Unparalleled legacy of an educationist

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Unparalleled legacy of an educationist

Tuesday, 25 December 2018 | Abhishek Pratap Singh

At a time when the Education sector is faced with serious challenges, Malaviya's vision finds relevance and a reason to contemplate

As we celebrate the birth anniversary of Mahamana Madan Mohan Malaviya today — a freedom fighter and a great son of mother India who was born on this day in 1861 — we must also remember about his phenomenal contribution and his vision for higher education of this country. Besides being a great educationist, Malaviya was a social reformer, who founded the BHU.

While the formation of the BHU holds the foremost expression of his vision par excellence, his ideas on education remain highly relevant in the present scenario. The higher education system as it exists today is marred by administrative corruption, nepotism and promotion of vested interests, failing institutional integrity and quality research, managing cost and crumbling infrastructure, poor student-faculty ratio and apathy for talent.  All of these have come at the cost of undermining nation-building efforts and the failure to respond and take along the palpable amount of youth energy, driven by a sense of confidence and aspiration. 

To put it on factual terms, a former Indian Ambassador to the US told this writer: “Almost close to six billion dollar is the amount spent by Indians only on tuition fees at universities in the US”, emphasising on the importance of higher education among the present generation. Faced with new challenges of ‘fiscal prudence’, the country’s higher education sector reflects a sense of disillusionment. Contrarily, Malaviya dreamt of establishing an ‘ideal scheme’ for the higher education that would act as a ‘foundational block’ for the creation of an inclusive, accessible, equitable and diverse knowledge society. For him, all of this was above parochial interests.

Malaviya conceived a unique model of education based on the values of integration, harmony and peace, deriving from our rich cultural heritage and combining the same with science, reason and an inquisitive mind, much like the way he shaped and formed the BHU. This is very well expressed in the motto of this pioneering institution, which suggests: “The end of all knowledge is the attainment of immortality.” For Malaviya, the essence of our education system must be “openness and acceptance” of noble thoughts from all directions, and also sending out its own message to the outer world.

Knowledge remains the biggest source for balance of power in contemporary times. In the past, India has always been recognised as an epitome of ‘civilisational wisdom’, but at a time when the system is faced with serious challenges, Malaviya’s vision for education finds much relevance and contemplation today for both our leadership and educationists. The same was echoed at the 2009 World Conference on Higher Education which noted that, “Higher education must pursue the goals of equity, relevance and quality simultaneously.”

Malaviya emphasised that as the system fails to insulate itself from the challenges of marketisation and globalisation, collective efforts must be put to protect our indigenous knowledge, tradition, culture and values. In search of the new, we must not fall prey to complete Westernisation. Rather, we must build a system combining traditional wisdom with modern innovative thinking and scientific rationality with spiritualism. He believed that India’s spiritual traditions, given its liberal and non-conformist beliefs, will always attract philosophers, scholars and educationist. As the urban-based middle class look for inner peace, it has made deep inroads into the newly affluent society. Rabindranath Tagore noted: “Is not the East the mother of spiritual humanity and does not the West quite often turn their faces to that serene mother, the East?”

Being a great votary of protecting vernacular languages and accessible public education, Malaviya always warned against the modern education system becoming subservient to the forces of market and privatisation. As our current system of education is faced with financial crunch, Malaviya laid emphasis on higher public spending on education. Interestingly, while China spends almost four per cent of its GDP on education, India remains much below at 2.7 per cent of its GDP, as per latest financial estimates.

For Malaviya, good education and critical learning were the noble ways towards self-realisation ie salvation or moksha, which is considered as the supreme duty for Hindus. He believed that religion and education were interdependent and existed in harmony with each other. The relation between both, he argued, was going through a new change. In pursuit of serving the humanity, it shall be build on the foundations of social charity, higher morality and greater public good.

While addressing the second session of the Congress in Kolkata in 1886, Malaviya emphasised that to revitalise our motherland, we need to impart our young minds with education founded on Indian ideals, which must be combined with the richness of science and learning from the West. 

Malaviya believed that the demands of modern industry would make it essential for India to introduce an extensive system of technical and industrial education. The centrality of skill-based technical education was at the core of his education scheme. His educational policy was envisioned on multi-disciplinary research-based academic model. For him, modern universities were like ‘power houses’, taking the young minds away from misery, ignorance and darkness to new levels of development and empowerment.

Malaviya very well understood the problem of unemployment and its relation with quality of education. Hence, his vision outlined the role for developing the mind even with average intelligence, based on imparting new skills, technological tools and vocational training. For him, the framework of modern higher education should always address and respond, keeping in mind societal trends, nature of economy and demographic composition.

In the present age, driven by consumerism and capitalism, Malaviya’s vision of education, establishing it as the most honoured value against wealth, must form the guiding force to formulate and execute educational policies. Nations that fail to learn from the vision of its great leaders are most likely to remain in non-viable fantasy for long in the future. By carrying forward Malaviya’s vision and mission, we can surely pay tribute to him.

(The writer holds PhD from East Asian Studies, JNU and teaches at the University of Delhi)

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