I thank the authorities of the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan and particularly its president, Dr KM Munshi, for giving me this opportunity to associate myself with the tri-decennial celebrations of the Bhavan. I deem it both an honour and a privilege to do so. The fragrant memories of this unique function will ever remain with me. In particular, I feel that I have been greatly honoured by being called upon to confer the title of “Brahmavidya Bhaskara” on the great son of India, Dr S Radhakrishnan, and to present him a Tamra Patra in token of the award. I shall ever remain grateful for your kindness in giving me this privilege.
Looking back on the last thirty years, I find that the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan has made a tremendous progress to which there can be only a few parallels, if any, in the annals of contemporary institutions. I do not think that even that incorrigible optimist and dreamer, my friend, Dr KM Munshi himself, could have realised its present grandeur when, in 1938, he laid the foundation of this institution with the support and co-operation of a few friends among whom I must mention Dr. Rajendra Prasad, Sir Chimanlal Setalvad and Sir Harsiddhbhai Divatia.
In 1938, the Bhavan had 12 students. Now that number is about 11,000, excluding more than 60,000 students who annually appear for its Sanskrit and Gita examinations at about 600 centres spread over all parts of the country. It began with a staff of 11, whose monthly salary was about Rs 9,000. Today, it has more than 1,600 members on its staff with a salary which exceeds Rs 38 lakh. In the beginning, its annual budget was of Rs 13,000 and its assets, a modest Rs. 50,000. Today, it has an annual budget which exceeds Rs 150 lakh and total assets of more than Rs 200 lakh. It has been able to establish 8 Kendras in different parts of the country and 26 constituent units.
It has developed a large publication programme of high quality and has brought out more than 500 titles which have been sold in more than three million copies. These include several outstanding works among which I might mention the eleven-volume History of India of which as many as eight have already been published. What is even more important, it has not remained merely an institution or group of institutions. On the other hand, it has become a veritable movement which has got its hold upon the intelligentsia of this country: a movement for rejuvenation of our national life through a deeper and more critical study of our ancient heritage.
I feel it my duty, therefore, to pay a tribute to all patrons, friends and workers of the Bhavan whose support, industry, zeal and dedication have made the Bhavan what it is today. I think it is the duty of us all, in this context, to convey our gratitude to the one person who has been the moving spirit behind all this vision and development. I mean, our young President Dr KM Munshi. I deliberately call him young because, in my opinion, youth is an attribute of the mind and not of the body. Byron was disillusioned and old at 36, while Browning was exuberantly optimistic and young at 76. Dr. K. M. Munshi, Founder-President of the Bhavan, has been more responsible than any other single individual for this tremendous development that we now see before us. Of course, when I say this, I also include Dr Munshi, his Shakti or presiding spirit, Smt. Leelavati Munshi. No words can be adequate to describe our gratitude or to convey our thanks to this great couple who have struggled together over the years to conceive, to create and to develop this great vision of an institution dedicated to promote a cultural renaissance within the country. I wish them both good health and long life to serve the cause of the Bhavan and the cause of the country for years and years to come.
In this busy age of modern technology, in which time-saving devices have destroyed all leisure, long speeches have hardly any relevance and I do not propose to inflict one on you. However, I would be failing in my duty if I were not to refer to one great aspect of the Bhavan’s work, to which I attach great significance, namely, its emphasis on holding fast to the fundamental and eternal values enshrined in ancient Indian culture, in the midst of a world falling to pieces under the impact of an abnormal technological avalanche.
In the early years of human civilisation, great thinkers and philosophers tried their best to focus our attention on the fundamental issues of life. They tried to see life steadily and to see it whole because, as Socrates said, an unexamined life is not worth living. They also urged that the goal of all human endeavour was self-knowledge or realisation of God, which are the two sides, as it were, of the same coin.
It must be remembered that this insistence on the cultivation of the religious spirit, although oriented overwhelmingly towards the individual, was also the fountainhead of all social life, of the aspiration of man to serve his fellow-men, to establish equality and justice, and to abolish ignorance, pain and sorrow. It is true that man was not then able to conquer poverty or to add largely to his material well-being because modern science had not yet been born. But he could often reach spiritual heights and internal peace which have rarely been attained in subsequent centuries.
When modern science began about 300 years ago and began to develop at tremendous speed, adding substantially to man’s material welfare and flattering inordinately to his endless lust for power, this pursuit of the spiritual was temporarily put aside. I deliberately say ‘temporarily put aside’ and not abandoned, because the roots of this spiritual quest lie deep in human nature itself and can never be thrown out. But momentarily, at any rate, the glamorous achievements of technological societies made us forget the less ostentatious appeal of the spiritual; and for a time, we even questioned the need of revelation or spiritual fulfilment. We were quite happy to lose ourselves in fantastic statistics of students, libraries, educational institutions and universities. We thought that mere information was enough for human needs, to say nothing of knowledge and not at all of wisdom. We felt that science and technology was the be-all and end-all of human endeavour and that, for a time at least, little things like the existence of a soul or the meaning of life could be safely ignored.
To his great cost, man now finds that his pursuit of mere material welfare through science and technology has not been an unmixed blessing. The happiness which he once thought was within his grasp has eluded him and modern technological societies find themselves under a great strain. In the stock-piling of nuclear weapons, peace and even the future of man seems to hang on a slender thread; and prosperity seems nowhere to compensate for the lack of peace within.
There can be only one solution to this problem which cannot be resolved so long as we continue to emphasise either science or religion. We must reconcile them both and pursue them together, so that man’s conquest over the external world is matched by his conquest over himself. It is only then that man will be able to meet God, to discover himself, to give free scope to his creative impulses, and to find peace and happiness both within and without.
It is here that the Bhavan makes what, according to me, is its most significant contribution. It insists on the re-integration of science and religion which is the essence of the Bharatiya Vidya it advocates. It also insists that Bharatiya Vidya can be appreciated and promoted through Bharatiya Shiksha or a system of education where the cultivation of science and technology is blended with the cultivation of social, moral and spiritual values and the development of a sense of social responsibility. To the extent that education fails to bring about this synthesis between science and religion, education ceases to be education proper and fails to serve man. The Bhavan, therefore, has nothing but horror for a godless education which has created a man shaking with fathomless fear and consumed by uneradicated hatred and faces it, as the poet did, with this tremendous challenge:
“This monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched.
How will you ever straighten up this shape?
Touch it again with immortality.
Give back the upward look and the light.
Rebuild in it the music and the dream.”
It is the faith of the Bhavan that education can meet this challenge successfully and help man to discover himself by combining scientific and technical training with the great cultural values of our tradition, captured and interpreted afresh by each generation for itself, to meet effectively the challenges of a changing world. It is this faith of the Bhavan that attracts me most and I humbly hope and pray that it may soon move this mountain of Indian education which, like a volcano, is now grumbling and groaning under a multitude of ills.
This is part of ThePrint’s Great Speeches series. It features speeches and debates that shaped modern India.