates sends civilization reeling for survival under the starry skies, again reminding one of the epic Vivekananda lines in ‘The Song of the Sannyasin’:

Have thou no home. What home can hold thee, friend?

The sky thy roof, the grass thy bed; and food

What chance may bring, well cooked or ill, judge not.

Today, the whole of Nepal is living outdoors in the care of Mother Nature as a series of severe after-shocks following the original 7.9 Richter quake on 25 April has rendered them homeless, a nation destituted overnight while the world witnesses this horrific sight in abject submission to the grand truth that man is powerless against the fury of Nature. And what fortitude is on exhibit as these sturdy Himalayan people face the terrible trial of their individual and collective life with a wistful smile even now donning their mountain-merry faces and await the call of their numbers or their dear ones to the kingdom of the dead or perhaps they hang on the hinges of hope of a brighter day when their lives will again light up with the merriment of their mountainous mores!

SHASHI RAM, BLESSED CHILD OF THAKUR-MA

Blessed indeed Shashi you are and blessed is your work of propagating the message of Ramakrishna-Vivekananda. Your earnest writings will draw many a soul to the path of the Divine Duo and bless their lives with the fruition of spiritual love as well. May Thakur-Ma-Swamiji ever guide your steps as you tread the razor's edge up unto the summit of realization which is the abode of peace, bliss and beatitude! And all this is coupled with an utter self-effacement on your part which renders your work holy and spiritually efficacious. May Thakur-Ma grace you with strength and inspiration to carry on with your wonderful work whose far-flung effect in awakening the dormant spirituality of receptive souls you scarce realize but which surely the Master is getting you to do in His infinite grace that you may be ready to rid yourself of the shackles of Maya in the fullness of time and return to Him who is your source, course and estuary!

MASS MEDIOCRITY, THE BANE OF CULTURE ... 1

Mass literacy is welcome, is a necessity, an absolute blessing, but may it be attended with diffusion of culture as well. The mere spread of diluted education does not conduce to the well-being of the nation as it offers neither a strong information base nor does it train the intellectual faculties well enough to equip them to explore the realms of knowledge in depth. Moreover, knowledge divorced from character-building and refinement of culture serves not the national cause well enough as run-of-the-mill graduates and undergraduates throng the national scene filling it with the fruition of mass mediocrity. This is counter-productive for the development of the nation as it significantly stifles the creativity of the talented minority who suffocate in the inert atmosphere of the proliferating popular culture devoid of substance or merit. The net result is the lowering of academic standards throughout the country, absence of good research and the lowering of the culture of the nation as well. This is hardly the progress we as a free nation seek. Our independence has been hard fought and it will be a travesty of the sacrifice of our martyrs if we cannot arrest this decadent trend in our national life which is eating into the vitals of our culture and rendering it sterile. The advancing tide of gross materialism must be stemmed and the national current must be re-oriented towards its pristine heritage of spirituality and wisdom that is the hallmark of the Indian civilisation.

And how may this be achieved?

To begin with, the curriculum in schools and colleges must include the study of Sanskrit as a mandatory academic discipline. Thus, within a short span of time an entire generation will be well-versed in Sanskrit and be privy to the grand spiritual, intellectual and cultural treasures contained in the vast body of Sanskrit literature. Today, we as a nation are not even well-aware of the vast resources of thought embedded, nay, enshrined in our sacred books merely because of our ignorance of Sanskrit, the language of our illustrious ancestors. Sanskrit literature is a mine of intellectual and spiritual thinking, the vast reservoir of noble ideas and ideals which once nourished the nation and has the potential of re-vitalising her. The Upanishads comprise the sublimest spiritual literature wherein lie the seeds of civilisation and knowledge of the Supreme Self, inspiration divine that can recharge the depleted resources of our vast population and set them up on the royal avenue of quickened national evolution. The study of Sanskrit will re-connect Indians to their glorious spiritual and material past and make them conscious and proud of their heritage. Only then may patriotism be fruitful in the reshaping of India’s destiny and may go beyond frothy emotionalism amounting to nothing. Sanskrit is the lifeline of India as it holds in its ambit the highest aspirations of humanity, the subtlest discoveries of the spiritual laws governing the universe and the blueprint of our national evolution as envisaged and activated by our rishis (seers of Truth) of yore. Only if its study be made mandatory and its research encouraged by the State may we as a nation hope to regain our lost bearings and begin afresh our ascent along the line of our innate national development.

End of Part 1...to be continued.   

MUST GREED BE YOUR GOD, O MAN?

Character is a quality in absence today among businessmen in the bulk and I include here all those who are making money at the cost of the disadvantaged position of the consumer or the client or the patient or the student to fill up their own coffers without caring even once to ponder the hapless condition of these thereby. Doctors charge inordinately high fees for treatment and for operations. Lawyers reduce clients to penury when litigation lingers long. Public schools, colleges and universities charge tuition fees post-admission and capitation fees for admission quite beyond the paying capacity of ordinary people though they may deserve to study there by dint of merit. And what to speak of businessmen enmasse? They have lost their morality and are mere slaves to the third vice of the human system, greed. Capitalism for all its pretensions is fuelled by greed and charity of the rich is the biggest eye-wash of all for, oftener than not, one is charitable only when one has earlier siphoned money out of the economic system by foul play of prohibitive profit-making in the name of law-abiding business and about that, too, there are significant causes for worry, for who does not know that tycoons hoard wealth by not merely ‘fair’ means permitted by law?

Law. Whose law? The law of the land? The people’s law? The law that looks after the well-being of all? Or the law that caters to the accumulation of wealth for a few at the expense of the life-blood of the many? The Father of the Nation had rebelled against the inequities of British Indian law and had staged the Civil Disobedience Movement. The British have gone. We are a free nation. Then why are these extreme inequities of wealth being allowed to proliferate in the name of national development? After all, whose development are we talking of? The masses? Their condition is growing worse by the day as prices of commodities soar and they must perforce be purchased still for sheer survival necessity. Add to it the constant brainwashing done by advertisement of all sorts to induce desire into the human system for acquisition of commodities not necessarily a necessity for living but an imperative after the signal sent into the nervous system grips the desirous mind of the hapless potential consumer. This rapacious capitalism is ruining the character of humankind across the globe and reducing man to an economic animal. It has greed, I reiterate, as its fuelling force and basis, and, gluttonous acquisition of unlawful and ‘lawful’ wealth as its goal. This worship of Mammon cannot but spell the doom for human civilisation at no distant a date and, therefore, it is time to retrace our steps and return to the path of righteous living founded on the principles of ethics and morality, of spirituality and virtue. Only then may we call ourselves ‘human beings’ when our lives are governed principally by humanistic impulses. Till then we are no better than savages that feast on each other impelled by cannibalistic impulses. Watch out, O you mercenaries among men, you insensitive souls who have strayed from the path of God and righteousness. Return to God. Return to Man.      

THE SIREN SOUNDS, SHUT DOWN SHUTTERS

When the real history of man will be chronicled, it shall be written in letters of blood how the sufferings of countless souls down the ages had sustained civilization that a few enjoyed and a fewer still so often destroyed, how the aspirations of millions were crushed to the dust as the chariot wheels of conquerors enslaved their subject masses reducing them to mere beasts of burden and the saga continues to this day as the hopes of humanity enmasse lie in the clutches of a handful of gluttonous capitalists heaping horrendous misery on the defenceless destitute they call their brother man. Natural disaster is one and one may come to terms with it physically and psychologically but when disaster is the pernicious product of prohibitive profit-making, it is ruinous at all ends and demands a complete overhauling of the exploitative machinery that has lasted in human society for ages, to be finally replaced by a more equitable system where all get a fair share of the resources of the Earth to be equipped to lead decent lives with dignity and distinction. Human life is so precious and such a monumental waste of human resources on account of man-inflicted poverty is a barbarous crime against God and Man and must be stopped by all means in the name of all that is just and good in the mind of man. The masses suffer daily deaths dealt them by the diabolic designs of these mercenaries among men, the silent scientific life-crushers that masquerade as merciful merchants but are mere marauders masking motives for gain. This age-old tyranny of the rich and the powerful must be put an end to and the masses must be saved from their octopus-hold. Else a violent revolution will set in a train of cataclysmic changes once the critical mass of hunger and hopelessness has been reached which will perforce make its way to set into motion a new order of human existence, the rule of the proletariat. This is the philosophy of hunger, the politics of sheer survival necessity, the religion of revolution. Lest such a day soon comes to pass, capitalists beware! Your extortion in all measure is measuring out the future guillotine hanging above your vicious head so drunk heavy with the wine of your ill-begotten wealth. Take care while there is time to spare for the wrath of the masses waits for aeons to mature but not a moment more when the heat is on. Beware businessmen, beware! Take no more away from the people or the tide turns soon, watch out. Hark! Hear the footsteps of the masses marching down the marts. Now whose profit who will earn friend? All will be gone, all, all! Before such an hour befalls you all, give up greed and share, care friend, care.   

SPARE A THOUGHT, O NOBLE ONE

When we suffer the miseries of life, we pray to Sri Ramakrishna and Sri Ma Sarada Devi for succour. There are so many monks and nuns of the Order of Sri Ramakrishna and Sri Sarada Devi who are right now ailing and are in severe physical distress. May we not pray for their recovery as well? Remember they have left their home and hearth for the welfare of the world at Swami Vivekananda’s bidding, at Sri Ramakrishna’s call from the roof-top of the Kuthi Bari at the Dakshineswar Kali Temple Complex. They have left behind the comfort of domestic life to embrace the rigours of the life of the renunciate. Must we forsake them who have given up their all for us? May we not spare a few moments a day in contemplating the good of those who are ever contemplating our good? May we not integrate our vibrations with the holy vibrations of these chosen children of the Lord that the Mission of Ramakrishna may be nourished better for the betterment of the world? Send brothers a prayer a day to the Master, a fervent appeal to Mother that they may look after our monastic sisters and brothers and keep them from hunger, sickness and bondage of any sort that may beset their spiritual lives. For sure the Master and Mother are looking after them but our prayers will only ennoble us and integrate us with the Cause of the Master, spiritually nourish us and who knows, may help the nuns and the monks in their distress as well for did not the Swami Vivekananda exhort us to send holy mental vibrations in all directions and did he not speak of the potency of such thoughts to awaken the latent spirituality in receptive souls even at a far-off distance? Let us then turn on a new leaf in our lives and start living in unison with the renunciates of the Order that the movement of Ramakrishna-Vivekananda may be bolstered by our effective participation and a fresher current of spiritual love may deepen our fraternal bonds to give the movement added strength and purpose and our lives a fulfilment transcending the terrestrial terrain. May Mother give vision to all who care for her children! May the Master live radiant in the hearts of all who love the lonesome and the lost in life’s solitary sojourn! Jai Ramakrishna! Jai Ma!