Tagore's Philosophy: Liberation In Light And Love

M N Kundu





Rabindranath Tagore's all-time relevant religion of self-expanding love sourced from the innermost core of our being in realisation of cosmic inter-relatedness ­ not through intellectual knowing but in our being ­ is relevant even today . The poet said, “Everyone has something special called `my religion'... which is his religion?
The one that lies hidden in his heart and keeps on creating him.“ Religion is the deep driving creative impulse in man that constantly keeps him engrossed in discovery of life in the context of creation, cosmos, time and eternity.The subject is quite complex as the poet was born in a Brahmo family propagating monotheistic concept of the formless Absolute. But his natural attraction adhered him to the dualistic mystics of the medieval Bhakti-cult, and his boundless poetic temperament was incompatible with any belief system imposed from the outside. Hence, like his songs, his religion flowered from within and through his intimate engagement with nature, love, humanity and aspiration for something beyond the sphere of imprisoned finitudes.
The process involved can be appropriately termed as discovery of life.Seized by a sense of utmost limitation of our psychophysical existence the poet periodically experienced expansion of consciousness. In childhood he read, “Jal pare pata nare.“ (It rains, leaves tremble).Immediately he glimpsed the interconnectedness of the universe and the inherent rhythm in creation. Later on he felt he was one with people moving in the street, the sun shine and vibrant life all around which was expressed through his Awakening of the Waterfall'.` When we say the Supreme is in the inner realm of the spirit or He is manifested in creation we do not fully realise the truth. Truth is in unity and therefore freedom is in its realisation inside, expressed outside, in the mystery of the unknown and unknowable creation and Creator. Poetic appreciation of this enigma enables us to glimpse and engage with that. Scientific knowledge about a lotus can take us nowhere near the feeling, “I have tasted of the hidden honey of this lotus that expands on the ocean of light, and thus am I blessed.“
Lack of freedom is in the sense of alienation. Liberation lies in realisation of unity with the cosmos with our body , mind and life force as products of endless assimilation and aspiration or evolution. Hu man tragedy lies in missing the truth that leads us to compromise values. Ascent is easily possible through an inward process of losing ourselves in self-effacing love and realisation of One manifested as many . Human bondage has stronghold within and not in the outside world. So he sings, “Deliverance is not for me in renunciation. I feel the embrace of freedom in thousand bonds of delight... all my illusions will turn into illumination of joy , and all my desires will ripen into fruits of love“ ­ not in dimming consciousness but in total being.
Human superiority lies not in transient possessions but in the power of union with the rest of creation.Intense suffering of mundane life enables us to transform our pain into joyful sublimation with the light of consciousness that exists in unbroken continuity with the cosmos. To be in eternal peace we have to surrender our individual existence to its cosmic counterpart, “Let all my life take its voyage to its eternal home in one salutation to thee.“
Tagore's poetic religion of light and love is based on realisation of creative unity and beauty expressed as truth amid universal mystery deciphered through his discovery of life. (May 8 is Tagore's birth anniversary).

5 reasons why any Indian university has failed to make it to Times' top 100 list

Data collection, research collaboration could help Indian varsities register higher brand recall globally

 

Indian universities, led by the likes of Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and Indian Institute of Science (IISc), have been featuring in the overall top 100 list of some of the major rankings such as Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) and Times Higher Education (THE) – at times even in the top 20.These rankings are usually based on their overall functioning in the areas of teaching and research, apart from other parameters.

However, when it comes to global reputation, Indian universities continue to fail to make it to the top 100 list. Since its launch in 2011, not a single Indian university has ever made it to the THE top 100 world reputation rankings, including the recent ranking released by THE for the year 2016. The world reputation rankings are based on universities are globally perceived by peers, faculty, students and other stakeholders.

 

We look at five key reasons why Indian universities find it hard to build a global repute.

1) Non-conducive parameters

 

The parameters that measure global repute are not helping Indian universities. The parameters talk about global diversity, international faculty, international students, research intensity and number of professors that are engaged in research, among others. Many Indian universities, designed to meetUGC and AICTE guidelines, are not used to adhering to such parameters. 

 

2) Social Inclusiveness

 

According to Narayanan Ramaswamy, partner and head - Educational Skill Development Sector Advisory at KPMG in India, by design, Indian universities are supposed to be socially inclusive.“Our students are all not always the best of the best. We include the marginalised sections of the society for the overall betterment of the country. Some of the foreign universities with global repute don’t have such compulsion,” says Ramaswamy. 

 

Seconding Ramaswamy is U B Desai, director of IIT Hyderabad, who says that a lot of things that IITs do are not reflected in the global reputation rankings. “We do things for nation building. We do projects for defence or strategic initiatives which don’t get reflected in these rankings. This was in fact a motivation for building our own rankings,” says Desai.

 

3) Data Collection

 

Indian universities and ranking agencies alike have rued over the lack of willingness or initiative among some of the universities in collection and sharing of data that could fit the parameters set by the ranking agencies. One of the things that a committee of IIT directors was working to improve global reputation was on this front. “Data has to be properly documented and we are working towards it,” says Desai. 

According to Ramaswamy, it is lack of intention among Indian universities to focus on improving global competitiveness. “Hence, the kind of information that they share or the forthcomingness with which they collect the data is lacking. Some of the ways they interact with stakeholders are not tuned to being globally competitive in terms of building reputation,” he adds.

 

4) Collaborations

 

An area where management institutes have had a relatively higher success is international collaborations. While some of the Indian universities have had collaborations for teaching and research, more efforts are still wanting. According to a director of one of the older IITs, the faculty should also be looking for international collaborations to enhance brand recall of IITs among foreign peers.

 

5) Publicising Research and Teaching

 

Director of another IIT admitted that institutes like the IITs and IISc need to work on building their international presence by publicising their research and courses abroad. Barring a few, not many IITs have been focusing on publishing their research work in the right kind of publications internationally.To this, Ramaswamy adds that the Indian universities could make small changes in terms of asking their faculty to participate in global research projects and get international faculty and students onboard.

 

Source | http://www.business-standard.com/

Love in the time of development

By Madhusree Mukerjee

6 May 2016

Pankaj Sekhsaria’s new novel about the Andaman islands turns real life into compelling prose.

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  Jarawa youth on a visit to the outside world, 1998.
  Photo courtesy: Madhusree Mukerjee

  The Last Wave is a love story, or rather, two. One is a fairly conventional tale of growing attraction between a man and a woman, thrown together not only by circumstance – confined as they are on a dungi, a small boat, with their five-person team, exploring a pristine coastline – but also by their shared wonder and concern at all that they see and hear. The other is between a journalist and an archipelago. Pankaj Sekhsaria is in love with the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and it shows – in the occasional but compelling lyricism of his writing, and in the reverence with which his characters circumnavigate the Jarawas’ territory, probing its mysteries without quite violating its boundaries:

  Riding the darkness and the silence, announcing the takeover of the advancing night, rising from somewhere deep in the surrounding dark forests, came the high-pitched, haunting yodel of the Jarawa. It wasn’t loud, but it was clear, with the mysterious quality of a very real dream. The pace was gentle to begin with, the beat unhurried. Then, in measured steps, it began to increase, picking up pace in slow notches, and rising quickly to the high-pitched crescendo of a fast, foot-tapping rhythm… [until] it died abruptly, like the sharp snapping of a delicate thread. In those few moments, the silence re-surfaced clear and crisp, a glowing, starry, spread on a sheet of night-coloured paper.

  Since the 1990s, the author has devoted himself to defending all that is magical about the emerald isles, their coral-studded waters, and the ancient culture that thrives within its glorious and primeval rainforest. The novel is a first for Sekhsaria, who has several other identities – journalist, environmentalist, activist, photographer, and academic.

  While most writers would use the Andamans merely as an exotic setting for a story about humans, for Sekhsaria, the exquisite but fragile archipelago is the true protagonist.

  In each of these personas, however, he has served the islands and its peoples, and his turn as a novelist proves to be no exception. Sekhsaria has written magazine articles about the Andamans; campaigned to protect the Jarawa, the hunter-gatherers who live within the strip of great evergreen rainforest along the western coast of two Andaman islands; published academic articles on the archipelago’s environment, development, and strategic role in India’s defence policies; co-edited a collection of papers on the Jarawa’s encounters with outsiders; and, most recently, exhibited photographs on the archipelago’s natural wonders. He has annoyed many of the islands’ mainstream residents by advocating that the road through the Jarawa territory be closed, because it brings in pernicious influences. And yet, when the December 2004 tsunami washed away thousands, and the administration dithered, it was the Yahoo webgroup –andamanicobar – which Sekhsaria initiated and still administers, that became crucial to disbursing information and coordinating aid efforts. So, while most writers would use the Andamans merely as an exotic setting for a story about humans, for Sekhsaria, the exquisite but fragile archipelago is the true protagonist. Through the eyes and ears of the novel’s characters, we learn about the islands and its intriguing communities.

  Seema is a  27-year-old “local born”, descended from the first Indians who arrived on the islands in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. Her great-great-grandfather, a Muslim, had ended up in the penal colony of Port Blair, established in 1858 by the British, for beheading his sister’s rapist; her great-great-grandmother, a Hindu, was a freedom fighter. In the Andamans, such interfaith unions were common. Seema has recently returned after studies on the mainland in order to research her own people, the local borns. Harish, a mainlander, is searching for the meaning of life after a disastrous marriage by touring the islands with a reporter friend. Uncle Pame, the elderly Karen boatman, is perhaps the most remarkable character in the book: he has witnessed the Jarawa slay his parents, but nonetheless believes they have a right to defend their forests from outsiders.

  For decades, Jarawas killed intruders who entered their territory, and were killed by them in turn. The Last Wave is set in 1998, when the Jarawa started emerging from the forests without arms. In his fictionalised account, based on the real-life events that led to the Jarawa being pacified, Sekhsaria describes an injured Jarawa teenager, who is treated at the hospital in Port Blair. Once he is exposed to goodies such as TV and then returned to the forest, he starts bringing his friends to a local jetty to meet outsiders. The settlers greet the naked visitors from the jungle with a mixture of fear, curiosity, titillation, and condescension, as Harish witnesses on one occasion. A young man in tight jeans brushes against a Jarawa woman’s bare bottom, till she pushes him over; a policeman’s wife dresses a Jarawa mother with bangles and sindur, Hindu markers of marriage, in an attempt to ‘civilise’ the savage; while a radio reporter, thrusting her mike into the face of a Jarawa youth, is horrified at the utterly un-broadcastable Hindi cuss-words that emerge.

  Even as Harish observes the encounter, he becomes aware of an older Jarawa man standing to one side, watching all that is taking place with obvious disapproval, but holding back from intervening directly. “He was like a rubber band pulled and held taut; unpredictable, but ready to act, brimming with potential energy, but extremely vulnerable at the same time. A release now would mean an explosive outburst.” Suddenly the man looks straight back, and his gaze knocks “Harish back with an intensity more raw than a street fighter’s well-directed punch”. The book implies that the man somehow intuits that this strained bonhomie between two alien peoples, this breaching of a formerly sacrosanct boundary, could only portend evil – and that Harish knows this too.

  The Jarawa are one of the few remaining indigenous peoples on the Andamans. Tens of thousands of years ago, some of the first humans on the planet had arrived on the islands, and remained almost entirely isolated until British colonisation. As a result, they had never been exposed to – and never developed immunity to – the contagious diseases that plague our densely populated society. Whereas the islands probably contained 10,000 or so inhabitants to begin with, counting all the tribes, including the Jarawa, the Great Andamanese tribes and the Onge, contact with outsiders led to epidemics that felled the natives with astonishing rapidity.

- See 

Nepal President Bidya Devi Bhandari to lay the foundation stone of South Asian University 

New Delhi: In a significant development, the construction of the South Asian University is finally taking off, having cleared all the necessary hurdles, on 11 May 2016 at the SAU Permanent Campus site in Maidan Garhi, New Delhi.

Her Excellency Mrs. Bidya Devi Bhandari, President of Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal to lay the foundation stone in the Presence of Mrs. Sushma Swaraj, Hon'ble External Affairs Minister of India at 10:30 am. 

Source: Indiaeducationdiary, 6-05-2016

How efficient is Indian education?

There is a need for measuring the ability of educational systems across states to convert inputs to outputs

The Right to Education (RTE) Act has been a cornerstone in changing the education landscape in India. With the introduction of the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, the goal of ensuring universal primary education was aggressively pursued, and a significant quantitative impact in terms of the enrolment ratio has been seen. For the past six years now, enrolment in the country has been around 96%, which may seem a great feat. However, an assessment of the actual learning levels reveals the flip side of the coin. It is almost as if the common ‘volume versus quality’ trade-off has played its part in this scenario too, like any other.

The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2014 indicates how this linear approach hasn’t reaped the benefits it should have; learning levels of students are still a huge concern. According to the survey, almost 50% of Class V students were not able to read basic sentences, and more than 70% were unable to perform simple division.

Thus, it is important for state administrations to realize that improving infrastructure and resources should be accompanied by commensurate learning levels of students. Thus, the need for a measure of efficiency emerges in order to assess education systems in their ability to convert educational inputs to outputs. This can help provide an objective way for states to get feedback on their education delivery process and do away with the practice of judging the performance of states based solely on their inputs, or outputs.

The objective of this work, therefore, is to develop a methodology to measure the relative efficiency of the education delivery process and provide insights on what states can learn from peer-to-peer exchanges. Since there are multiple inputs and outputs, the conventional notion of efficiency defined as the ratio of output to input would not work here. The field of Operations Research provides a suitable methodology in the form of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), which has been used extensively in several investigations and researches across countries and sectors for efficiency analyses. DEA compares each entity (states in this case) with its peers in the set, and assigns a relative efficiency to it. For states that are marked efficient, it does not imply that there isn’t room for improvement; it simply means that in ‘relative’ terms, there is no other state performing better than the given one.

The first step in efficiency measurement using DEA is to identify relevant inputs and outputs for the educational process. The learning outcomes reported by ASER are used as outputs, namely reading levels in local language, basic arithmetic ability and learning levels in English. Similarly, the resources and infrastructure provided by state authorities to facilitate education are the quantifiable inputs.

The RTE lays down certain minimum requirements, and the percentage of schools adhering to those norms serve as input values in this method. The seven factors, as mandated by RTE, considered in this analysis are pupil-teacher ratio, classroom-teacher ratio, availability of drinking water, availability of usable toilets, availability of buildings and playgrounds, availability of library with books and mid-day meals being served. Two additional inputs to represent the socioeconomic background of students as well as the local village infrastructure are also used. These account for the specific conditions within a state. The data is obtained from ASER reports of 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014.

The findings presented here are based on research conducted by our team at IIT Delhi, and a detailed research paper elaborating a part of this research is under consideration for publication. Interesting insights about the standing of various states with respect to each other emerge from the analysis. While there are 12 inefficient states from the 2014 data, an extension of the same to previous years (2011-13) yields a few patterns. Gujarat, Jammu & Kashmir, Karnataka, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu have consistently been performing poorly, and are inefficient across all four years. Punjab had been performing efficiently until 2014, when it slipped slightly. On the contrary, Uttar Pradesh used to be inefficient in 201112, but has remained in the efficient group since 2013, indicating improvement in its education delivery.

Since DEA compares each state to all others while computing efficiency, some states act as the superior efficient peers, whose better performance results in inefficiency of others. Himachal Pradesh and Manipur are two states that have consistently been the efficient peers for the most number of inefficient states.

For each of the inefficient states, it is also possible to highlight the output attribute that needs particular attention, improvement in which will lead to the maximum rise in efficiency. The importance of comparing performance on grounds of efficiency as opposed to merely outcomes is reinforced by the fact that while outcome-oriented rankings would classify Punjab and Sikkim as high-performers, the analysis shows that they are not performing to their fullest potential. Similarly, from an inputoriented perspective, Gujarat, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu are seemingly providing good resources, but are not able to translate them to equally good learning achievements.

Hence, in order to not trade off quality against volume, as recently emphasized by the prime minister, a careful inclusion of inputs as well as outputs is needed in assessment of the status quo, and data-driven insights need to be drawn to identify the right focus areas for improvement. DEA fulfils all such requirements, and can aid in the policymaking process in other sectors too. A sound elementary education system is essential for our country to tap the potential of its vast human resource, and the importance of data-driven policy in this context can never be overemphasized.

Source: Mintepaper, 6-05-2016

The Indian is no longer alone

If grief and anger unite us, so does, when such occasion arises, relief 

Why did Mahatma Gandhi make non-violence a non-negotiable requirement of the mass movement that won us our freedom? You don’t demand non-violence from non-violent people; there is no need to. Did he see behind the seeming docility of the “meek Indian” caricature and much-derided stupor a streak of latent violence that would rip Indians apart along the fissures of caste, creed and gender long before it became a threat to any empire? He witnessed the lava that blew up when chaos erupted; he became a martyr to violence.

No saint can eliminate crime from human behaviour; that is the original sin of existence. But how does one explain the unthinkable, unspeakable and unbelievable depths of depravity that accompany the rape of a Dalit woman in Kerala by “normal” men who have led “normal” lives? How many psychopaths lurk beneath the banal? Why does an instrument of state, the police force, refuse to register an FIR for five days? Can a crime be more brutal, more heinous? Such questions leave me helpless.

Our nation remains a vast collage swirling through a restless kaleidoscope. Blood in one corner, dust and drought in another, elections in a third, corruption in a fourth, and always a sense that more storms are waiting to break any moment. But below this trembling surface is a powerful new fact: The Indian is no longer alone. Anger against barbaric rape-murder spreads from mother to neighbour, neighbour to state, state to country. Indians rise against injustice from every point. If grief unites Indians, so does, when such occasion arrives, relief. I was in Ranchi last weekend when early clouds, always ready to flatter only to deceive, nevertheless broke the morbid, dry grip of an oven-hot summer. A wind from heaven whipped through the city. As I stepped out of the hotel to enjoy the weather, a beaming doorman told me with festive sparkle, “There has been rain. In Latur.”

I have had the curious experience of reading the censored sections of a book long before the authorised version. Hector Bolitho’s Jinnah: Creator of Pakistan first appeared in 1954, commissioned by the Pakistan government. As history, the book is nonsense; as biography it is warped. But as an anthology of anecdotes picked up from about 50 people who knew Muhammad Ali Jinnah it makes for good entertainment. The trouble was that the real Jinnah had eating and drinking habits that were not quite Islamic; and political views that did not suit the new narrative being developed by the Pakistan state. So all such bits were censored by a certain Majid Malik, Principal Information Officer, Government of Pakistan. Bolitho, of course, was not allowed to mention that the book had been sanitised but an enterprising Pakistani publisher five decades later managed to filch these bits from the archives and put them into print. Obviously, the censored bits are far more interesting, evidence as they are of a life replete with contradictions.

Bolitho records this image of Jinnah as a young barrister in Mumbai: “…an El Greco look, with grey, cold depths — lean, pale hands, which he washed almost every hour…” Bolitho is not sharp enough to pause and ask why he washed his hands every hour. There can be only two reasons, vanity or guilt. Pride in one’s hands is a bit odd; but what on earth could Jinnah feel guilty about? One can only conjecture: Was he too cold to the teenage-wife he was forced to marry as per custom before he left for England? She died before he returned.

Jinnah’s winter-summer romance and elopement-marriage with the vivacious Parsi beauty of her time, Ruttie, has been well documented. Ruttie was half his age, and for a while he was completely entranced. Perhaps inevitably, it was all too good to last; they quarrelled, they drifted and began to live apart. Ruttie fell seriously ill, and went to Paris for treatment. Jinnah rushed to her bedside, and for a brief while friends thought their relationship had revived. It did not. Jinnah was not at her side when Ruttie relapsed. Her last epistle to Jinnah is one of the most moving love letters I have read (it is not in Bolitho’s book). Jinnah, famously, broke down and wept when she was buried, at just 29, in Mumbai. And yet when he returned to the home they had shared, Jinnah removed every photograph, every souvenir, every art object associated with her. What manner of man was this?

Source: Indian Express, 6-05-2016

Practise Forgiveness Instead Of Revenge

Maulana Wahiduddin Khan





Almost every day of our lives, we face some kind of bad experience, big or small, which is inescapable. One has two options: either ignore it or try to take some counter measure. The first option is a form of forgiveness, while the other amounts to seeking revenge. Which is the better option? We must decide by looking at the outcome, for that will be the determining factor.Forgiveness is the better option, for it is based on a proven formula for saving yourself from even worse experiences. For example, forgiveness saves you from unworthy distractions, saves your precious time, and saves you from creating even more problems. It is an instant solution to any problem. On the contrary , taking revenge is bound to complicate the problem, for that means making everything go from bad to worse. Where forgiveness can buy time, taking revenge just wastes time without any benefit.
In such a situation, people are generally prone to place the onus for the predicament entirely upon others. But this is an unwise reaction. The better plan is to examine one's own role in the affair. In other words, if you are having some sad experience, don't focus on the other party . Think about your own self and adopt a course of action better for you. At many times in our lives we are faced with two kinds of choices ­ anti-other thinking and pro-self thinking.Anti-other thinking makes you descend to the brute level, whereas pro-self thinking elevates you to a higher plane of human behaviour.
If forgiveness is a full stop, revenge is punctuated by commas. Forgiveness means ending an unwanted situation, w ending an unwanted situation, while taking revenge means endlessly extending it. Forgiveness maintains your positive thinking uninterruptedly, while revenge fosters negativity . And negative thinking can lead to all kinds of evil actions.
Some would argue that forgiveness does not always work, and that it is better to adopt the tit-for-tat policy . But tit-for-tat is not a real solution; it does not end the problem, it only leads to a chain of action-reaction. Forgiveness puts an end to the problem once and for all, while a tit-for-tat policy only aggravates and prolongs it. Some might argue that the policy of forgiveness will only encourage others to indulge in further wrongdoing against us. But this runs counter to the law of nature.
Psychological studies show that every human being is born with an ego and a conscience. If you follow the tit-for-tat policy, es the ego of the other party , it arouses the ego of the other party , whereas if you follow the policy of forgiveness, it will activate the other person's conscience. And it is a fact that, in controversial matters, the conscience always plays a positive role.
Forgiveness and revenge are two different moral cultures. The culture of forgiveness helps in the building of a better society where positive values flourish, the spirit of cooperation prevails, where disparate groups join together and turn themselves into a peaceful society . The outcome of vengefulness is quite the reverse. A revenge culture creates an environment of mistrust, in which everyone takes others to be his rivals. This rules out the growth of a healthy society .
Sooner or later, everyone is bound to do something wrong. Then the saying `To err is human' should be borne in mind. This being so, taking revenge means making not just one mistake, but making mistake after mistake. On the contrary , forgiveness means undoing wrongs with rights. If to err is human, to forgive is even more human.