Friends, I am very happy to be here this afternoon, see the work of this Institute of Technology and see also the first batch of students from this institute go out.
I was present on similar occasions at Kharagpur and Bombay. It gives me special pleasure to be here and watch the growth of this institute. I am also pleased that this work is due to the collaboration of the Indian and German Governments. President Luebke, President of the German Republic, sent us a gracious letter today; he was recently re-elected President of his Republic, and we are all extremely pleased that his Government and his country and this institute will all have the benefit of his guidance and leadership for another five years. By that time I hope this institute will establish itself so as to make for an enduring friendship between the two nations, the German and the Indian.
Both the Vice-Chancellor of this institute and His Excellency the German Ambassador referred to the beginnings of this institute in a visit which our late Prime Minister paid to Germany in 1956. Our country has been passing through a series of very rapid changes in recent times. We ha ‘e had religious reform initiated in our times by Ram Mohan Roy, Ramakrishna, Vivekananda, Tagore, etc. We have had social reform movements started also by the same agencies. Gandhi gave us the political revolution. He asked us to shed off the shame of subjection, become independent and stand erect on our feet and not always walk on our knees.
In 1947 when we attained independence, Jawaharlal Nehru thought it was time for starting an industrial revolution. Poverty is the greatest problem facing the country and the only way in which we can tackle the problem is by increasing production—agricultural and industrial— and the way to do it is by the application of science and technology. If today in different parts of this country we see dotted institutes like this—laboratories, dams, atomic reactors, irrigation systems, etc., all these things are due, to no small extent, to the urge which Jawaharlal Nehru gave to our country.
In recent times, therefore, we have had a spiritual revolution, a social revolution, a political revolution, and an industrial revolution. It is the industrial revolution through which we are passing. Now this has the benefit of the co-operation of the German Government. This country, during its great days, was never isolated. It was a part of the stream of world history. If you turn to the ‘ ancient systems of mathematics or medicine, etc., you will find there the great influence of the Greek, the Roman, the West Asian and other systems. If you turn to the European world you will find that the great advances of science were due to the co-operation of people like Newton, an Englishman, Kepler, a German, Copernicus, a Pole, Galileo, an Italian. All of them collaborated and brought about a scientific revolution of the modem world. So also we were collaborating with the other nations in our great days. When we fell under subjection, when we were cut off from the other sources, when we became isolated, our lives became constricted and we were not able to carry the torch that we used to.
After political independence was gained, we again came back into the mainstream of history. Our scientists go to different parts of the world and make some small contributions to the advance of the world. They are known today to all parts of the world where science is pursued and, therefore, it is a matter of not much unimportance, a matter of great significance, that we have come back; and this institute, where you have the collaboration between Germany and India, is an illustration of the ancient truth that all countries contribute to the furtherance of knowledge and we must gain knowledge wherever it is found. That was the gospel that we adopted and which we practised for a number of years. We forgot it, we were cut off from it, and we have come back to it, and, therefore, we must try to regain our lost initiative.
It is necessary that if we want to attack the problems which our country faces—poverty, malnutrition, disease, defective water supply, people dying like flies in some parts of the country—these are all things which must make us feel ashamed of ourselves—it is necessary for us to care for the poor. Attention to the poor is the supreme test by which any government is judged. If we are to be judged to be a civilized society, our first interest must be what we are doing for the thousands of people who are suffering from undreamt of evils— who are the victims, so to say, of all sorts of epidemics and who die like flies on the pavements of our country or in rural areas. If we want to tackle these problems, it is essential for us to develop science and technology. We must develop these things, we must adopt a scientific outlook. Every one of us must be endowed with a scientific spirit; obscurantism, superstition and such other things which have weighed us down for centuries must be removed and human beings must feel that they are rational human beings with dignity, with a sense of responsibility, responsibility not merely for what they do but for the poor who are entrusted to their care.
Again and again remarks were made, a special lecture was delivered at Cambridge, saying that a scientific culture and an academic or literary culture are two different things and one has little to do with the other.
We produce either seers or technicians; we produce men of intuition, of imagination, or we produce men with mechanical skill, with practical ability, but we do not produce men who are at the same time seers and technicians, people who are able to develop their imagination and at the same time develop their scientific skill. This whole concept of our cultures being divided, of their being two, is something which is, to my mind, unfounded. Truth is indivisible. Whether it is historic truth, literary truth, or scientific truth, the approaches may be different, but ultimately what we do is exactly the same. It is the imagination that is roused in us by the study of literature, it is imagination again that makes the scientist go forward; his hypothesis makes him remould the environment by which he is presented and makes him bring out the deepest secrets of nature. It is the spirit in man that sits in judgment on the facts of nature, which enables the human being to reshape the environment. We should reshape not merely our outer environment but our inner environment also, our inward forces, the internal power we have, even that has to be remoulded.
I listened with great interest to the pledge which your graduates have taken that ‘I will not use my knowledge to unworthy ends’. It is easy to say that. We have all said that in convocation ceremonies. But we generally forget these things when we enter into life. Not only do we forget these things, but our leaders also forget these things. The great leaders of countries, the great statesmen, have developed astounding power over nature; they have developed spectacular capacity to destroy humanity as well as to save humanity. If we are threatened today by the forces which we have raised, it is not due to forces outside, but lack of control which we have, so to say. It is not weapons that destroy us but it is lack of wisdom. It is the human being who destroys the rest of humanity. If we are to reform ourselves, then science will be the great instrument for the. development of the human race, for improving the quality of the human race. That is what we should aim at. It, therefore, gave me great pleasure to know that in your institution you are using not merely technological studies but mathematics, humanities, etc. These are subjects that indirectly bear on the refinement of the human soul. Whereas others bear directly, these things remould your nature. All the technical disciplines which you produce, they are there for the purpose of refining the human spirit. Atma samskrti, development of human nature, refinement of the human spirit— that is the one supreme aim which we have to put before ourselves.
Most of us think that we are scientists because we press a button, the light comes up; we press another button, the telephone rings; we press a third button, we get the motor-car outside. But we do not know how these things function. What is the knowledge which is enshrined in these instruments? We know only how to press a button and get something done. That is, we live on the surface of human life—robots, mechanics, technicians. We do not know what the depths of these things indicate and stand for. If we know that, we will never say that science is a different discipline and not human discipline, and the other things, literature, history, etc., make a different kind of man. It is not so.
We must study science not from the surface but from its very depth. We must try to understand how all these things happen, how the human being has been able to penetrate into these things and how it has brought about a new transformed world. It is not necessary for us to be technologically or mechanically uniform. That does not follow. If we have the human spirit cultivated, we will not become mere mechanical robots. The very transformation that science has brought about will make you raise the question of the meaning of existence. That is part of the quest for knowledge. You want to know why knowledge is what it is, what is the knowledge which science contributes, what is the relation to the knowledge which other branches of discipline give us?
All the branches of discipline have only one end—sarvasdstra prayojanam atma darsanam. An insight into Reality is the end of all kinds of discipline. It is my earnest hope that you will not fall victims to this tendency to view science and humanities as two diversified disciplines and that those who follow them become followers of two different courses. You must recognize that knowledge cannot be divided against itself. All truth must be regarded as one whole. Whether you practise this discipline or the other discipline, you should practise the one supreme pursuit of truth. It is that which makes a human being dignified and civilized. If you are able to do it, then you become a really civilized human being.
It is my earnest hope that this first set of graduates who go out from this Institute of Technology will set an example to others who follow them, an example which they can all imitate, an example of never using their knowledge to unworthy ends, of using their knowledge for the betterment of humanity, for the education of the human race, and for making this world a true human fellowship.
This is part of ThePrint’s Great Speeches series. It features speeches and debates that shaped modern India.