Dilemma ... 1

Dilemma of a Traditional Pundit

(Implications to the society)

Reproduced the first part of conversation between a revered seer and a great traditional scholar.

This is a dialogue between a learned Pundit and His Holiness Sri
Chandrashekhara Bharati Swami, the late Shankaracharya of Sringeri Sharada
Peetha, on the topic of Education. Only the first part of the conversation,
titled ‘The Wrong Attitude’, has been reproduced here. I thought it might
be of interest in the context of what we have been discussing lately: the
preservation of Vedic Culture.
 

 THE WRONG ATTITUDE

  One evening a learned Pandit came to pay his respects to His Holiness.
After some formal enquiries about his welfare, His Holiness asked him:
 
 S: What is your elder son studying now?
  
P: He will be appearing for School Final Examinations at the end of the
year.
 
S: And after that?
 
 P: I have not yet decided. The authorities within recent years have
increased the cost of education enormously and I find it very difficult to
meet it out of my scanty earnings. I do not know how I can manage if he has
to get higher education. The boy however is very intelligent and promising
and his teachers assure me that he is bound to shine in life.
 
S: I suppose by ‘shining in life’ you mean becoming rich.
 
 P: Not only that, I include also a status commanding respect and influence.
 
S: Anyhow you mean only worldly prosperity?
 
P: Of course. The education that is being imparted in the English schools
is purely secular and I cannot expect any spiritual benefit from it.
 
S: I suppose, then, you have made other arrangements for training him in
your own system of Dharma?
 
 P: Where is the time for it? The morning and the early night are spent by
him in preparing his class lessons and in the evening he must have some
recreation, the rest of the day he has to attend his school.
 
S: That means, he has no time in which he can learn and practise some of
our Dharmas.
 
P: Practically none. But, I am glad that unlike other boys, he is
continuing to perform his daily sandhya worship, though somewhat
perfunctorily.
  
S: I am equally glad about it. But, don’t you think that you are seriously
neglecting his spiritual education?
 
P: I fear I am, but how can I help it in the present conditions of the
country?
 
S: I take it that from your infancy you have been trained in the orthodox
method and have been taught the Vedas and other sacred literature.
 
P: Yes.
  
S: Do you really believe that such training and teaching have been
beneficial to you?
 
P: Certainly.
 
 S: Are you then justified in denying to your son the kind of training and
teaching which you really believe to be beneficial?
 
P: I know I am not. But what can I do? It is impossible to get on in this
world now without the modern education.
 
S: I hope you are getting on well enough without that education?
 
P: Only so so.
 
S: How is that? You are certainly above want. You are held in high respect
by everybody who comes into contact with you. What is there to complain in
your case?
 
P: Not much, but we are characterized as ‘old’ Pandits and wherever we go
we are looked down upon by the laukika gentlemen (officers, pleaders and
the like) for want of modern education which they have received.
 
S: Why don’t you reciprocate by calling them ‘modern’ and looking down upon
them for want of the orthodox education which you have got?
 
P: How can we do that?
 
S: If you really believe that the training that you have undergone is
superior to theirs, that alone must be your proper attitude. There is no
reason at all, in any case, why you allow them to look down upon you.
 
P: It is not a case of allowing them or not. It is a fact that they do look
down upon us.
  
S: If so, it must equally follow that you must look down upon them, whether
they allow it or not. Do you really ever maintain that attitude?
 
P: I can’t say we do.
 
S: So far as I have been able to understand the trend of modern society,
the Pandits not only passively allow themselves to be looked down upon by
the modern gentlemen, but positively even look up to them.
 
P: I fear that is a correct reading of the attitude of most of us.
 
S: Further when you see a modern gentleman pass by you in a luxurious car
while you are trudging along the road with a bundle of books or clothes
under your arm, have you not felt very often envious of him?
 
P: I must confess I have sometimes felt so.
 
S: Though you may not have framed it in so many words, you must have
regretted that you were not given the benefit of modern education in your
boyhood.
 
P: Sometimes I have that regret.
 
S: That regret must have unconsciously coupled with another regret that
your boyhood has been wasted in the pursuit of the worthless Vedic lore?
 
P: I do not think my regret took that form, but I have felt that my
education could have been on more modern lines.
  
S: By ‘more modern lines’, you mean more useful lines.
 
P: Yes.
 
S: That is, you felt that the Vedic training was useless or at least less
useful than English education?
 
P: I can’t say that I felt so, positively.
 
S: I quite see that; that is why I stated that you unconsciously felt it.
In doing so, you must have impliedly thought ill of your parents for giving
you this worthless education.
 
P: Impliedly, as Your Holiness puts it.
 
S: Thus whenever you see a modern gentleman, you are sorry that you have
not had his education, you are sorry that you had your education and you
mentally think ill of your parents for denying you the former and giving
you the latter and incidentally perhaps think ill of your teachers also?
 
P: It is not always so, but at some moments my mind does admit of such an
analysis.
 
S: If, in spite of the invaluable training you have got, you are sometimes
led to look up to the loukikas, is it any fault of theirs that they accept
your attitude at your own valuation and look down upon you? If you, who
know what Vedic culture is, can lower yourself so much as to think ill of
your parents, is it any wonder that those who do not know what that culture
is do not appreciate it in you? Don’t you think also, believing as you do
in our Shastras, that the unmerited abuse of the Vedas and your parents and
teachers is a sin bound to land you in more sorrow? Why can’t you pity the
laukika for the waste of his boyhood in the pursuit of purely secular
education? Why can’t you abuse his parents for spoiling his spiritual
interests by giving him a training divorced from Vedic culture? Why don’t
you make him feel that you really pity him? And, why don’t you, by your
conduct, make him look up to you?

... continued

If society does not think of this aspect, we will have very few scholars to cater to the needs of a billion plus population. In that dreaded scenario, MNCs or some foreign will jump into the arena to corporatise our Dharmik needs. West is already seeing the trends.

Time for serious thought.

Patronage to Traditional Education is not doling money to practitioners, but to put children to learn it.